LOS ANGELES — Amid baseball’s most heated rivalry, the benches cleared Thursday night at Dodger Stadium after San Diego Padres manager Mike Shildt and his Los Angeles Dodgers counterpart, Dave Roberts, confronted each other moments after Padres star Fernando Tatis Jr. was plunked in the right wrist.
Major League Baseball suspended Shildt and Roberts one game each on Friday. The league also announced a three-game suspension for Padres closer Robert Suarez, who will file an appeal. Danny Lehmann will manage the Dodgers on Friday night against the Nationals.
Shildt appeared to glare directly at Roberts as he went to tend to Tatis, then stormed toward the Dodgers dugout until he was met on the field by a similarly incensed Roberts. The two benches and dugouts cleared as the two men made momentary physical contact, sparking a brown and blue mosh pit of sorts behind home plate to cap a series that left both sides more black and blue and chapped than anything else.
“I felt that he was trying to make it personal with me,” Roberts said of Shildt after the Padres’ 5-3 win. “Which then, I take it personal.”
“After a while, enough’s enough,” Shildt said after a game in which Tatis was hit by a Dodgers pitcher for the third time in a span of 10 days. “Intentional, unintentional, the fact of the matter is, I took exception with it. And I’m responsible for my actions, and I recognize that’s one of the few times that I’m going to instill myself in the game.”
Both managers, along with Padres bench coach Brian Esposito were subsequently ejected, and warnings were issued in the final inning of a four-game set that included eight combined hit batters between the two sides. Tatis, who walked off the field under his own power, was replaced by a pinch runner.
“I support it,” Roberts said of the suspensions levied by the league. “I think that, obviously, I never want to make the game about the managers. It shouldn’t be. It should be about the players and winning. And so, last night, both managers are protecting their teams and it just unfortunately got to a point that we became the focus, and that’s not the way it should be.
“So, yeah, just getting a suspension for both of us, and starts tonight. I think (senior vice president of on-field operations and workforce development) Mike Hill of Major League Baseball made the right decision. So it’s something I’ll certainly have to be mindful of.”
Initial X-rays on Tatis’ wrist were negative. Imaging done later also came back negative, and Tatis is in the Padres’ lineup on Friday for their game in San Diego against the Kansas City Royals.
After the game, the outfielder said he felt “not good” and described those results as “kind of inconclusive.” Tatis is scheduled for further imaging Friday.
“You know, you’re messing with people’s careers. You’re messing with people’s seasons,” Shildt said. “We’ve got a guy that’s in there getting drilled. … It’s not cool, man.”
“Let’s just hope the CT scan comes back negative,” Manny Machado, the Padres’ franchise third baseman said. “They gotta pray it comes back negative tomorrow.”
When asked whom he meant by “they,” Machado said he meant the Dodgers.
Since he returned from a PED suspension in April 2023, Tatis has been hit by a total of 14 pitches. Five of those pitches were thrown by Dodgers players. Tatis said late Thursday that he felt in the moment that the latest plunking wasn’t intentional.
Regarding the Dodgers’ tendency to pitch him inside, Tatis added: “Just clean it up. You know, I come over here to play baseball, and that’s all my intention to do on the field. For all the other crap, we don’t have time.”
In the home clubhouse, Roberts said there was “no intent” behind Little’s pitch.
“I think even Mike (was) speaking the other day, talking about intent versus no intent. And so I think anyone would understand there’s no intent there,” Roberts said. “And even by my reaction, I didn’t feel good about Tatis — great player, good guy — getting hit. I didn’t feel good about it.”
Roberts had lifted stars Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman and Will Smith from the game in the eighth inning due to the 5-0 score, and said, in using rookie Jack Little for his major league debut, he was “trying to get this game over with and get this kid a couple innings.”
Tatis, batting in the top of the ninth, went to the ground after being hit in the wrist by a 93 mph fastball from Little. The visceral scene unfolded just two nights after the Padres and Dodgers traded seemingly retaliatory plunkings, with Tatis taking a fastball in the back and Los Angeles star Shohei Ohtani getting a heater in the right thigh.
Despite those incidents, Tuesday’s game did not include any bench clearings.
![Highlight] Dave Roberts appears to bump Mike Shildt when Shildt came out to argue after Fernando Tatis gets hit in the top of the 9th, causing the benches to clear. : r/baseball](https://external-preview.redd.it/highlight-dave-roberts-appears-to-bump-mike-shildt-when-v0-cGNsdmo0ZHVqMDhmMfCIFNl2b_tHrIeouEb-5cbgVNWc28-HS8SfoY27Xciu.png?width=640&crop=smart&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b29a8d4964de10cd8e218a5309016e161b162862)
Last October, Roberts accused Machado of throwing a baseball in his direction in “unsettling” fashion during last year’s National League Division Series, a series that also included an on-field delay when fans threw garbage onto the field at Dodger Stadium, egged on in part by Tatis and then-Padres outfielder Jurickson Profar.
Like Roberts, Tatis was asked Wednesday if he expected more extracurricular activity in the series.
“I don’t think so,” Tatis said. “I don’t see nothing growing. It’s a lot of Hall of Famers out there, future Hall of Famers out there, so everybody knows how to handle themselves.”
Until they didn’t on Thursday night.
Now, the two teams will not meet again until Aug. 15 in San Diego.
“We’re going to get after it for the next two months, and they’ll be on the schedule two months from now,” Shildt said. “And we’ll be ready.”