Did Kevin Cash seriously admit that Andrew Kittredge threw at Austin Romine intentionally back in 2018, an incident that happened in the same game as CC Sabathia’s infamous “that’s for you, bitch!” moment?
Apparently he did, as part of his post-game press conference after the Rays’ 5-3 loss to the Yankees Tuesday night, which featured the two teams nearly having a dust-up after Aroldis Chapman struck out WHO to end the game.
As you surely know by now, Masahiro Tanaka apparently threw at Joey Wendle to open the game, hitting him to put the first baserunner on, and Chapman threw multiple pitches up and in during his ninth inning – a tactic the Rays have also seemingly admittedly employed against the Yankees in the past, based on Cash’s postgame comment of “we get it, they don’t like being thrown up and in on.”
Cash later went on to call the Yankees’ strategy “ridiculous” and said that “he has a stable of guys who throw 98,” intimating that the Rays would not be shy about retaliating in Wednesday’s series (and season) finale.
And one other thing: in that postgame rant, Cash also said this: “I can assure you, other than three years ago, there hasn’t been one pitch thrown with intent from any of our guys.”
That could, in theory, mean anything, but Kittredge throwing at Romine was the final attempted beanball of a season series full of them in 2018, including Sabathia’s ejection (and subsequent loss of a potential bonus) for the “that’s for you” incident. Cash did say "three years ago," but that timeline could be off.
Aaron Boone was asked about it later in his post-game Zoom, and a clearly agitated Yankees manager curtly said, “I don’t know where you’re going with this, but I don’t want to get into it.”
The Rays do bat first as the visitors in Wednesday’s game, but clearly, MLB might (and should) step in and have the umpires issue warnings right off the bat about any chicanery.
Still, friend of the program Jomboy has (as usual) an excellent breakdown of the whole situation here: