Rob Manfred: Red Sox-Orioles intervention was about player safety

— -- MINNEAPOLIS -- It was an unprecedented action for Rob Manfred, but the Major League Baseball commissioner said Friday he doesn't regret intervening in this week's beanball feud between the Boston Red Sox and Baltimore Orioles.

"The Orioles and the Red Sox situation had persisted for a substantial period of time," Manfred said. "I felt it was different than the normal, 'I hit your guy, you hit my guy.' As a matter of fact, it had persisted so long, it was hard to trace back who had hit who, when and whose turn it was."

After several games of pitchers from both teams trying to hit batters, Manfred arranged a conference call on Wednesday with Red Sox manager John Farrell and president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski and their Orioles counterparts, Buck Showalter and Dan Duquette, to urge them to relay a message to their players that enough was enough.

Manfred typically allows teams to work out these disputes on their own. Otherwise, MLB chief baseball officer Joe Torre mediates, often handing out discipline. But Manfred believed the Red Sox-Orioles situation had devolved to where it was an issue of player safety.

"There was at least one pitch that was of grave concern to us, a second one that was of serious concern," Manfred said. "We just didn't want to see it go any further."

Manfred said more severe punishment for a pitch thrown at a batter's head would have to be collectively bargained with the players' union. Manfred said he hopes to "have a continuing dialogue with [union chief] Tony Clark and the MLBPA about whether our rules in this area are really sufficient."

Red Sox ace Chris Sale will not be suspended for throwing a 98 mph fastball at the knees and behind Orioles star Manny Machado, a source told ESPN's Buster Olney.

Red Sox reliever Matt Barnes was suspended four games for throwing a 90 mph pitch behind Machado's head.

But Manfred also suggested that the league could take measures to stop such incidents from occurring by spacing out series between division rivals.

"Those series where I play Baltimore in Baltimore, maybe have one or two short series, and then I play Baltimore in Boston, you don't have that same cooling-off period," Manfred said. "Eighteen, 19 games is a lot of games over the course of a 162-game season. I do think that the proximity of those series can make the problems more serious."

Manfred also addressed the issue of racism in ballparks. In the aftermath of Orioles center fielder Adam Jones reporting that he was the target of a racial slur on Monday night at Fenway Park, Manfred said MLB is surveying its teams about how they handle such incidents, in order to come up with "more industrywide guidelines in this area."

"We want to make sure we know exactly what clubs are doing before we start recommending changes," said Manfred, who added that he wants to ensure that all 30 ballparks are "welcoming to fans of all racial backgrounds."

On Wednesday night, the Red Sox permanently banned from Fenway Park a man they said used a racial slur. The person banned was not the person who directed insults at Jones.

The Orioles returned to Camden Yards on Friday night and posted a message on the scoreboard that read: "Threatening language or any type of hate speech will not be tolerated and will result in ejection from the ballpark."