The San Francisco Giants' Joc Pederson and Cincinnati Reds' Tommy Pham had to be separated in the outfield prior to Friday's game, in which the latter slapped the former on the cheek.
Bad blood? Yeah, you bet.
It turns out the scuffle stemmed from … a fantasy football league.
"It was a surprise," Pederson told the media after the game. "There was no real argument. He kind of came up and said, like, 'I don't know if you remember from last year,' and I was like, 'Fantasy football.' He was like, 'Yeah.'"
Pederson explained the case, in which Pham cited him with cheating for placing an injured player on IR and subbing in a free agent — a move that Pederson said Pham tried to pull himself.
"I sent a screenshot of the rules, how it says that if a player's ruled out, you're allowed to put him on the IR and that's all I was doing," Pederson said. "He literally did the same thing. That was basically all of it."
Pham wound up a lineup scratch prior to Friday's game. Pederson, meanwhile, went 1-for-3 with the team's lone RBI in a 5-1 loss.
"Violence isn't the answer. It's over as far as I'm concerned," Pederson said. "I won't talk to him. I don't think he wants to talk to me, I don't know. It was a weird interaction."
Weird, indeed.
