Tommy Pham SLAPPED Joc Pederson in the face prior to the San Francisco Giants' game on Friday against the Cincinnati Reds. Apparently, Pham held onto a grudge for months after he didn't agree with some of the things Pederson wrote in a fantasy football group chat late last year.
Pham thought that Pederson was being shady with some rules, but Pederson says he was operating within them and that Pham was actually doing the same thing. Pham also says (and Pederson admits) he made fun of the Padres with a GIF late last season as the SF Giants and Dodgers fought over first place in the NL West and the Padres floundered. Pham took these incidents so poorly that he decided to hit Pederson in the face on Friday. Pederson did not fight back and said that "violence isn't the answer." Pham was suspended for three games by MLB.
The Giants then went on to play an ugly series in Cincinnati. Their offense just could not get anything going pretty much all series, until they finally broke through with six runs with two outs in the 8th inning on Sunday. They were being no-hit through 6.2 innings until Thairo Estrada finally broke up the no-no. Evan Longoria delivered the big hit in the 8th, crushing a three-run homer to right that gave the Giants the lead. Luis González added a two-run double, and the Giants would go on to win the finale. Still, it was a rough series and the Giants have played relatively poorly over an extended stretch this month.
Their team offense has overall been pretty good, however, with a 112 wRC+. Their pitching has under-performed their peripherals by a wide margin. Alex Cobb has been perhaps the unluckiest pitcher in baseball, but the results finally matched up with the peripherals with a very strong outing on Sunday. The SF Giants have a three-game lead over the final playoff spot and are five games over .500. Despite the poor play as of late, they appear to be in pretty good shape to improve over the remaining 70%+ of the 2022 season.
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The best daily San Francisco Giants podcast. Whether the Giants are winning championships or retooling for another title run, Locked On Giants host Ben Kaspick—a lifelong Giants fan and former contributor for RotoGraphs and Beyond the Box Score—breaks down every game, rumor, and transaction in a way that's data-driven and rational but also simple, passionate, and accessible to all.
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