Devon Travis #29 of the Toronto Blue Jays circles the bases after hitting a two-run home run in the fifth inning during MLB game action against the Baltimore Orioles on April 22, 2015 at Rogers Centre in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.Tom Szczerbowski/Getty Images
Doesn't anybody in this game like each other any more?
One cannot help but get that impression after a tempestuous start to this baseball season, just more than two weeks old and already filled with a litany of player altercations and managerial meltdowns.
Toronto Blue Jays manager John Gibbons said he cannot say for sure, but he senses that the grand old game has taken on a nastier element since opening day on April 6.
"I don't know if you call it rivalry or what the reason, but there's some pretty good intensity out there and there's some cheap shots being taken, no doubt about it," Gibbons said. "Probably more so than I remember it for so early in the season."
Gibbons was expressing his views in his office on Wednesday afternoon, several hours before his Blue Jays were slated to resume hostilities against the Baltimore Orioles at Rogers Centre.
Unlike previous encounters against the Orioles, which often have threatened to escalate into a barroom brawl, this outing was tame by comparison.
The end result was a very complacent 4-2 win by the Blue Jays (8-7) who have won two in a row over Baltimore (7-8) and will look for the sweep in Thursday's finale.
Aaron Sanchez (1-2), notched his first win since being converted to starter from closer for the start of this season, but it was by no means a work of art.
Sanchez went 5 1/3 innings and only gave up two hits, including a two-run homer by Jimmy Paredes in the Baltimore third that provided the Orioles with a 2-0 lead.
Sanchez struggled throughout with his control, walking seven batters. The 22-year-old benefited from a couple of timely double plays to pull him along.
The Blue Jays knotted the score in the fourth on a two-run home run by Justin Smoak, his first of the year. The Jays gained the lead in the fifth when rookie Devon Travis, returning to the lineup after sitting out a game with a sore ribcage after getting hit by a pitch, launched a two-run homer.
It was the fourth round-tripper of the year for Travis, who went 3-for-4 and is now hitting .388.
Rookie Miguel Castro came on in the eighth inning to retire the final out and then concluded the job in the ninth to record the save, his third of the year.
The game had none of the fireworks that dominated proceedings on Tuesday when the Blue Jays, especially Jose Bautista, felt Baltimore reliever Jason Garcia was being conveniently wild with some of his pitches.
The Orioles countered that Bautista was showboating on Tuesday, especially after he socked a home run off Garcia in the same at-bat in the seventh inning in which a pitch sailed in behind Bautista's back.
The fact that Bautista was not in the lineup Wednesday, sitting out with a sore shoulder, no doubt helped lessen the tensions between the clubs.
Although it is still early in the season, players being thrown at and other assorted misdeeds have dominated storylines throughout baseball.
Umpires have had to eject 18 participants from games this season for perceived misbehaviour, eight players and 10 managers or coaches.
The Kansas City Royals and Oakland Athletics got into a bit of a beanball war in their heated series over the weekend.
While it may seem as though more pitchers are taking direct aim at batters in the early going of 2015, in fact the opposite is true. And heading into play on Wednesday, 155 batters have been hit by pitches.
Players with the Texas Rangers have been plunked most often, with 16, followed by Kansas City (14), Boston and Pittsburgh (10 each) and then the Blue Jays (9).
While the totals may seem high, the incidents of hit-by-pitch have actually declined when compared to last season.
In 2014, a total of 1,652 players were struck in 2,430 games. That amounts to a hit-by-pitch rate of 1.47 a game. This season, through 208 games, the rate is 1.34.
The players, for the most part, accept getting hit by a pitch. It is the cost of doing business.
"Nobody likes getting hit with 95 [miles-an-hour], the ball's hard," said Toronto outfielder Ryan Goins, who was plunked in the right thigh by a Garcia pitch on Tuesday. "But it's part of the game, it happens. Just play along with it and hope you don't miss time."
Garcia was asked: At which point does a batter realize the pitch is zeroing in on his anatomy instead of the plate?
"I don't know – when you say 'Oh, shoot' in your head and try to move," he said. "But you can't go up there thinking defensively. You have to be thinking about getting a hit."