Andrew McCutchen Didn’t Deserve That

Andrew McCutchen is a special player for the Pittsburgh Pirates who called out the Philadelphia Phillies Tuesday night. We wrote about the new Andrew McCutchen yesterday.  Tuesday night McCutchen said the Phillies pitching staff had nothing.  Then on Wednesday, the reigning NL MVP had himself a night including the game tying inside the park home run.

McCutchen was just being McCutchen, doing what he gets paid to do.  The 5’10” center fielder said the Phillies had nothing and then went out and backed it up.

So last night, Phillies reliever Luis Garcia did what he felt he had to in order to defend his honor, and threw a 96 mile per hour fastball that would have connected somewhere above the shoulders if McCutchen had not hit the deck.  Garcia has shown plenty of wildness during the season, but had no trouble throwing in the zone during the rest of McCutchen’s at bat.  It was an at-bat that ended with McCutchen hitting a grounder back to the mound.

We think throwing at the head of a player is something that should never happen, but we also think McCutchen is going to get more than his fair share of balls thrown at his body by frustrated opposing pitchers like last night and also because the Pirates pitch inside and hit a sizeable amount of batters.

When McCutchen said the Phillies pitchers had “nothing,” he should expect to be hit when he steps into the batters box.  It was a pretty aggressive comment, McCutchen knew that.  Expecting to be hit is one thing, expecting to be hit in the head is something very different.

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