Pittsburgh's Tommy Pham gets Blue Jays fans riled up with his childish antics

It was a sloppy game for the Toronto Blue Jays in their 5-2 loss to the Pirates on Monday night in Pittsburgh, but it wasn't really the result that got people talking after the game. It was a benches clearing incident that came out of nowhere when Tommy Pham walked in the bottom of the seventh.

Pham walked on a pitch that was clearly below the strike zone and proceeded to flip his bat in front of Blue Jays catcher Tyler Heineman as if he just walked off the game. After taking a few steps towards first, Pham turned around and started shouting and pointing at Heineman before the home plate umpire intervened. The benches cleared, but cooler heads prevailed and everything was diffused quickly, although Pham was still visibly upset.

After the game, Blue Jays beat reporter for MLB.com Keegan Matheson said in a tweet, "Tyler Heineman told us that he didn't say a word and "you're probably just as confused as I am" about Tommy Pham and the benches clearing.

“I don’t even know him. No idea. Barely know who he is.”

“It was weird, man. It was weird. It was unprovoked and super weird."

Keegan added, "In summary from Pittsburgh: The #BlueJays don't seem to know what Tommy Pham's bat-flip walk was all about, they don't seem to care much, and they will return to their postseason race tomorrow."

However, that prompted a further reply from Pham, directly toward Matheson. The Pirates outfielder said, "B****ing about a ball not being called a strike to the umpire when it’s clearly below the zone and away is disrespectful not only to the umpire but the hitter as well so like I said when I flipped the bat f*** him dude has two years in the show I know the zone."

Pham then went into a full on rage, jawing back and forth with Blue Jays fans on line, including throwing out accusations about other Blue Jays players, inciting all kinds of takes from Jays fans and personalities on twitter.

No one really expected these kinds of fireworks going into this series as the Blue Jays were hoping to take advantage and build on their lead in the AL East. Maybe when the divisions get realigned, the Pirates and the Jays end up in the same division to keep this fire ignited. More realistically though, the Blue Jays win the next two games and act as if nothing happened as Manager John Schneider alluded to in his post-game comments.