As a KC Royals fan, I'm not surprised by the events of the weekend - it was a volcano waiting to erupt.
Apr 6 vs CWS - Lorenzo Cain, CF gets hit by a pitch, Alex Gordon, LF gets hit by a pitch
Apr 8 vs CWS - Lorenzo Cain, CF gets hit by a pitch, Mike Moustakas, 3B gets hit by a pitch
Apr 9 vs CWS -
Apr 10 vs LAA - Mike Moustakas, 3B gets hit by a pitch TWICE, Alex Gordon, LF gets hit by a pitch
Apr 11 vs LAA - Eric Hosmer, 1B gets hit by a pitch, Alex Gordon, LF gets hit by a pitch
Apr 12 vs LAA - Mike Moustakas, 3B gets hit by a pitch
Apr 13 vs MIN - Alex Rios, RF gets hit by a pitch PUT ON 15-DAY DL, Alex Gordon, LF gets hit by a pitch
Apr 15 vs MIN - Kendrys Morales, DH gets hit by a pitch
Apr 16 vs MIN -
By the time the Oakland series rolled around, my guess is KC is a little on edge with all of the HBPs they have experienced - 13 HBPs in 9 games. That's a pretty high rate.
On top of that, one of those batters was put on the DL due to a broken finger from a hit by pitch.
By Friday night, the Royals are frustrated and have seen one of their starters go down due to a HBP.
In the seventh inning of Friday night's game, Lawrie slides hard into Escobar, dirty or clean, and injures a second starter from the Royals.
The bear has been poked.
A retaliation is coming.
Sure enough, in Saturday's game, Ventura plunks Lawrie. Ventura gets ejected. Lawrie takes his lumps with no complaint. Should be the end of things, right?
Whoops, guess not. In the first inning, Cain gets hit by Kazmir. No ejection of Kazmir. Royals are enraged.
Once again, retaliation is only a matter of time.
Sure enough, Lawrie steps up to the plate in the 8th inning and gets one pitch inside and the next one goes behind his head. Herrera is ejected and all hell breaks loose.
I'm not going to try to guess which events were intentional or not. But you've got to be naive to think that KC was going to go quietly into the night after seeing another starter get injured and another HBP.
Hopefully, they've got it out of their system and can cool down a bit over the next week. But don't be surprised to see them easily get aggressive if something happens again (HBP, hard slide, collision, etc).