The Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres have split six tension-filled games so far this season, with the emotions lending to both exuberant celebrations and benches clearing. On Saturday, there were bat flips and trolling with Trevor Bauer and Fernando Tatis Jr. the stars.
Coming off a two-home run game on the anniversary of his father slugging a pair of grand slams in one inning at Dodger Stadium, Tatis Jr. opened play Saturday with a homer. As he rounded first base, Tatis turned to the Padres dugout and covered one of his eyes.
It was, of course, a troll of Bauer and his propensity to pitch with one eye closed. Then after hitting his second homer of the game, Tatis flipped his bat before breaking into a home run trot. It concluded with the shortstop imitating the Conor McGregor strut, which Bauer regularly does as well.
While Tatis’ celebrations came at Bauer’s expense, they had his full support. “I want to say something about that because I think it’s important. He did it in the first, I didn’t see it because I was paying attention to doing my job,” Bauer began. “Then he did it again when he homered off me again later in the game. Their dugout was doing it, and I like it.
“I think pitchers who have that done to them and react by throwing at people or getting upset and hitting people or whatever, I think that’s pretty soft. If you give up a homer, the guy should celebrate it. It’s hard to hit in the big leagues. So I’m all for it. I think it’s important that the game moves in that direction and we stop throwing at people because they celebrated having some success on the field.”
Bauer had his fun as well, twice putting an imaginary sword in a holster on his hip. It was in response to twice fooling batters on a strikeout, as “sword” is used to describe half swings from hitters in such instances. Though, that too was flipped on its head against Bauer.
“Another one of those moments was I got Hosmer on a curveball in the dirt and hit him with a sword celebration. The next at-bat he hit a curveball at my face and gave me the sword celebration at first. We kind of laughed about it,” Bauer said.
“We’ve got a little history together from playing against each other for many years. That’s what it is to be a competitor. I’m going to go at you and get you sometimes. And you’re going to get me sometimes. We can have fun and we can celebrate it while we’re competing at the highest level. I just thought that was an important note.”
Hosmer’s line-drive base hit nearly was not a laughing matter as it narrowly missed striking Bauer in the chest. “I don’t know how it didn’t hit me, honestly,” Bauer reflected. “I actually told Hos at first, I was like, ‘Hey bro, you almost killed me.’ We kind of laughed about it, but I’m not kidding. It was really, really close.”
Bauer slides past Machado
Entering Saturday’s game, Manny Machado was a lifetime 12-for-19 with two doubles, four home runs, six RBI and four walks against Bauer. Machado had two singles in two at-bats during Bauer’s start at Petco Park one week ago.
However, Machado struck out in two at-bats when facing the right-hander on Saturday. Bauer effectively resorted to throwing sliders to Machado in both trips to the plate.
“It’s always the gameplan. Last time I just didn’t do it for whatever reason,” he said. “It’s my best pitch to righties, so it’s always the gameplan to throw sliders to righties, and then you read based on what they’re doing and how they react to it.
“I had a really good slider tonight, so it was a lot easier to lean on it because I felt like I could throw it where I needed to.”
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