Tommy Pham suspended, explains why he slapped SF Giants’ Joc Pederson over fantasy football
CINCINNATI — The story of the night in the baseball world continued Saturday, when Tommy Pham addressed why he slapped Joc Pederson over a fantasy football dispute.
Pham confronted Pederson during batting practice on Friday and slapped him across the face with his hand open, an action Pederson did not respond to. After an MLB investigation, the league suspended Pham for three games for his “inappropriate conduct” prior to Friday’s game, which Pham agreed to sit out.
After Pederson gave his side of the events that caused the fracas Friday night, Pham told media in Cincinnati before Saturday’s game that Pederson had made “disrespectful” comments towards Pham’s old team, the San Diego Padres, in a group text message.
“I slapped Joc. He said some [expletive] I don’t condone. I had to address it,” Pham said.
Pederson — who has not yet addressed the accusation of disrespectful text messages — felt the dispute with Pham originated from which football players are eligible to be placed on the injured reserve, which Pham referred to as “sketchy [expletive].” Pederson specifically highlighted 49ers running back Jeff Wilson Jr. as a football player who was at the center of the dispute between the baseball players.
“There was a text message in the group saying that I was cheating because I was stashing players on my bench,” Pederson said Friday. “I looked up the rules and sent a screenshot of the rules that says when a player is ruled out, you’re allowed to put him on the IR. That’s all I was doing.
“It just so happened that he had a player – Jeff Wilson – that was out, and he had him on IR. I said, you literally have the same thing on your team. … It feels very similar to what I did. That was basically all of it. There’s not much more to it.”
It would seem that this specific fantasy football league brings together several baseball players from around MLB and is a high-money league. Pham said Saturday that there was “too much money on the line” and “he was messing with my money.”
“I’m a big dog in Vegas,” Pham said. “I’m a high roller at many casinos.”
While Pederson surely did not seem to anticipate the incident occurring, he expressed regret that it may have played a factor in the Giants’ sloppy 5-1 loss to the Reds.
“It was a weird interaction. Unfortunate. You show up here, and it’s hard to lock back in. It was a tough day,” Pederson said on Friday. “We’re scuffling a little bit, so that just makes things worse, and this is just an added distraction. You want to eliminate those as much as possible because this game’s so hard. Like I said, we lost.
“It feels like what happened was unfortunate, but it’s still a big distraction to other guys around here. We didn’t play a good game tonight. If I had something to do with that, being a distraction, that makes me feel really bad because I’m here to help this team win, not be a distraction.”