After confusion, Gomes sits tonight

Posted Apr 4, 2008 by Marc Lancaster

Updated Apr 4, 2008 at 05:58 PM

NEW YORK—Nobody on the Rays’ side seemed to have a clear idea of the machinations behind Jonny Gomes having his suspension reduced to one game, but at last we have a decision.

Gomes will sit out tonight’s game after the players’ union negotiated an agreement with MLB to knock a game off his suspension if he dropped his appeal. The Yankees’ Shelley Duncan and Melky Cabrera also had their suspensions reduced by a game, to two each. Cabrera will serve his today and tomorrow, followed by Duncan on Sunday and Monday.

There was plenty of confusion before we got all that info, though. First MLB told the Rays’ public relations staff—but not Andrew Friedman or anyone else in baseball operations—that Gomes would be suspended tonight. But because that word didn’t come down until about 4:15 and Gomes was already in the starting lineup, Gomes asked the union to try to get his suspension pushed back to Sunday. MLB then sent out word at about 4:50 that he would sit out Sunday, and the Rays assumed that was it. But sometime around 5 p.m., Friedman got a call from the commissioner’s office letting him know Gomes would in fact be sitting out tonight.

“The [MLB] labor relations department handles it with the union,” said Friedman. “The clubs are never involved in this process when there’s a negotiation to reduce it. In fact, at 4:00 today I thought the hearing was going to be Monday and that’s the way it was going to be handled. I didn’t hear until 4:15 that there had been an agreement reached.”

Friedman was not very pleased with the way the situation was handled, but the bottom line for all is at least the Rays will be able to get it over with tonight.

“You know, 162 games – one game, we’ll just chalk it up and move on,” said Gomes.

Here’s their revised lineup:

Iwamura 2B
Crawford LF
Pena 1B
Upton CF
Floyd DH
Navarro C
Hinske 3B
Haynes RF
Bartlett SS