It must be a hard life going from Major League Baseball reliever to Fresno farm league grunt. Former Seattle reliever and current San Francisco Giants’ farm league pitcher Julio Mateo was arrested this week after he was caught giving a cabbie a counterfeit $100 bill. That $390,000 minimum major league salary looks hella good after getting paid in peanut shells and free tobacco.

“There are counterfeit notes involved, deceptive notes,” Ferretti said Tuesday. According to police reports, as officers patted Mateo down in a hotel hallway early Sunday, he made a statement in Spanish to police that translates to, “I didn’t pass the bad money.”

“Before officers informed him of why we were there, Julio stated that he did not know anything about fake money,” Officer Christopher Enyart wrote in a police report.

Mateo’s agent didn’t immediately return a telephone message seeking comment.

Giants spokesman Blake Rhodes said the team declined to comment.

You might as well go out in style if you’re going to imply guilt as soon as cops have hands all over you. We suggest inviting the officers over to his apartment, hire some stripper and give them each 50 fake $100s so everyone can have a good time. We need to drink less coffee this early because that was simply too vivid of a scene in our minds.

Ex-MLB reliever Mateo arrested with fake bills [Yahoo]
Image [Newsday]