Papelbon was given a three-game suspension and a fine for hitting Manny Machado with a pitch, but will appeal the suspension, Mark Zuckerman of CSN Washington reports. And because Machado hit his homer off Scherzer – not Papelbon – then hitting him on objective would represent something Papelbon endeavored on behalf of his teammates.
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So the league office has ruled that Papelbon’s pitch was intentionally thrown toward the head of Machado.
“It’s good to get all the stuff back on Adam and Zach, and to know that we’ve got to wait it out”, Showalter said.
Papelbon (58) argues with second base umpire Alan Porter (64) after being ejected from the game during the ninth inning against the Baltimore Orioles at Nationals Park. Baltimore has been eliminated from the AL East race thanks to Toronto while the Washington Nationals are 6 ½ games back from the New York Mets and remain a just nearly out of wild card contention.
“He beat me. He put a good swing on it”, said Scherzer, who still has not won a home game since his June 20 no-hitter against the Pittsburgh Pirates. I’m not going to sit here, go back and forth on whether I did or whether I didn’t, because it doesn’t matter. The home run also came two innings after Machado was rung up on a fastball right down the pipe as he attempted to call time.
I woke up this morning thinking about how nice it would be if the Orioles got the sweep against the Nats today. Plus, Papelbon did himself no favors by failing to outright deny plunking Machado, even if pitchers nearly always deny hitting guys on goal even when they’ve clearly done exactly that.
Given Machado’s go-ahead home run a few innings earlier…
“Perception is reality,” Papelbon said.
When I threw at my friend, I knew what I was doing, but I was a child, without a fully developed moral compass.
“It’s disappointing”, Nationals manager Matt Williams said, “that we didn’t win these games”. “So, it’s one of those situations where it happens and I don’t know, I’ll probably get drilled tomorrow, so we’ll see what happens”.
“We just hope it’s (a) 9-1 (game)”, Williams smiled.
But that was not the case when Baltimore played the series finale Thursday afternoon against the Washington Nationals.
Up 4-3 going to the eighth courtesy of a two-run seventh-inning rally, Blake Treinen was summoned to keep the status quo.
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Orioles: RHP Kevin Gusman (3-6, 4.26 ERA) will start Friday’s opener of a series at the Boston Red Sox, who will send LHP Rich Hill (1-0, 1.93) to the mound.
