MILWAUKEE -- Christian Yelich said the beef between the Brewers and Cardinals had been “handled” by Wednesday morning and St. Louis manager Oliver Marmol said he saw no need for extracurriculars in the matinee series finale at American Family Field, a 2-1 Brewers win that was notable only for St. Louis starter Dustin May’s pitching brilliance and Milwaukee’s eighth-inning comeback.
Meanwhile, clues emerged about what had caused the multi-day feud in the first place.
“We’ve all addressed it and we can hopefully move on, and have it not be something that becomes a big distraction,” Yelich said.
“I’d rather not blow anything out of proportion,” Marmol said. “I think it already has been, to be quite honest with you.”
It was Brewers reliever Abner Uribe who made public the simmering resentments between the teams during Tuesday’s 6-0 Brewers win by gesturing three times toward the Cardinals dugout after an inning-ending strikeout in the eighth. Later, Uribe levied the serious allegation that Marmol had been signalling for St. Louis pitchers to hit Milwaukee batters during Monday’s series opener on Memorial Day.
Marmol categorically denied that allegation.
“I’m being honest, never in my Minor League career or big league career have I asked somebody to do it,” Marmol said. “I just think you’re putting real people at risk. Like, it’s not worth it. Say what you want, but that’s my take on it.”
Like so many disagreements in baseball, the source of discontent was one team sensing another team had picked up its signs. The Brewers have long been labeled as particularly adept at that skill, which is considered fair game as long as it stays within the field of play.
Marmol, however, accused Brewers coaches of relaying signs from the dugout to hitters, apparently during Milwaukee’s three-run first inning on Memorial Day against left-hander Matthew Liberatore. Yelich punctuated that rally by hitting a 2-2 slider for a two-run home run.
As Yelich came to bat again in the fourth, multiple Brewers players and coaches said that Marmol gestured toward the Milwaukee dugout and pointed to his ribs. In-house footage from the first-base camera trained on hitters’ at-bats proves it, those players claim, and circulated around Milwaukee’s clubhouse after that game and on Tuesday. That’s what Uribe referred to when he accused the Cardinals manager of calling for plunkings.
But Marmol described his gestures differently.
“I’ve got no issues telling you the full story,” Marmol said. “I just think with anything these days, it gets blown up. This is like an everyday occurrence, but happy to talk about it.
“We felt like they were being pretty demonstrative about relaying from the dugout. I looked over, I said ‘Hey, don’t do it. Be smart. You’re going to get somebody hurt. Like, what are we trying to do here?’”
As he relayed the word “smart” to reporters while telling the story, Marmol pointed to his head. When he said “hurt,” he pointed to his ribs.
“That was it,” he said. “Outside of that, not sure what else.”
And Marmol believes the Brewers broke a rule, whether written or unwritten, by relaying signs from the dugout?
“That’s a part of the game that you have to be buttoned up on your end for it not to be the case, right? I always take that stance,” Marmol said. “If someone has something on us, that’s on our staff and players to clean it up. But then there’s a certain way that you use it. I’ll leave that up to you guys.”
Brewers hitting coach Daniel Vogelbach denied the allegation.
“We’re not relaying signs from the dugout, it’s as simple as that,” Vogelbach said.
Uribe and some other Brewers saw Marmol’s gestures in a more threatening manner, leading to a batting practice altercation on Tuesday, which Uribe only vaguely referenced after the game. Two Brewers sources said it was between Marmol and Vogelbach, who confronted Marmol about those gestures as well as his habit of staring into the opposing dugout for long stretches of Monday’s game, and, one player said, while the Brewers took batting practice on Tuesday afternoon.
Marmol and Vogelbach exchanged words loudly enough that it temporarily paused the activity on the field during Cardinals batting practice, one player and one coach said.
Marmol confirmed the altercation but declined to name the coach. He said he reached out to the same coach in the wake of Uribe’s assertions, which may be what Yelich was referring to when he said the matter had been “handled” both internally by the Brewers and between the two clubhouses.
According to Vogelbach, after he and Marmol talked, “Everything is good.”
Was Marmol convinced the matter is closed?
“I have no reason to think it’s not, to be quite honest with you,” he said. “Teams have these conversations all the time. All the time. Usually, you just don’t get that type of demonstrative reaction that spurs further questions.”
Said the Cards’ Alec Burleson, whose strikeout spurred Uribe’s demonstrative celebration: “Just doing it toward the whole dugout is kind of not acceptable. We’ll see. If [the Brewers] said there was communication, I don’t know what that looks like. I don’t know who it was.”
And from Yelich’s point of view, is this over?
“To be honest with you, I don’t really know what’s going on the last couple of days and why it was like that,” Yelich said. “Obviously, I don’t think [Uribe’s] strikeout celebration is something that we need to be doing. I think it might have been a little bit over the top.”
Yelich and Brewers co-closer Trevor Megill agreed: They appreciated Uribe’s sentiment, but not his execution.
“Young, emotional player, and you’ve got to reel it in a little bit, you know?” Megill said. “I’m sure he heard it from the front office and other players last night. He’s just a charged-up player, and every game means a lot to him.”