2022 MLB General Season Chatter: Ghost Runners On The Half-Billion Dollar Infield

man, i used to root for tommy pham pretty hard, because he was one of those guys with tons of talent who faced so many ridiculous obstacles on his way up, including lots of weird injuries, his persistent eye issues. but wtf is up with this guy now

CINCINNATI -- Major League Baseball is investigating a pregame altercation that occurred on Friday afternoon between the Reds’ Tommy Pham and the Giants’ Joc Pederson.

Pham was scratched from Cincinnati’s lineup shortly before first pitch, with a Reds spokesperson saying he agreed to sit out pending MLB’s investigation.

“MLB is investigating the incident that occurred before the game involving Mr. Pham,” said an MLB spokesperson. “Mr. Pham agreed to not play this evening, pending the results of MLB’s investigation.”

Reds players were taking batting practice at Great American Ball Park when Pham and Pederson met out in left field. Pederson said Pham confronted him and slapped him on the face over a dispute involving the fantasy football league that included both players as participants last year. Several players intervened in the situation, and both clubs’ dugouts and bullpens emptied.

“Unfortunate situation,” Pederson said following the Reds’ 5-1 win. “Kind of stemmed from a fantasy football league we both were in last year. I put a player on the injured reserve when they were listed as out and then added another player. And then there was a text message in the group [chat] saying that I was cheating because I was stashing players on my bench.

Maybe take it his convo to the fantasy thread, but I feel like it’s a perfectly acceptable thing to do?!

Mets booth were speculating it might be a cover story, a la last year’s “rat or raccoon” fiasco

i require context on that one!

Tommy Pham said Pederson said “disrespectful shit” about the Padres and “fucked with my money”

— C. Trent Rosecrans (@ctrent) May 28, 2022

i love this, tommy pham should fight everyone in baseball

Thermo: Last year McNeil and Lindor had an in-game squabble down the dugout tunnel, and a bunch of bench members rushed down there to break it up when it got heated. At the end of the game, they described it as an argument over whether the animal they saw in the tunnel was a rat or a raccoon. It was clearly not about that.

Pham caping for the Friars is so strange. He played a year and change and then they got rid of him

i get that some athletes fire themselves up by fixating on ‘disrespect’ but tommy pham is a head case (with a three-game suspension)

also, dallas keuchel has been DFA’d by the white sox

Pham is the idiot in this case. Piecing this thing together from Pham's comments. Joc talked shit about his club, sounds like trash talking to me and probably goes on all the time. But, this is all about fantasy Football, which ended months ago. Pham, instead of dealing with it at the time, let it fester until he saw Joc next. He then went up to him and slapped him while in pre-game warmups. He then gets a three-game suspension which is not being appealed. Life huh?

Sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do to defend the honor of the San Diego padres, we've all been there

lol

San Diego padres

Brilliant.

Joc showed up with receipts of the fantasy football group chat with Tommy Pham, which included a GIF making fun of the Padres last season pic.twitter.com/rCYbFRdwA8

— SF Giants on NBCS (@NBCSGiants) May 29, 2022

not defending Tommy Pham’s actions but Joc Pederson has a very slappable face

sorry what year is it??

https://i.imgur.com/as9pALk.png

it turns out that a while back, time started folding back in on itself. some things change, but others are locked in

i'm still kinda pissed about tommy pham!

i mean if you or i premeditatedly slapped a colleague -- let alone over gambling on sports -- we'd be instantly fired, and rightly so

does he only get three games because joc is a big boy himself? or because the players union would object to more? how would it be different if he'd slapped a clubhouse manager? or an umpire?

i guess tommy pham can't exactly be fired, but he should at least have been suspended far longer

Good points and you're 1000% correct.

So why is Martin Perez suddenly amazing? What the hell.

he had flashes of brilliance for the red sox, i was sad to see him go

We’re maybe 30% into the season and he’s pitched absolutely god like. I have kind of a hard time reading the tea leaves on savant pages - but this looks like a real break through and not just a 9-game fluke (at age 31!). What’s he doing differently this year?? I think this turnaround is nuts

hey when you got it you got it

look up the Azocar outfield assist in the first inning of today's padres game. holy crap, that's pretty much exactly how you play it

I can’t tell if it’s because the play is so smooth, but that looks like some Ill-advised base running.

yeah, gorman isn't the fastest and he's just coming up from the minors, so he's probably not used to the ball being whipped back in so quickly

still, i was impressed.

however, later in the game Azocar almost wiped out CF Grisham on a ball that was clearly Grisham's. that is my least favorite play in baseball, the near-collision. i watch through my fingers.

obvs still preferable to actual collision.
seeing kurt suzuki suddenly drop in the angels dugout the other day was pretty freaky too

KM, Do you know why the Cards gave up on Nick Plummer? He’s looked good for the Mets the past two days. Lot of sneaky power. Small sample size and all.

Honestly, I hadn’t realized he was with the Mets now! He elected (minor league) free agency? I didn’t realize he’s been with the cardinals org long enough to do so.

He has a big breakout year in 2021, after several years of disappointing results. I remember his first round signing being roundly criticized even on the day it happened, and from the start, the few updates I’d see about him were generally of the “looks like a bust” variety. Looking at his early milb stats, they don’t seem _that bad_, but he was also usually relatively old for his levels he was playing at, I think.

Anyway, all that seems like ancient history. His 2021 was really great, enough to get him back in the conversation for the big league roster, but he was blocked in the OF by several others, so I can see why he and the cardinals might have parted way amicably? Don’t know.

1/4 of the Dodgers losses this year have been to the Pirates.

It’s even more than that now. First Pirates sweep in LA since 2000.

Josh Donaldson hurt New York Yankees didn't publicly support him after comment about Tim Anderson

poor guy

Aww.

Cano to El Paso free agency

couldn't have happened to a more wealthy guy

Girardi

Out

oof

https://www.nbcsports.com/sites/rsnunited/files/article/hero/Dombrowski_D_Getty_1052531664.jpg

tough out there for a team of DHs

it's kinda funny that they fired him after a win and then an off-day tho

Great back and forth Mets-Dodgers game today. Going to be exciting if they meet in the playoffs.

Last night Dave Roberts tried to use a position player to pitch in the 9th, but was not allowed to since it was only a 5-run lead. The bullpen coach put up a stink and the umpires eventually allowed the not-warmed-up actual pitcher to take warmups. The whole thing caused an eleven-minute delay. Embarrassing.

The impression I had was that it was clearly against the rules for him to take warmups but it would be insane to let the guy risk injury by pitching without warming up so the umps let the bullpen coach argue long enough for the guy to get some pitches in, avoiding a situation where the umps had to overtly disobey the rule

There should be more of a penalty, like a free runner at second or something. I agree you don’t want to risk a pitcher injury, but it’s a bad look. Sort of like when a team loses their challenge, but then their manager asks the umpires to review a play later in the game, and the umpires oblige.

Interestingly, in the game today, Roberts elected to review a pitch for catcher interference in a key spot. Down a run in the bottom of the 10th with 2 outs, Trea Turner was up with a runner on third. On review, it was ruled catcher interference, and Turner was awarded first. He subsequently stole second, but then Will Smith struck out to end the game. I would have thought you’d rather have Turner up with the game on the line.

Agreed. It should be a penalty that makes the team more likely to lose, not a penalty that creates an injury risk for a player who had no involvement in the mistake (or any player, frankly.)

TS: Joey Votto or Glenn Otto

another joe fired (maddon)

Already plotting the first episode of The Camus 'Cast with Joe Maddon

Maddon traded for the first overall pick in the draft (of 1992)

I was surprised to hear that Maddon was fired (mainly considering his long history with the Angels), but he's in the last year of his contract and hadn't really improved things on the field. His weird tinkering was suited for the Rays (a franchise that more or less exists for beta testing creative management strategies) but not for a team with the resources and talent of the Angels. Even with the Cubs I think he was getting away with a lot of his eccentricities because the team was too good to not win (until, of course, they stopped winning).

amazing last time I looked up the Angels record they were like 26-15 or something and I thought it was great that finally the two best players of the modern era were gonna get some playoff time

they're now 3 games under .500 lmao