Major League Baseball suspended St. Louis Cardinals right-handed pitcher Miles Mikolas five games Friday for intentionally throwing at the Chicago Cubs' Ian Happ.
Mikolas, who was also fined an undisclosed amount, is appealing the discipline. Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol was also suspended for one game and will serve it Friday night's game against the Cubs.
In the top of the first inning of Thursday night's game between the Cardinals and Cubs, Happ hit Cardinals catcher Willson Contreras in the head with his bat on an uncontrolled backswing on a swinging strike. Contreras had to leave the game and the Cardinals ruled him day-to-day with a scalp laceration.
Contreras and Happ, who are former teammates with the Cubs, hugged before the catcher left the game, and Happ would later say it was an accident, but Mikolas was unconvinced. He threw his next pitch to Happ up and in, then plunked him on the hip with a fastball.
The umpires gathered, and crew chief Lance Barksdale ejected Mikolas. Marmol subsequently was tossed after continuing his protest over Mikolas' ejection.
"In any circumstance, I've got Willson's back," Mikolas said after the game. "He's my catcher. I consider him a really good friend now. Any single one of these guys in this locker room I go to bat for 100 percent. So that's something I think we as a team believe in is just always having each other's backs and I guess that's what the umpires thought I was doing, and it's unfortunate that there was no warning or anything like that."
Marmol also said his pitcher should have received a warning if the umpires had an issue with the first pitch.
"Yeah, if the explanation was that there was intent behind the first pitch, then I feel like there should have been a warning after the first pitch," Marmol said. "That could've saved everybody a lot of trouble."
More must-reads: