Catching A Pissed-Off Framber Valdez Should Come With Hazard Pay

A baseball season is long and frustrating. By the time the calendar flips to September, and the season enters that phase where the stresses of playoff races compound the mental and physical fatigue that has accumulated over the previous 140 or so games, it's fair to wonder how anyone is keeping it together out there. Sometimes they don't. Sometimes a player can get so mad that they might sneak attack their own catcher with a heater.

There is plenty of speculation that Houston Astros starter Framber Valdez did just that to his battery mate, César Salazar, during Tuesday night's 7-1 loss to the New York Yankees. This drama begins in the top of the fifth inning, with Valdez trying to work out of a bases-loaded snarl. After missing the zone with his first pitch, a curveball, to Trent Grisham, Valdez came set while Salazar fiddled with the PitchCom buttons to call for the next pitch. Apparently unhappy with how that process was going, Salazar waved at Valdez to step off the mound and reset, at which point Valdez began his windup and fired a sinker over the middle of the plate that Grisham turned into a grand slam.

Valdez started the next hitter, Anthony Volpe, off with a non-sinking sinker that missed high and outside. You can imagine that at this point Valdez was pretty cheesed off. He'd just given up a grand slam after ignoring the counsel of his catcher and then badly mislocated his best pitch. Stupid game, is a thought that may very well have been filling Valdez's head at this time. Stupid fucking sport that I hate playing! Stupid catcher that distracted me with his little wave and made me give up a grand slam! This perhaps explains why the next pitch, a 93-mph sinker that crossed up Salazar and nailed the catcher right in the tummy, was delivered. Simply look at the facial expressions of both of these men and decide for yourself if that pitch was delivered with any malicious intent:

Both players were pulled into the manager's office after the game, and when they spoke to the media afterward, they did their best to end any speculation that Valdez nailed Salazar on purpose. Valdez spoke to reporters through an interpreter, and offered a somewhat confusing explanation. As he put it, the pitch that Grisham hit for a grand slam was called by Salazar to be a curveball, but Valdez was having trouble hearing the PitchCom over the crowd noise and so decided to just throw a sinker. As for the pitch that hit Salazar, Valdez said they got crossed up, but not on purpose, and that he apologized to Salazar in the dugout.

Salazar blamed the cross-up on all the damn Yankees fans in attendance making it difficult to wield the PitchCom "There was a good amount of Yankees fans, so it was pretty loud after the grand slam," he said. "Maybe my PitchCom wasn't in the right spot, so I pressed the wrong button, you know?"

Hopefully these fellas found a way to unwind after last night's game. They've got to do this shit all over again soon.