The Main Point
Brewers reliever Abner Uribe has been handed a one-game suspension for what Major League Baseball called inappropriate actions, the league announced Friday.
The incident occurred during the eighth inning of Tuesday's game against the St. Louis Cardinals, a 6-0 Milwaukee victory that had already been decided. After Alec Burleson took a called third strike—one that replay showed barely clipped the zone—Uribe turned toward the Cardinals dugout and made a crotch-chop gesture.
That is usually how club statements work: the wording stays calm while the room clearly has not.
If Burleson's pitch had been overturned, the bases would have been loaded with two outs. That detail did little to temper manager Pat Murphy's frustration.
The Tension Underneath
"That's unacceptable," Murphy told MLB.com. "It's just unacceptable. I don't knowwhat got into him. He's been an emotional guy. But that kind of thing—that'sjust not how we do things, and I was embarrassed by it. Why are we doing it ina 6-0 game?"
Uribe is appealing the suspension, so it will be held in abeyance until the process concludes. Through a translator, he apologized to his teammates and the or ganization.
"I owe an apology to the Brewers, to my teammates, to my manager," Uribe said,per the Associated Press. "I understand it's unacceptable to go out the reand react in a way like that."
The Next Step
Earlier in the game, tensions had risen when Uribe threw a fastball near the head of Iván Herrera during a four-pitch walk. Herrera told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch he responded by saying "Keep it down," and that the pitch was"a little uncomfortable."
The Cardinals or ganization denied any intentional retaliation. No Brewersbatter had been hit by a pitch in the first two games of the series.