NEWSLETTER
There are the kinds of “benches-clearing” incidents where pockets of the two baseball teams go out onto the field, do some jawing, some tough-guy-hold-me-back stuff. It’s still interesting, but it’s mostly just funny.
And then there are the kinds where some players are seriously trying to wail on each other. Doggy piles and haymakers and the kind of mass of dudes where you can’t even really tell who is doing what or fighting with whom.
What just happened in the Angels-Mariners game was definitely the latter kind. Three minutes of chaos, and MULTIPLE rumbles, following Mariners outfielder Jesse Winker getting plunked in a situation where apparently everyone thought it was intentional:
That was a multi-layered, multi-engagement, multiple-punches-thrown type of basebrawl. There was almost no “I’m just here to stand around” energy, and when the bullpens came out, they were SPRINTING to join.
The rumble was apparently spillover from Mike Trout getting thrown at by the Mariners the night before, so the Angels retaliated, and things went off the rails from there. Wantz, by the way, had already thrown at a Mariner in the game, so it’s all the more understandable that the teams were ready to react:
By the time the rumble happened, things had gone so off the rails that, even after things had kinda wrapped up, Angels reliever Raisel Iglesias was still steaming mad. He took it out on the … sunflower seeds?
I, too, hate when there aren’t enough Ranch seeds. I feel you.
In the end, there were a whopping EIGHT ejections from this one: Angels manager Phil Nevin, Mariners manager Scott Servais, Jesse Winker, JP Crawford, Julio Rodriguez, Raisel Iglesias, Andrew Wantz, and Ryan Tepera.
