The Lancaster Barnstormers, an unaffiliated minor league baseball team in Pennsylvania, announced early Wednesday morning that they have released outfielder Danry Vasquez after a Texas television station obtained a 2016 surveillance video that showed Vasquez beating his girlfriend.
The video, obtained by KRIS-TV in Corpus Christi via open-records request, shows Vasquez striking a woman multiple times and pulling her hair in a stairwell at Whataburger Field, the home stadium of the Class AA Corpus Christi Hooks, Vasquez’s team in 2016.
Vasquez, who came up through the Detroit Tigers organization but was in the Houston Astros’ farm system during the time of the incident, has played in his native Venezuela the last two years (Major League Baseball suspended him indefinitely after the incident). The 24-year-old signed with the Barnstormers in January.
“There is no choice but to sever the relationship,” Barnstormers Manager Ross Peeples said in a statementreleased on Facebook. “Neither I, nor the Barnstormers’ organization as a whole, can condone or associate with that behavior.”
Police arrested Vasquez two days after the incident, but the charges against him recently were dismissed under the terms of a plea deal worked out with prosecutors in Nueces County, Tex. District Attorney Mark Gonzalez told KRIS that Vasquez took classes and paid a fine as part of the agreement.
“Yes, I’ve seen the video. That’s what happens in domestic-violence cases,” Gonzalez said. “Every time a man or woman hurts each other that’s what it looks like, and it’s ugly, and what I’m trying to accomplish is to stop that from happening.
“I’m hoping Mr. Vasquez will be the poster boy for our program and never hurt somebody that he’s in a relationship with, and only time will tell,” he continued.
