Chicago Cubs reliever Ryan Tepera, who is appealing his three-game suspension for throwing behind Brewers pitcher Brandon Woodruff, today explained what happened. It’s about what you would have expected was the reality, and frankly, I’m good with him just saying it.
It was a message about the absurd level of HBPs the Cubs – and specifically Willson Contreras – had been receiving from the Brewers:
Cubs reliever Ryan Tepera on Woodruff/Brewers incident: "What happened on Tuesday, there was no malicious intent but it was a message that we had had enough."
— Tony Andracki (@TonyAndracki23) April 16, 2021
Tepera says he "chose" to send the message, but he was still "very surprised" by the suspension by MLB.
— Jordan Bastian (@MLBastian) April 16, 2021
Dang straight. There was a time when an MVP finalist would never be treated like this. Get it together, MLB.
OK, but in all seriousness, you risk losing me a bit with this part:
Ryan Tepera says he's surprised by his suspension: "I believe over time baseball has changed & to be blunt today's baseball has become a bit soft. Back in the day matters were settled on the field.
"There was no malicious intent. It was a message that we'd had enough." #Cubs
— Meghan Montemurro (@M_Montemurro) April 16, 2021
*IF* he’s referring to the league wanting to discourage actually hitting batters, well, that’d be mighty big talk coming from a relief pitcher. That is to say, if he thinks suspensions overall for actual retaliation are “soft,” well, like I said. It seems like plenty of hitters and their physical wellbeing would disagree.
If he is, however, just referring to a three-game suspension for throwing way behind and low to send a message (i.e., not trying to hit a batter in the butt or whatever), then I’d agree with him. This is just way too much from MLB when you consider all the context and then you consider the execution throwing sufficiently behind and down that the risk of an accidental impact was about zero.
If you missed what happened, here was the Tepera pitch and aftermath:
Tepera throws behind Brandon Woodruff pic.twitter.com/TBs9w1ZLyE
— Bally Sports Wisconsin (@BallySportWI) April 14, 2021
And if you missed what set it all up (and Willson’s dinger response), here you go:
The Link LonkUnbelievable. pic.twitter.com/xUIrMPS2Pt
— Chicago Cubs (@Cubs) April 14, 2021
April 16, 2021 at 11:20PM
https://www.bleachernation.com/cubs/2021/04/16/ryan-tepera-admits-he-wanted-to-send-a-message/
Ryan Tepera Admits He Wanted to Send a Message - bleachernation.com
https://news.google.com/search?q=Send&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
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