St. Louis Cardinals: Kolten Wong talks Chase Utley slide
During the pregame press conference, St. Louis Cardinals second baseman Kolten Wong addressed the Chase Utley slide that injured Ruben Tejada on Saturday night.
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Utley received a suspension for the slide but is expected to appeal.
“Man, that’s tough,” Wong said when asked to talk about his perspective of the Utley slide as both a base runner and an infielder. “You know, you feel bad for Ruben because he didn’t want to get taken out, nor was he ready to get taken out. He was kind of doing a spin, trying to make a play. Chase coming in doing what he did, you can see both sides of it being a clean slide and also being a dirty slide. It’s a tough situation to kind of talk about. Yeah, it’s a big discussion that they’re going to have to figure out.”
One may wonder if we will start to see Major League Baseball calling for cleaner sides at second base. Many players will slide into the base and try and prevent the double play from being made.
“In that case you can’t,” Wong said of being able to protect oneself. “He’s trying to make something happen out of a play that — it was pretty good of Murphy just to get to that ball in the first place. That’s one of those plays where you’re trying to make something happen, and unfortunately trying to make something happen, you got yourself injured. It’s just part of the game, and it’s a — not a dirty part because it’s a scary part of the game being a middle infielder because you can be put in vulnerable positions, and that was one of them right there.”
The Buster Posey rule is currently in effect at home plate. Will there soon be a Ruben Tejada rule in play at second base?