There’s no California Love between Jack Flaherty and Manny Machado.
The Dodgers’ starting pitcher and the Padres’ star third baseman had a war of words twice Sunday night during San Diego’s 10-2 Game 2 win that evened NLDS at 1-all.
Flaherty told Machado to “Sit the f–k down motherf–ker” after striking him out in the top of the sixth and then the two jawed at each other during the bottom of the inning.
“Just going back and forth, competition right?” Machado said. “Things happen between the lines, people just going back and forth. He’s competing for his ball club and I’m trying to get a big hit for my team, so, yeah, man. This is the beauty of postseason baseball, right?”
Machado and Flaherty provided differing stories for why the two chirped at each other late in Sunday’s game, with Machado insinuating that it was Flaherty hitting Padres outfielder Fernando Tatis Jr. earlier in the inning and Flaherty asserting that Machado crossed a line by throwing balls in the Dodgers’ dugout.
It all unfolded in the sixth inning with the Padres leading, 3-1, after Flaherty started the inning by beaning Tatis, who had been 2-for-2 with a homer and a double at that point.
Machado believes Flaherty purposefully hit Tatis, who is 5-for-8 with two homers in the series.
“When you try to hit our best hitter, get him out. You can’t get him out, don’t hit him, right?” Machado said. “They got the best player in the game, right? (Shoehi) Ohtani. We don’t go out there and try to hit Ohtani. We try to get him, right? Don’t go out there and try to hit my guy.”
He added: “Try to hit (Tatis) on a sinker in after a bomb and a double off of him? I’ll let you guys decide that.”
Flaherty countered that hitting Tatis down two runs in a playoff game isn’t a smart move.
“I missed in the first inning and I threw the ball over the middle. I wasn’t going to miss over the plate again. But I’ve got no reason to hit a guy to start the sixth. As good as he’s been swinging the bat, we’re down in the game. I’m trying to go in for effect and he didn’t get out of the way, it hit him,” said Flaherty, who allowed four runs in 5 1/3 innings. “Didn’t go and try to hit him, lead off an inning or anything like that. That doesn’t really make sense. Didn’t go up near his head, nothing, just trying to push a guy off the plate. Didn’t get out of the way. Sometimes that happens, they’re upset about it. That’s part of it.”
Flaherty then allowed a single to Jurickson Profar to put two men on for Machado and he won that battle by striking him out with a 3-2 fastball off the plate.
The righty then pointed toward the dugout while telling Machado to sit down.
Ironically, being called “motherf–ker” didn’t really bother Machado.
“He made some good pitches, made some quality pitches, got me, got me going,” Machado said. “He won that competition, right? He made his pitches. I couldn’t deliver with that situation there.”
The story then takes a weird twist when Flaherty and Machado started jawing at one another after the top of the inning supposedly over balls being tossed into a dugout.
Flaherty alleges Machado acted out of line.
“He did some s–t between innings where he throws the ball at our dugout and everybody kind of catches the tail end of it, which is me and him going at it. I was sitting there for my team, I wasn’t going at him, but he was throwing the ball at our dugout and the umpires went over immediately to tell him — don’t know what there conversation was, but our dugout was fired up because there ain’t no reason for that,” Flaherty said. “Everybody caught the tail end of it, like me and him going at it. Manny’s a great player. It’s postseason, everybody’s fired up. You can be frustrated, upset about the pitch to Tatis, like I said, you got to be able to pitch him, and I missed the first inning.”
Machado, though, said he did nothing wrong, and didn’t know what they were arguing about.
“I throw balls all the time into dugouts. Both dugouts,” Machado said. “They have batboys, you throw the ball back in there.”
He added: “Honestly, you can’t really hear with this crowd so I don’t really know what was being said, a bunch of gibberish going back and forth.”