At the Philadelphia Inquirer, Bob Brookover wrote a column titled “Phillies’ battle for center-field job should include Odubel Herrera.“

On social media, we can assume that most people did not read the article, but simply replied to Inquirer tweets in disagreement, based on the fact that Herrera assaulted his girlfriend on Memorial Day two years ago.

The responses resembled this one:

Clever tweet right there, but let’s take a look at what Brookover actually wrote before casting judgment. Here’s the most relevant part of the column, for our purposes of dissection and analysis:

“A team source indicated that the final decision on whether Herrera receives an invitation to camp is in the hands of managing partner John Middleton. Another source indicated that the Phillies are leaning toward inviting Herrera.

The smart baseball move is obvious: Whether he makes the team or not, the Phillies owe Herrera $10.35 million this season and at least a $2.5 million buyout after the season. That’s money spent, so why not bring him into camp and let him compete for a job?

Herrera was suspended for 85 games without pay in 2019 after he was charged with assaulting his girlfriend. The charges were dropped. He was assigned to the minor leagues last season, but no games were played because of the coronavirus pandemic.

We know this much about Herrera: The four seasons he put together from 2015 through 2018 were better than anything we have seen from the trio of Quinn, Haseley, and Kingery, which is why he is still working under a hefty contract. During his first four years with the Phillies, Herrera hit .279 with a .336 on-base percentage and a .763 OPS. He also averaged 28 doubles and 15 home runs per season. His 11.2 fWAR during that stretch ranked 15th among major-league center fielders.

Maybe the 29-year-old Herrera will never recapture that form, but the Phillies owe it to themselves to find out. Did he do something awful two years ago on Memorial Day at an Atlantic City casino? Yes and if he is ever involved in a domestic violence incident again, he should be banned from baseball forever. But he should also be given a second chance.”

First things first, and let’s be honest about this, because you know it and I know it:


If Odubel Herrera was a superstar, he’d already be back on the roster. But he’s not Tyreek Hill, he’s Odubel Herrera, which is why he’s in baseball purgatory and possibly done with his MLB career.

But with the domestic violence incident, a lot of folks on social media want to make it a black and white thing and draw this “zero tolerance” line in the sand, which is commendable at face value but doesn’t take into account the entirety of the story.

So let’s take another look at the facts:

That’s the CliffsNotes version right there. He committed a horrific act, but the girlfriend chose not to proceed with the case. You don’t have to agree with her decision, but we should all respect it, because it’s her choice and nobody else’s.

Obviously that does not interface with the hardline approach that a lot of people feel when it comes to domestic violence, and you see that in the responses to Brookover’s column. There is a large portion of people who feel like a second chance is not warranted here, which really is just a matter of personal opinion. I’d be curious to know how many people who are anti-Odubel were also anti-Michael Vick, a guy who murdered dogs and served a two-year prison sentence. Are we a society that values second chances or have our feelings changed over the years?

That’s a rhetorical question, or one you’d have to answer individually. For what it’s worth, Herrera has said and done all of the right things since committing this crime, and now the Phillies need to decide if he gets that second chance or not. If he was hitting .335 with a .925 OPS, he’d be a shoe-in starter this season, and maybe that’s the sad irony of this situation, that we’d all turn our heads like hypocrites if a superstar athlete hit his girlfriend. But Odubel is not a superstar athlete, so here we are.

There was nothing wrong with Brookover’s column. It was fine.