Marcus Stroman And The Red Sox Had Themselves A Little Squabble

What happened between Blue Jays pitcher Marcus Stroman and the Red Sox in Tuesday’s game doesn’t rise to the level of a feud or beef. It could better be described as a tiff, or perhaps a bunfight.

The foofaraw started in the fourth inning, when Michael Chavis took forever to get in the box as a way to throw Stroman off his rhythm. So, Stroman quick-pitched him when he finally got into position. Chavis reached base anyway, on an error from third baseman Vlad Guerrero Jr.

Right after that at-bat, with Christian Vazquez at the plate, there was some kind of jawing. At the start of this slightly helpful video, you can hear home plate umpire Alan Porter looking toward the Boston dugout and telling someone named Chris—pitcher Chris Sale, it turned out—to stop whatever he’s doing. The NESN broadcast showed Stroman smiling and shaking his head before the game continued.

After the game, Stroman said he did indeed exchange words with Chavis, but that he wasn’t sure what Sale was saying from the dugout:

Alex Cora tried to explain what he was trying to do without actually getting into the details of Stroman’s quick pitch, because baseball dictates that a person never actually state what they find annoying:

Stroman took part of that quote, courtesy of a tweet from The Score, as a prompt to defend himself and joke(?) that Cora was just mad that he didn’t play for Puerto Rico in the 2017 World Baseball Classic (Stroman’s mother is Puerto Rican, so he would’ve been eligible for the roster):

Sale isn’t pitching tonight, as the Red Sox will start Rick Porcello, but who knows if this is the end of it. The impetus for this fussiness is silly, although not as silly as whatever Adam Eaton and Todd Frazier did yesterday.

Correction: The original version of this article stated that Wednesday was the final game of this Red Sox-Blue Jays series, when in fact the final game is Thursday.