St. Louis Cardinals relief pitcher Genesis Cabrera came into Wednesday night’s game against the Philadelphia Phillies and immediately plunked two batters, but the left-hander insists it was not intentional.
Cabrera came in to pitch the top of the sixth inning for the Cardinals. He hit Bryce Harper with a fastball in the face on his first pitch, and he drilled Didi Gregorius in the ribs with the first pitch of the next at-bat. Following his team’s 5-3 loss, Cabrera delivered a sincere apology through team translator Antonio Mujica.
“I want to again apologize for all of the action that happened, especially to Harper,” Cabrera said, via Katie Woo of The Athletic. “I really wish him the best. I hope he has a speedy recovery in whatever it is that happened and that he’ll be able to return to baseball activities. The game got away from me at that point. I’m really sorry for everything that happened today. None of it was intentional. And again, I’m sorry for everything.”
Cabrera seemed distraught when he hit both Harper and Gregorious. You can see the video below:
Génesis Cabrera hits Bryce Harper in the face and Didi Gregorius in the ribs with his first two pitches
Benches get warned and Joe Girardi gets ejected, yelling "throw the ball over the fucking plate!" on his way out. Cardinals manager Mike Shildt yelled back pic.twitter.com/PLMmBQhvCt
— Jomboy Media (@JomboyMedia) April 29, 2021
The wild pitches came in a 3-3 game with no outs, so it seems unlikely that Cabrera would have wanted to put two runners on base intentionally. Joe Girardi thought home plate umpire Chris Segal should have done something about it, however, as the Phillies manager wound up throwing a tantrum and getting ejected. You can see the video here.
Harper shared a video on social media saying all of his tests came back clean and he is “all good.”
