VIDEOS: Derek Jeter plunked, benches clear in Yankees-Rays game
Things got testy between the Yankees and Rays and on Tuesday night in St. Pete.
Late in Tuesday night's Yankees-Rays game (TB 6, NYY 1), things got testy between the two AL East rivals.
It seemed to begin in the eighth when Steve Geltz came inside against Derek Jeter and got a piece of his left arm/hand.
Much like the Yankee booth, I don't see cause to warn both benches, but perhaps the umpiring crew was privy to some preexisting tensions. As for Joe Girardi's somewhat puzzling overreation, we'll get to that in a second.
Anyhow, you can probably guess what happened in the home half of the eighth.
Sean Rodriguez seems displeased!
Larger hostilities were avoided, but the bad feelings lingered.
As for Girardi, he explained after the game that it's not the intent but rather the seeming inability of Rays' pitchers to command their inside stuff that stuck in his craw. Via CBS New York, here's part of what Girardi had to say:
“If you are going to pitch inside, pitch the right way,” Girardi said. “If you can’t pitch inside, don’t pitch inside. We are not pin cushions.
...
“I’m all for pitching inside, but you’ve got to know how to pitch inside because it’s extremely dangerous. I don’t know what they expect; you hit five of our guys in four games, you don’t think we’ll be pissed?”
For what it's worth, the Rays rank third in the American League with 60 hit batsmen this season. The Yankees, meanwhile, rank seventh with 53. The league-average mark is 52. As Girardi suggests, though, it's not so much the body of work he's objecting to as it is the recent clustering of HBPs against the Yankees. On another level, though, that's baseball.
Developing, maybe!
