Arizona Diamondbacks reliever Randall Delgado was ejected for hitting Pittsburgh Pirates star Andrew McCutchen with a pitch on Saturday night. Delgado deserved to be run from the game, because the plunking was clearly intentional.
How do we know this? For starters, Delgado hit McCutchen with first base open and the Pirates leading 5-1 in the ninth inning. The pitch that drilled McCutchen was a fastball right to the center of the back. And then there was the stuff that happened the night before, which the D-Backs obviously felt warranted retaliation but certainly did not.
With Pittsburgh leading 9-4 and nobody on in the ninth on Friday, Ernesto Frieri hit Paul Goldschmidt on the hand with an 0-1 fastball that ran up and in. Given the situation and the location of the pitch, there’s just no way Frieri did it on purpose. See for yourself:
This is clearly just pitching inside, and the ball probably wouldn’t have even hit Goldschmidt if he didn’t drop his hands:
As Matt Snyder of CBSSports.com noted, there is no bad blood between the Pirates and Diamondbacks. However, the D-Backs found out on Saturday that Goldschmidt suffered a fractured bone in his hand and is likely out for the season. Does the severity of the injury mean Frieri’s pitch was intentional? No, but apparently Delgado –and possibly old school Arizona manager Kirk Gibson — thought it was enough to warrant hitting Pittsburgh’s best player.
Kudos to McCutchen for only spiking his bat and not charging the mound. Would the D-Backs have been happy if he suffered some sort of injury? There’s no place in the game for that.
