At long last, Mike Trout has been exposed as a fraud.
No, not by Major League Baseball pitchers, not by his legion of loving fans.
No, the Los Angeles Angels three-time Most Valuable Player has been outed as the ‘worst commissioner in fantasy sports,’ by Cincinnati Reds outfielder Tommy Pham.
By the way, Trout’s career batting average is .304. Pham’s is .263.
Good thing Trout has baseball to fall back on.
Trout caught shrapnel this week stemming from Pham’s dispute with San Francisco Giants outfielder Joc Pederson (career batting average of .233) where Pham slapped Pederson in warm-ups before a game in Cincinnati. Pham was suspended for three games by Major League Baseball.
Without Pham the Reds persevered on to win two of three games from the Giants and are now (checks notes) dead last in the NL Central at 18-32.
Where’s the beef?
In a story that has as much meaning as a 10-year-olds TikTok video and twice the relevance, Pederson said he had been accused of cheating in the Fantasy Football League they both played in.
Pham approached Pederson in the outfield during batting practice and smacked his sunglasses off.
(As an aside, aren’t you dying to know what the league’s name is, like, do they call it the “Baseball Journeyman’s Fantasy Football League” or the “Part-Time All-Star” League)?
As everyone who has ever played in a Fantasy Football League can attest, it can be easy to play fast and loose with the rules on stashing injured players or putting in a waiver wire claim. I’m still mad about what Dickie Whitson did in my league back in 2001. He basically had farm teams owned by his friends and near the end of the year would beef up his team by trading for their best players.
I didn’t slap him though. Of course, we were only playing for a couple of hundred bucks. Pham and Pederson may have been playing for serious money.
The player in question is injury-prone backup San Francisco 49ers running back Jeff Wilson. Wilson has played in 37 games in his four-year NFL career.
Everything but the GIF
But wait, there’s more.
So Pham slaps Pederson. Pham gets suspended. Media flock to Pham to find out what is going on.
And since this is the epitome of the perfect 2022 nonsense story, Pham then says that hey, it wasn’t really about Pederson stashing players on the Part Time All-Stars League injured reserve it was that Pederson sent a GIF (that’s a short animated video if you’ve been in a cave the last 10 years) making fun of Pham’s old team the Padres for their late-season collapse in 2021.
Pederson is like, “I’m sorry bro,” but then realizes he sounds like Phillies star Bryce Harper and says was it supposed to be a friendly thing.
He’s sorry if anyone was offended, which are the words athletes and husbands use when they should just say they’re sorry and move on.
Then Pham comes back this week and throws the shade at Trout, saying that as Commissioner he should have done something to, I don’t know, prevent GIFs from being sent in a group chat.
Trout throws it back
After a hot start, the Angels are now 9-13 in their last 24 games and have lost six in a row as of Friday, so naturally, while he’s in New York for a series with the Yankees, the first questions for Trout are about being Fantasy Football commissioner.
What did he know and when did he know it? Did he allow Pederson to stash Jeff Wilson on the injured reserve? Did he see the rude GIF in question? Does he know how to pronounce the word GIF?
To his credit, Trout originally demurred and then answered questions about his role in the Pham Slam. He said he knows lots of commissioners get booed. He won’t commit to being the Commissioner going forward.
We’ll never know who won the league last year (I bet the winner had Rams wide receiver Cooper Kupp, his season was ridiculous). Pham said he left the league, which also includes Manny Machado and Mike Moustakas and Eric Hosmer.
Fantasy Football League Drafts usually take place in August. Jeff Wilson will probably go in about the 18th round.
One thing we know for sure, there’s a league with an opening that has a spicy group chat apparently but keep the GIFs friendly please.
