The referees have warned both teams. (With two strikeouts and no one in the first, Yankees starter Masahiro Tanaka had knocked out Rays third baseman Joey Wendle, who was laughing derisively as he made his way to the first. At 95.1 mi. / hr was the hardest pitch Tanaka had thrown all night.) Kevin Cash stormed out of the canoe and complained bitterly to team leader Chad Fairchild: If you think it was intentional enough to warn us, you should throw it out of the game. Fairchild let Cash declaim, then kicked him out. Eventually, play resumed and Chapman pulled Brosseau out to finish the game, then looked him down. The two teams spread out across the pitch and circled around until the refs separated them.
Subsequently, Brosseau said: “If there was an intention behind it, and they wanted to send another message [after hitting Wendle]I guess they made their point.Cash was not dealing in hypotheses. He insisted to reporters that the presentation had been useful. “It’s bad judgment, bad management, it’s just bad teaching,” he said. He added, “I have a hell of a stable full of guys who throw 98 miles an hour.”New York Director Aaron Boone responded, via reporters: “These are pretty scary comments. I don’t think that’s true at all. But I’m not going to go into it right away.
Chapman, through a Yankees spokesperson, declined to make himself available to the media.
These teams have ranked a lot over the years. The Yankees grumbled about the Rays’ strategy of throwing first baseman DJ LeMahieu inside; the Rays growled back. The empty ball fields only exacerbated their aversion, as each team can hear the other’s reproaches. “We’ve got a bit of history of tweets and some of the things that happened between the white lines,” Tampa Bay center defenseman Kevin Kiermaier told reporters on Sunday before the series began. “I don’t think they’re the biggest fans of us, and vice versa. ”
After Tuesday’s game, he echoed: “We don’t like them,” he said. “They don’t like us.”
The Rays are currently first in the AL East, three and a half games ahead of the second-placed Yankees. The teams will meet for the last time this regular season Wednesday. If they meet again, it will be in the ALCS.
Quick shots
• We are six months into a global pandemic that has changed life as we know it. The Marlins are in a position to make the playoffs. A year ago, the second sentence would have seemed more unlikely than the first. On Tuesday, Miami beat the Blue Jays 3-2 to move to 16-15 and stay tied with the Phillies for second place in the NL East.
• DH Reds Matt Davidson started Tuesday’s game as a designated hitter and ended it as a pitcher. (Cincinnati lost to the Cardinals 16–2.) He went 0–4 with a step and allowed two runs in two innings. This was only the 12th time in history that a player has spent time at these two positions in the same game – and incredibly, the last time was three days ago, when the Mariners’ Tim Lopes went 1 at 4 and allowed two runs in one set. in a 16–3 loss to the Angels.
• The Giants beat the Rockies 23–5 on Tuesday. Left fielder Alex Dickerson went 5–6 with three homers, two doubles and one walk; second baseman Donovan Solano went 4-6 with two doubles; and shortstop Brandon Crawford went 3–6 with a double. Each has driven in six races. According to Stats Perform, they became the first trio of teammates to have at least six RBIs each in the same game since the RBI became an official 1920 statistic.
