CBS Sports’ Jon Heyman recently quoted Nats P Max Scherzer as claiming there’s no place for the designated hitter in the National League (“if you look at it from the macro side, who would you rather see hit, Big Papi or me?”), a stance that was criticized by San Francisco’s adept-with-the-bad Madison Bumgarner (“he knew the rules. Whatever much he signed for — what did he get, again? — he didn’t have a problem signing his name”). On Tuesday, Scherzer took to Twitter to, well, pretty much blame everything on Heyman (“I was making an attempt to be funny with those comments and nothing more…this is simply a case of a reporter taking a casual comment and turning it into a story with a specific agenda”). Quotes compiled by DC Sports Bog’s Dan Steinberg :
“In a recent article written by Jon Heyman, there were comments taken out of context that I would like to clarify. First and foremost I value what my colleagues and fellow players think of me and it appears my casual and in-jest comments were not portrayed properly. I was having a casual conversation with Jon discussing Adam Wainwright’s injury and the subject of the DH and pitchers hitting came up. John [sic] asked me if the National League had the DH would it have made a difference in regards to Adam’s injury and I responded ‘no’ as I believed it to be a freak injury and had nothing to do with him actually hitting.
“John [sic] then asked me how I liked hitting in the NL since I made the switch over from the AL and I told John [sic] that I love to hit and enjoyed all of it (bunting, hitting, running the bases, etc.) to help our team any way to win a game. He asked if the NL should have the DL [sic] just like the AL and my response was simply an opinion that I thought at some point it would be good for both leagues to have the same rules.