Padres-Nationals benches-clearing incident highlights Jurickson Profar's villain tour

Inexplicably, San Diego Padres star Jurickson Profar has been the target of a lot of ire from opposing teams this year. The Dodgers' Will Smith called him "irrelevant" and LA promptly regretted that. Profar has also seemingly thrived off being underestimated, and just made the Nationals pay for the choice to intentionally walk Luis Arráez ahead of him on Monday with a walk-off hit.

However, it appears as though the Nationals did not take kindly to Profar's heroics and the celebration afterwards. Washington catcher Keibert Ruiz decided it was a good idea to confront Profar about the celebrations of his walk-off in the first inning on Tuesday, and put his hands on the Padres slugger. Both benches subquently cleared, some not nice words were exchanged. Former Padres prospect Mackenzie Gore hit Profar with the next pitch after the kerfuffle, and Mike Shildt was ejected.

Padres' Jurickson Profar is getting mistreated by rest of MLB in bizarre trend

At this point, it is ridiculous how opposing teams are handling Profar's domination of them. If they don't like him taking motivation from the disrespecting him and celebrating big hits, then go get him out and stop crying about it ... and definitely don't escalate things like Ruiz did.

As Profar said after the game, "I took exception to being touched on the shoulder. You can talk, but you can’t touch." Profar had every right to be upset and should be even more upset that he got hit by a pitch because the Nationals were being gigantic babies.

All of that said, it never should have gotten to that point. Ruiz clearly was the one that started that whole incident by making contact with Profar and warnings should have been issued. That Gore was able to immediately hit Profar with a 98 mph fastball (albeit one that was really low and in) without getting thrown out of the game shouldn't have happened, and Shildt got his money's worth arguing as such when he got ejected instead. This wasn't a couple innings later on an errant fastball. This was the very next pitch after benches had cleared.

Luckily, Profar and the Padres had the last laugh. Not only did the Padres win 9-7 over Washington, but the difference in the game was a grand slam off the bat of — you guessed it — Profar in the sixth inning which allowed San Diego to weather the Nationals' late rally.

Sometimes, the baseball gods are truly just.

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