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| From the Toledo Blade |
@SeanGagnier
Story updated May 19 at 11:12 p.m.
It's hard to find anything wrong with Justin Verlander's one-hit performance from Friday night, so Mud Hens short stop Cale Iorg found fault with someone else on the Tigers; Jhonny Peralta.
In the world of social media athletes can find themselves compelled to talk about the things that they would never say if there was a microphone in front of their face, but when it's a cell phone screen or computer monitor, things are different.
Verlander had mowed through the Pittsburgh lineup and gotten into the ninth inning with a no-hitter intact. He retired the first batter of the inning before Pirates' Josh Harrison hit a ball back up the middle, just out of the reach of Detroit's short stop Jhonny Peralta, for the Pirates only hit of the night.
Most fans were disappointed, and it even looked like Verlander mouthed the word "sorry" to the crowd following the final out, but most people attributed it to baseball being baseball and let it die. Not Iorg, who took to Twitter following the Mud Hens impressive comeback game.
At 11:04 p.m. Iorg posted this Twitter message;
That seems like a shot at Peralta by Iorg. Saying that Peralta didn't do enough to try to get to the ball to try to preserve Verlander's no-hitter. Iorg may say that now, but when it comes time to play the field in the ninth inning of a major league no-hitter, if he is so lucky, he may not be so sure about diving for anything "a few feet away."
Perhaps if Peralta had dove he may have been able to get the webbing of his glove on the ball and it may have slowed the ball down, but would he have been able to get up and gun it over to first in time to beat the runner? Maybe, maybe not.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion and Iorg believes that Peralta should have at least attempted a dive at the ball. Tigers fans can think what they will about the game and the play, but Iorg may want to think before he presses send from now on.
A tweet was sent to Iorg asking for clarification on his original tweet, seen above. He responded with this tweet;
So perhaps he wasn't criticizing Peralta, but it sure sounded that way. Could just be chalked up to a young player getting excited after a chance at a no-hitter and not thinking before sending a tweet. Iorg is a solid young player and this is nothing in the grand scheme of things, he could be on his way to playing in the field in a no-hitter bid rather soon.
