Luke Voit drew the ire of Cincinnati Reds players in a way we haven’t seen in a long, long time.
During the first inning of the Padres’ eventual 6-2 win over the Reds on Tuesday, Voit got tangled up with Cincinnati catcher Tyler Stephenson in a nasty collision. Voit was trying to score from first on a ball down the left field line, and as he slid home, Stephenson was receiving the ball and attempted to make a tag.
Voit ended up coming down hard on Stephenson’s head, concussing him and putting the catcher on the injured list.
Former Padre Tommy Pham, in particular, took exception to the play, offering to fight Voit in response. But the play has split baseball fans, with some alleging it was a nefarious move on Voit’s part while others have absolved him of blame and posited that it was just a no-fault play that had unfortunate results.
Appearing on 97.3 The Fan’s “Ben and Woods” on Wednesday, Joe Musgrove, San Diego’s starting pitcher Tuesday, defended his teammate.
“You never want that, but everyone is aware of how they feel about it," Musgrove said. "There was no intentions on Luke’s part to take him out of the game or to make an aggressive collision, but a lot of people from the outside might see it as a dirty slide or see it as him coming down hard with his elbows to try to knock the ball loose or knock him out of the way.
“But you’ve got to look at it from Luke’s perspective, he’s barrelling home at full speed after trying to score from first. And at that moment he slid directly into the plate, Stephenson made a play diving back into the lane and they were both kind of defenseless. Both of them are off their feet at that point, and for Luke’s perspective you’re trying to protect yourself, you’re not thinking about protecting the catcher, you’re thinking about how do I have to slide, he throws his arms up in front of himself obviously to shield his face. I don’t think there’s any intention there to hurt him or to knock him out. And like (David) Bell said, he had no issue with the slide.
“I know there’s probably a few players a little upset about it, but when a team’s scuffling like that, a little thing will spark you. I hope nothing comes from it, there was definitely no malicious intent with the slide at all, it definitely didn’t look good and it’s a bummer that Stephenson had to come out the game. But there was no aggression or no intent behind that slide by any means.”
As Musgrove alluded to, Bell didn’t have an issue with the play at the same level his players did. Whether that’s enough to prevent any acts of retribution in Wednesday’s game remains to be seen.
“We’ve all played the game long enough now to know how things go and sometimes if you’ve got to take a dose you’ve got to take a dose," Musgrove said. "As long as they go about it the right way, we’ll take our lick and move on from it. You don’t know, we’ll see how it goes down today, I guess.”
First pitch for Reds-Padres is set for 4:10 p.m. ET, with Vladimir Gutierrez set to get the ball for Cincinnati.
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