Veteran Reliever Oliver Perez Threatened to Leave Team if Indians Brought Back Plesac, Clevinger

Indians reliever Oliver Perez has seemingly been playing baseball since 1972. The 39-year-old soft-tossing lefty actually began his career with the San Diego Padres in 2002 and is still retiring batters for the Indians in 2020. His already COVID-shortened 2020 season possibly would have come to an end though if the Indians had brought back pitchers Zach Pleasac and Mike Clevinger from their alternative site after being punished for breaking COVID protocol.

According to ESPN, Plesac’s and Clevinger’s actions caused a rift within the Indians clubhouse which went as far as Perez threatening to leave the team if they were brought back from the alternative site. Several Indians players went off on the two young starters who violated COVID protocol by going out with friends during a road trip in Chicago. The two then lied about it and put the entire organization at risk.

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Starter Adam Plutko didn’t mince his words when talking about his rotation mates,

“They hurt us bad. They lied to us.”

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen COVID cause rifts between teammates as Donovan Mitchell was previously furious at Rudy Gobert for being careless about the transmission of the virus, but the two teammates have seemingly made amends, at least enough so to play together effectively.

This one is a much stickier situation though, especially considering Indians pitcher Carlos Carrasco is a recent cancer survivor. Plesac’s “apology video” definitely didn’t help make amends with teammates.

In case you missed Zach Plesac’s IGTV….

Part 1: pic.twitter.com/wgMe42WuOg

— Gabrielle (@gfstarr1) August 13, 2020

It will be interesting to see how this unfolds. Both Plesac and Clevinger tested negative for COVID-19 so that is good news, but the carelessness of both Clevinger and Plesac is incredible.

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