Shohei Ohtani had the perfect response after getting thrown at by the Padres

Another day, another drama-filled game between the San Diego Padres and Los Angeles Dodgers. After Monday's series opener featured Andy Pages staring down Dylan Cease, we got the makings of another beanball war between these two NL West rivals on Tuesday.

Tensions boiled over in the third inning, when Dodgers reliever Lou Trivino hit Padres star Fernando Tatis Jr. square in the back with a fastball. Then, in the bottom half, San Diego starter Randy Vasquez returned the favor — and he chose Shohei Ohtani to do it, no less.

Los Angeles immediately cried foul, insisting that while Trivino's HBP was just a fastball that got away, Vasquez's was clearly retaliatory — a claim that would seem to be supported by the fact that Vasquez had thrown way in on Ohtani just one pitch prior to hitting him. But the umpiring crew decided to give both teams a warning, causing Dodgers manager Dave Roberts to get ejected in protest.

"Vasquez took one shot at [Ohtani] and then hit him again," Roberts told reporters after the game. "It's very hard to miss that bad with a right-handed pitcher. For me, if you're going to do it, own it."

Eventually, the dust would settle. And just like Monday, it was the Dodgers who got the last laugh: Pages went 4-for-4 with two homers and L.A. held off a late San Diego rally for an 8-6 win that moves them a full five games clear of the Padres in the divisional standings.

Fresh off another big win, Ohtani made sure to let everybody know that he was paying attention to what had taken place on the field. Or at least that would seem to be the only way to interpret what he put on his Instagram story postgame:

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Shohei Ohtani, Dodgers aren't letting Padres get under their skin

These teams and fan bases really, really do not like each other. This current iteration of the rivalry began in earnest back in 2022, when the upstart Padres shocked L.A. in a 3-1 win in the NLDS. They met again in last year's playoffs, with the Dodgers just barely eking out a 3-2 victory en route to capturing a World Series title.

At this point, any assumption of good faith is out the window. Each one of these games, even a regular-season contest in mid-June, begins on edge, with every player and coach looking for even the slightest hint of wrongdoing. But while the Padres seem to have let that charged atmosphere get the better of the them, the Dodgers are just using it as fuel — look no further than Pages, who responded to San Diego manager Mike Shildt wondering who he was on Monday by hitting two homers on Tuesday.

And now they appear to have caught even Ohtani's attention as well. Baseball's unicorn has never been known as someone who holds grudges, or lets his emotion get the best of him. But he sure seems to be just as fed up with San Diego's antics as the rest of his teammates, and that could make an already tall task for the Padres even tougher moving forward.