Hot GIF: Yunel Escobar Utilizes “Punch Throw”

A number of people in the sabermetric community have questioned the wisdom of the Braves’ decision last summer to send away a young and talented shortstop in Yunel Escobar for an old and less-talented shortstop in Alex “Sea Bass” Gonzalez.

Though we oughtn’t draw unnecessarily strong conclusions from one isolated incident, the footage you see thoroughly GIF’d and embedded above might, at the very least, point to some issues within the brain part of the Blue Jay shortstop.

Specifically what you’re seeing is an incident from last Thursday’s Pittsburgh-Toronto game in which Escobar mimicked a throw to first but then — kinda blatantly, really — opted to go ahead and punch former teammate Matt Diaz, instead.

As this YouTube footage shows, it’s likely that Escobar was exacting some sort of revenge for a takeout-type slide executed by Diaz the night before; however, there appears to be nothing particularly out of the ordinary about Diaz’s actions.

Friendly punch throw to Alex Remington for heads-up on this.