Tommy Pham Slapped Joc Pederson in Argument Over Fantasy Football
Earlier on Friday before the San Francisco Giants and Cincinnati Reds faced off at Great American Ballpark, there was a scuffle between the two teams during batting practice. Reds outfielder Tommy Pham and Giants outfielder Joc Pederson had to be separated from each other. Well, now we know the dumb reason why.
Apparently Pham slapped Pederson across the face after a disagreement stemming from their fantasy football league.
Our headline has been updated with more details: Sources confirm Tommy Pham slapped Joc Pederson across the face after confronting him about a disagreement stemming from their fantasy football league. https://t.co/xMUMAuc2n9
— Andrew Baggarly (@extrabaggs) May 28, 2022
Spoke with Joc Pederson, who said Tommy Pham slapped him during pregame incident over issue involving fantasy football league. Said he doesn’t expect to be in another fantasy league with Pham again.
— John Shea (@JohnSheaHey) May 28, 2022
Here's Pederson talking about the incident:
Joc shares details of what happened in his fantasy football league that started his altercation with Tommy Pham today pic.twitter.com/d9NBTwPVoG
— SF Giants on NBCS (@NBCSGiants) May 28, 2022
Here's his full quote:
We were in a fantasy league together. I put somebody, a player on the injured reserve when they were listed as out and added another player. And then there was a text message in the group saying that I was cheating because I was stashing players on my bench. And then, I don't know, I looked up the rules and sent a screenshot of the rules, how it says that when a player is ruled out, you're allowed to put him on the IR. That's all I was doing. And then It just so happened that he had a player -- Jeff Wilson -- who was out, and he had him on the IR. I said, you literally have the same thing on your bench. And then I guess he was in two leagues and in one of them (Wilson) was on the IR and in one of them, he wasn't. So maybe that was the confusion. In the ESPN league we were in, he was listed as out. It feels very similar to what I did. That was basically all of it. There's not much more to it.
Good lord what a dumb argument. Really Tommy? Slapping a dude across the face because of an argument about fantasy football? How about, I don't know, laughing about it and walking away? This happened more than a year ago.
MLB is currently investigating the incident.