Josh Naylor cannot help himself. The Mariners first baseman is at the center of another baseball beef, and this time the Detroit Tigers fought back the old-fashioned way.
Naylor was drilled by a Keider Montero fastball in the fifth inning of Saturday’s game at Comerica Park. The hit by pitch was not an accident. It was payback.
Earlier in the game, Naylor pulled one of the strangest stunts of the season. As he was sliding into home plate in the third inning, he threw his sliding mitt at Tigers catcher Dillon Dingler. The mitt did not interfere with the play. The Tigers still noticed.
“Josh Naylor threw his sliding mitt at the catcher as he slid into home,” noted JulioIsKing on social media, alongside the video clip that went viral within minutes.
The retaliation came two innings later. Montero drilled Naylor with a fastball, and Naylor responded with a smile and a slow walk to first. The Tigers and Mariners now have themselves a proper rivalry, and Naylor is enjoying every second of it.
This is who Josh Naylor is. He plays angry. He plays loud. He plays like he is daring the other dugout to do something. Over the last three seasons, he has been involved in at least four bench-clearing situations. He is the kind of player whose Reference page should include a “feuds” section.
The mitt toss is funny on the surface. It is also exactly the kind of move that drives veteran pitchers and catchers up the wall. There is a code in baseball, and “do not throw equipment at the catcher during a slide” is one of the unwritten rules even casual fans understand. Naylor knew exactly what he was doing.
The Detroit-Seattle bad blood goes back further than the mitt throw. Naylor was accused of stealing signs during the 2025 ALDS, when the Mariners beat the Tigers in five games to advance. Detroit lost a series they thought they should have won, and the Naylor accusations never fully went away.
Now the Tigers are sitting in last place at 22-37, 11.5 games behind the Cleveland Guardians. They have nothing to lose. Drilling Naylor in early June is the kind of move a team makes when they are sending a message about what kind of year they intend to have, not the kind of year their record suggests.
Naylor went 1-for-4 in the game. The Mariners won 4-0. Seattle did the only thing that actually mattered, which was take all three games in a series and remind the Tigers who is contending and who is not.
That is the part Tigers fans should focus on. Cute revenge HBPs are great for clipping highlight reels. They do not fix a 22-37 record. The franchise has a Tarik Skubal trade decision coming, an offense that has gone cold for weeks, and a pitching staff that cannot keep games close.
Naylor will keep being Naylor. He will keep finding new ways to make pitchers angry. The Tigers can hit him with another fastball next month. They cannot wake their playoff hopes back up with a 90 mile-per-hour reminder.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
