It really is the story that will not die.
Amazingly, there wasn’t another chapter in the Joc Pederson-Tommy Pham saga last weekend, when Pham’s Reds faced the Giants at Oracle Park in a three-game series that was without incident between the two parties. Another wrinkle was revealed on Monday, however, when two of Pederson’s teammates with the Braves last season disclosed some interesting info about the beef.
Braves pitchers Tyler Matzek and Josh Tomlin joined Chris Rose on Jomboy Media’s The Chris Rose Rotation, and recounted how they knew last year that Pham wanted to hit Pederson over the now infamous fantasy football dispute.
Apparently, Pederson was so concerned with being attacked by Pham, he hid in the dugout pregame during a series against the Padres, electing to take batting practice in the cage to avoid seeing Pham.
Transcript:
Chris Rose: Josh, what was your reaction when your former teammate Joc Peterson got slapped in the face by Tommy Pham?
Tyler Matzek: Oh boy.
Josh Tomlin: What the hell, Joc? Do something back first and foremost. What the hell are you doing letting somebody bitch slap you and you walk away from it? Just kind of say are you shitting me? That’s number one. Number two I knew is gonna happen. I saw the text message.
Rose: You weren’t in the, hold on, you weren’t in the league?
Tomlin: I’m not in the league. No.
Chris Rose: Okay.
Matzek: This has been going on, this was going on for a very long time. This was going on all last year. So we would hear about this in our clubhouse before this ever happened.
And the biggest one was when we went to San Diego that end of the year and he literally did not leave the clubhouse. Joc did not leave the clubhouse because he knew Tommy Pham was out there.
And Tommy Pham wanted to slap him and beat him up. And so he just stayed inside the clubhouse didn’t take BP for three days, just hit the side of the cage and then would come out to the game.
It was fantastic. So the whole clubhouse, everybody knew this. And he felt that it had like, you know, Tommy left or that Pham left the league and like he was good to go. Came out and then yeah.
Tomlin: What a grudge to hold. I mean that’s a year in the making and he just walked up to him and bitch slapped him.
For the few who haven’t been following this beef, a month ago Pham slapped Pederson in the face before a Giants-Reds game in Cincinnati over a fantasy football dispute from last year. Pham was apparently still angry about how Pederson had used his IR designation and a GIF that Pederson had sent to the league group chat.
Pham expressed no remorse and was suspended for the series.
Watch the entire episode of The Chris Rose Rotation here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-SWPmzxtuo