MLB investigating Tommy Pham slap of Joc Pederson over fantasy football flap

People take their fantasy football teams far too seriously, even professional athletes.

Giants outfielder Joc Pederson said he was slapped in the face by Reds outfielder Tommy Pham during an altercation in the outfield during batting practice on Friday over a disagreement that began when Pederson was accused of cheating in a group text chain concerning their fantasy football league.

“Unfortunate situation. Kind of stemmed from a fantasy football league we both were in last year,” Pederson told reporters after the game. “I put somebody, a player, on the injured reserve when they were listed as out and added another player. And then there was a text message in the group saying that I was cheating because I was stashing players on my bench. I looked up the rules and sent a screenshot of the rules, how it says when a player is ruled out, you’re allowed to put him on the IR. That’s all I was doing.

Joc Pederson Getty Images Tommy Pham Getty Images

“It just so happened that [Pham] had a player, Jeff Wilson, that was out, and he had him on IR. I said, ‘You literally have the same thing on your team, on your bench.’ I guess he was in two leagues and in one of them [Wilson] was on the IR and in one of them, he wasn’t, so maybe that was a confusion. In the ESPN league we were in, it was listed as out. It feels very similar to what I did. That was basically all of it, there’s not much more to it.”

The players had to be separated by teammates, and the Reds removed Pham from their starting lineup pending an MLB investigation of the incident. Pederson, who had a three-homer game against the Mets earlier this week, played for the Giants and went 1-for-3 with an RBI and a hit-by-pitch in a 5-1 Reds victory.

“It’s over as far as my concern,” Pederson said. “I don’t think I’ll speak to him. I don’t think he wants to speak with me, I would assume, I don’t know. That was, I think, the first time we ever spoke in person, so it was a weird interaction and unfortunate. You show up here, it was hard to lock back in. It was a tough day. 

“We lose the game. We’re scuffling a little bit. That just makes things worse and this is an added distraction. You want to eliminate those as much as possible because these games are hard. We lost. It feels like what happened was unfortunate, but it still was a big distraction to other guys around here and we didn’t play a good game tonight. If I had something to do with that by being a distraction, then that makes me feel really bad.”