Aceves back in camp

In case (by some miracle) you haven't seen this yet, I give you the video of the brawl that took place between the Mexico and Canada World Baseball Classic teams. As far as baseball brawls go, this one is actually pretty intense - less standing around and puffing up of chests and more actual contact than I'm used to seeing. Who knew Canadians harbored that much aggression?

In totally unsurprising news, Red Sox pitcher Alfredo Aceves was mixing it up with Canada's Tyson Gillies, a player he'd never met:

"What can I say? It didn't surprise me. He threw me to the floor. I stood up and I reacted, too," Aceves said. "I didn't do nothing to him. I was just calming [others] down. The fighting was with the pitcher and the hitter. I was saying, 'Calm down, man. Calm down. Come on. Calm down.' He just grabbed me and threw me on the floor. I was like, 'I want to throw you on the floor.' Then when I jumped in to this guy, I got seven guys against me.  You’re locked in. You’re just trying to defend and knock them out. That’s it. We were trying to [defend] ourselves. We didn’t do nothing to him. He just threw me," he said.

Mexico has been eliminated from the WBC, and Aceves is back in camp, relatively unharmed and ready to pitch. Given Aceves' history of surliness and griping about his role, it will be interesting to see how things pan out in camp: though he has always wanted a spot in the rotation, there's simply no room. He'll probably end up in the bullpen, in a much less glamorous spot than last year, and hopefully he'll handle that with some maturity.