Boston Red Sox: Rick Porcello and Manny Machado Exchange Words Over HBP

Boston Red Sox pitcher Porcello wasn’t having any of Machado’s back-talk after a hit by pitch on Monday night. He made sure to give advice to the heated slugger as well.

Rick Porcello is in the midst of a Cy Young caliber season. In fact, Porcello is one of the top candidates to take home the award this year. The ESPN Cy Young predictor gives him a 180, good for first in the entire MLB.

He leads MLB in wins and has been the most clutch pitcher for the Boston Red Sox this season. He has come through in just about every big game he has pitched this season and in dominant fashion.

So on Monday night, in a game against the division-rival Baltimore Orioles, it was no surprise that the Red Sox gave the ball to Porcello in hopes that he would help cushion the Red Sox’s lead in the AL East. What was surprising was seeing Porcello and Orioles slugger and big personality-man Manny Machado get into it.

Machado stepped into the box with the O’s trailing 2-0 in the fourth inning of Monday’s game with the bases empty and two away. He was 0-for-1 previously. Porcello jumped ahead in the count 0-1 before drilling Manny with an 88-MPH pitch in the left arm. It seemed unintentional and really unwarranted given the fact that Porcello had a perfect game going.

However, Machado didn’t think so. He took his time getting out of the box and then starred at the pitcher’s mound. On his way to first, he decided to share words with the pitcher. Porcello retaliated back with words of his own. From what was caught on camera, it seems like he said, “Why would I wanna hit you with that motherf—-r coming up? Use your f—–g head.”

(Warning: Tweet is NSFW and contains profanity. Proceed with own caution.)

Basically, Porcello is calling out Machado and his evident stupidity. The Red Sox were up in the game, and Porcello certainly didn’t want to serve up a free pass to first, especially with Mark Trumbo on deck. Trumbo currently leads the bigs with 43 home runs.

The pitcher was absolutely on the money with that, because Trumbo ended up doubling and scoring Machado from first. It’s kind of mind boggling as to why Machado would think Porcello would drill him on purpose. He is clearly a major competitor, and wants to do whatever he can to pick up the win. It’s not like Machado hit a home run off of him earlier in the game that upset him.

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In fact, Machado has literally never hit a home run off of Porcello. This is the first game of the series and up to that point, Porcello had a perfect game going. Yes, a perfect game – something you would assume Machado knew was happening.

Maybe it was mind warfare. Machado could have very well been trying to mess with the psyche of the pitcher, in which case he succeeded, at least momentarily.

Porcello had this to say to WEEI.com after the game,

“It’s September baseball. Obviously emotions are running high,” Porcello said. “Nobody wants to get hit by a pitch, that’s why I completely understand. I wouldn’t like it if I was up there and I got hit. At the same time, there’s absolutely no reason why I would hit him right there, especially with Mark Trumbo standing on deck. I mean, he’s hitting missiles all over the ball park off me. So I don’t want to face him in a 2-0 game, especially when I got a perfect game going.”

It was a minor lapse for Porcello, but he recovered quickly and ended up pitching a complete game. The Red Sox took the win and extended their lead in the AL East to four games. Machado can’t really have much of an argument as to why he thought Porcello hit him. It could just be out of frustration of being down in another game to the Red Sox.

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Machado may want to consider himself lucky. The last time a batter took out frustration on Porcello for being hit by a pitch, it didn’t end well for the particular individual. With Porcello growing up in New Jersey, Machado may even want to count his blessings it didn’t escalate from a screaming match to a fist fight.