Witness: Scheppers "lost a bar fight"

More details are starting to come out about that Thursday night altercation in Cleveland that left Tanner Scheppers with a black eye, a headache, and unavailable to pitch in Friday night's extra inning affair.

Drew Davison has a blog post in which he publishes an email from a Cleveland police spokesman, who says that the incident occurred at 2:30 a.m., and that Scheppers refused to provide the police with any information or make a report.

A Cleveland blog has quotes from a purported witness to the incident:

Scene spoke to a witness to the "sucker punch," and there are more than a few discrepancies between his story and that of Tanner.

First, it was at 2:30 a.m. outside of Panini's on W. 6th.

Second, Tanner was a verbal instigator. He was with Joe Nathan, A.J. Pierzynski, and, according to our tipster, a bunch of girls. He had been jawing back and forth for a few minutes before the physical altercation took place.

"He lost a bar fight," says the witness. "He had 10 chances to walk away before this happened."

So we shall have to see if more info on this comes out...