Padres translator mocks Domingo German’s sticky-stuff suspension with fake ejection

Yu Darvish’s translator jokingly tried to get Domingo German suspended for another 10 games.

Before the Yankees’ series-opener against the Padres on Friday, Shingo Horie — who was Masahiro Tanaka’s translator with the Yankees — went in for a handshake with German, and after their hands connected, Horie started imitating a sticky-stuff check.

He inspected German’s left hand for a few seconds, according to a clip from TalkRadio 77 WABC, and then switched to the right before proceeding to make the motion an umpire would make when ejecting someone.

German, whose suspension started May 17 against the Blue Jays and runs through Saturday’s game against the Padres, then flipped his glove around — as if trying to jokingly show that there wasn’t any sticky stuff — and hugged Horie.

Horie, now listed on the Padres website as their coordinator for Japanese player services, was Tanaka’s translator when the Yankees signed their future ace from Japan to a seven-year, $155 million deal.

Following the 2020 season, Tanaka returned to the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles — the team he played for in Nippon Professional Baseball before signing with the Yankees — and has gone 2-3 with a 4.37 ERA through his first eight games this season, according to his Baseball-Reference.com page.

Horie, who would’ve overlapped with German when the latter signed with the Yankees as a free agent in 2015 and eventually made his MLB debut in 2017, made sure to reconnect with — and poke fun at — German before the Yankees and Padres opened a three-game series at Yankee Stadium this weekend.

The sticky-stuff incident involving the 30-year-old Yankees starter was just one of many strange occurrences in the series against the Blue Jays last week, but German was tossed before the bottom of the fourth inning.

Crew chief James Hoye, the same umpire from earlier this season against the Twins when German was inspected more than usual, said that German’s hand was the “stickiest hand I’ve ever felt,” and the right-hander was later suspended the 10 games and fined — and didn’t appeal.

That meant the Yankees were forced to manage without one of their starters, and German is projected to make his first start since the suspension on Monday to open a series against the Mariners.