There appeared to be some tension between starting pitcher John Lackey and catcher Yadier Molina in the Cardinals dugout after the top of the seventh Monday night.
Fox Sports Midwest showed replays of the verbal exchange during and after its game telecast from Busch Stadium.
After the game, Lackey politely informed reporters that he didn’t think it was any of their business.
“Me and Yadi are good,” he said. “Just baseball stuff.”
The dialogue apparently began when Lackey was berating himself for a bad pitch and Molina thought the initial invective was directed at him.
Cardinals manager Mike Matheny said it was “two intense guys who have a passion for what they do. With intensity comes, sometimes, conflict. That happens more often than what you understand and that’s part of the game.”
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“When you have guys who are that fierce about how they go about their business and you wear everything on your sleeve, it opens up for a lot of things. But we don’t want to take emotion away from our guys. Sometimes you rub each other the wrong way.”
Matheny said, in such situations, he stands back for a while. “I let it play out for a little bit. But not much.”
ROSENTHAL UNAVAILABLE
There was an alarm flag, of sorts, raised when closer Trevor Rosenthal, who has 21 saves in 22 tries, was unavailable for the ninth inning Monday because of arm tightness. That condition also existed Sunday.
“(Rosenthal) didn’t feel right and we needed to give him a day,” said Matheny, who didn’t deem the matter a serious issue.
Kevin Siegrist pitched the ninth inning of the Cardinals' 3-2 win over the Twins and earned the save.
Rick Hummel
Rick Hummel is a Cardinals beat writer for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
