Reds' Tommy Pham suspended for slap of Giants' Joc Pederson; fantasy football beef was at root

Tom Gatto

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Reds' Tommy Pham suspended for slap of Giants' Joc Pederson; fantasy football beef was at root image

A beef over fantasy football was the root cause of a confrontation Friday between Reds outfielder Tommy Pham and Giants outfielder Joc Pederson that turned physical.

Pham slapped Pederson across the face as they converged in the outfield during batting practice at Cincinnati's Great American Ball Park.

After the game, Pederson went over his version of the slap's history.

He said he and Pham were in a fantasy league with other MLB players, and Pederson was accused of cheating by stashing a player who was listed as out on the league's injured reserve. Pederson said Pham did something similar with 49ers running back Jeff Wilson, and that was pointed out to him in a group text. This all happened "over a year ago," Pederson said. 

"It was a surprise," Pederson said. "He kind of came up and said, like, I don't know, 'Remember last year?' And I was like, 'Fantasy football?' He was like, 'Yeah.'"

Pederson said "violence is never the answer," so he withdrew from the situation.

Major League Baseball suspended Pham three games for the incident, and the Reds outfielder accepted the suspension, according to The Athletic's C. Trent Rosecrans. After the incident, Pham agreed to take himself out of the starting lineup Friday as part of the probe, according to multiple reports, which Rosecrans said counted as the first day of his suspension. Pederson remained in the Giants' lineup.

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On Saturday, Pham explained that Pederson had said something about Pham's former team, the Padres, that he didn't like, and said he didn't like what was going on in the fantasy league.

"We had too much money on the line, so I look at it like there's a code," Pham said, according to ESPN. "You're f—ing with my money, then you're going to say some disrespectful s—; there's a code to this.

"I'm a big dog in Vegas. I'm a high roller at many casinos," Pham added, according to Mercury News' Evan Webeck.

Pederson came back after Saturday's game by showing on his phone what got Pham so hot. Pederson displayed a GIF "making fun of" the Padres, who were "playing bad" at the time, that he sent to the fantasy league's group text. He said other Padres players, with whom Peterson said he was close, were in the league.

"'Was meant to be all fun and games. No hard feelings. Sorry if you took it that way,'" Pederson read from his phone. Pederson added that Pham left the league about two weeks later "and there has been no communication since."

Before Friday's game, Giants manager Gabe Kapler told reporters that his team was doing its own investigating and taking the matter "very seriously."

"(We're) learning as much as we can about the incident," Kapler said. "I sense that we will have a clearer understanding after the game."

The start of the game was delayed two hours by rain, giving Kapler an earlier opportunity to get to the bottom of what happened.

Kapler said after the game he did have "some information" but "probably won't say much" on the incident until MLB completes its investigation.

Edward Sutelan contributed to this report.

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Tom Gatto

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Tom Gatto joined The Sporting News as a senior editor in 2000 after 12 years at The Herald-News in Passaic, N.J., where he served in a variety of roles including sports editor, and a brief spell at APBNews.com in New York, where he worked as a syndication editor. He is a 1986 graduate of the University of South Carolina.