Generally when a pitcher throws at a player, the angry response is to charge the mound. Not when you’re Manny Machado though.
The Orioles third baseman took exception to being thrown at by Oakland reliever Fernando Abad — so he chucked his bat at the A’s third baseman on the next pitch.
The story goes like this. Machado and A’s third baseman Josh Donaldson got into a little tiff at third base earlier in the series on an aggressive tag. The A’s were not happy with Machado’s actions, so Abad retaliated with an inside pitch. Machado looked to the mound and said a few unhappy words. On the next pitch, Abad came inside again, so Machado flung his bat. It’s hard to tell if Machado was trying to throw it at Abad or not, because he came nowhere close. But it was clearly intentional, despite Machado denying it after the game. And Donaldson was not playing third base at the time, so he wasn’t trying to throw it at him.
Machado was ejected for chucking his bat. Abad was ejected for throwing at Machado twice.
The whole incident got Oakland very charged up. Catcher John Jaso quickly confronted Machado after the bat throwing, but was intercepted by Baltimore first base coach Wayne Kirby.
We got some pushing and shoving and players being held back, but in the end the “fight” was typical of most baseball “brawls” — lots of talk and no punches thrown.
“He thinks he’s got 10-plus years in the big leagues,” Jaso said in an interview on MLB Network after the game. “That doesn’t really fly with me. I mean, I don’t think it really flies well with a lot of these players and even sometimes those guys need to be brought down a little bit so they play the game right. There’s a few examples from this series where he isn’t playing the game right and it’s kind of a disrespect to the game.”
Follow Metro New York Sports Editor Mark Osborne on Twitter @MetroNYSports. Can’t we all just get along, people?
