Mariners Catcher Steve Clevenger Suspended Without Pay For Tweets

The Seattle Mariners responded to backup catcher Steve Clevenger’s dogshit dumb tweets about protesters by suspending him without pay for the remaining 10 games of the season. Here is the relevant part of the statement released by general manager Jerry Dipoto:

Seattle Mariners Executive Vice President & General Manager of Baseball Operations Jerry Dipoto announced that the club has suspended Steve Clevenger without pay for the remainder of the season.

“As soon as we became aware of the tweets posted by Steve yesterday we began to examine all of our options in regard to his standing on the team,” Dipoto said. “Today we have informed him that he is suspended for the remainder of the season without pay.”

Clevenger has been on the disabled list since June and wasn’t going to play anyway, but the suspension will cost him roughly $30,000 from his $516,500 minimum salary.

While the Mariners’ release didn’t cite which provision of baseball’s Basic Agreement Clevenger was suspended under, the Major League Baseball social media policy contains prohibitions on the following:

7. Displaying or transmitting Content that is derogatory or insensitive to individuals based on race, color, ancestry, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, age, disability, or religion, including, but not limited to, slurs, jokes, stereotypes or other inappropriate remarks.

8. Displaying or transmitting Content that constitutes harassment of an individual or group of individuals, or threatens or advocates the use of violence against an individual or group of individuals.

Further, in baseball’s Basic Agreement, the MLB Player’s Association agrees that players may be disciplined by either the league or their team for violating the social media policy (page 254), though they reserve the right to appeal an alleged violation of the policy.

We’ve reached out to the MLBPA for comment, and will update this post if we hear back.