In last night's Mississippi Braves game, catching prospect Christian Bethancourt was apparently hit by a pitch. He is one of the Atlanta Braves top prospects, ranking second on the Talking Chop Mid-Season Top-25 Prospects List. Here is M-Braves radio announcer Kyle Tait with the details:
Haven't heard an official report on Bethancourt, but he was hit just above the wrist by a pitch in the 13th inning last night
— Kyle Tait (@kyle_tait) August 10, 2012
He fell to the dirt immediately and was removed from the game. As he came off, he was holding his arm in close to the stomach
— Kyle Tait (@kyle_tait) August 10, 2012
The M-Braves have already been in a big fight with Mobile this year, but I'm not aware of any bad blood between them and Birmingham. They play the Barons for three more games. Hopefully Bethancourt will be all right, and cooler heads will prevail, and there won't be any retaliation. The Braves just got Evan Gattis back from a similar wrist injury in which he was struck by a pitch.
UPDATE 3:20pm:
It looks like Bethancourt is in a cast, as he just tweeted this:
First Time ever with a Cast ... twitter.com/ChristianBeth2…
— ChristianBethancourt (@ChristianBeth27) August 10, 2012
Darn! I guess he'll be out for a while. At least it's his non-throwing hand, though it's still vitally important for hitting. Hopefully this won't hurt his long term development.
UPDATE 3:45pm:
The great thing about Twitter is that people/players can correct misconceptions. So that's just what Christian did:
My tweet about "business" is just a movie I saw the other night,nothing about the hit I got last night, that's baseball and things happens
— ChristianBethancourt (@ChristianBeth27) August 10, 2012
Disregard my suggestions of anything being intentional. Thanks to Bethancourt for clearing that up. I've removed my misleading commentary from the post.