Steve Clevenger will have until spring training to ponder his tweets.
The Mariners announced Friday that they have suspended the catcher without pay for the rest of this season after his tweets about the Black Lives Matter movement and unrest in Charlotte, N.C., caused an uproar. Clevenger already was expected to miss the rest of the season with an elbow injury.
Thursday afternoon, Clevenger posted a pair of tweets referring to protests in Charlotte sparked by the fatal shooting of Keith Lamont Scott by a police officer earlier this week. The tweets read: "Black people beating whites when a thug got shot holding a gun by a black officer haha s— cracks me up! Keep kneeling for the anthem!" and "BLM is pathetic once again! Obama you are pathetic once again! Everyone involved should be locked behind bars like animals!"
MORE: National anthem protests across sports
The messages were quickly deleted, but not before screengrabs were taken.
#Mariners say they are "looking into" controversial tweets coming pitcher Steve Clevenger's account screencapped by @cablebox666: pic.twitter.com/RcWNdqflGV
— Jon Humbert (@jonhumbert) September 22, 2016
Clevenger, a 30-year-old Baltimore native, apologized via a statement Thursday night.
MORE: Dear, Steve ... | Releasing Clevenger won't fix the issue
"My tweets were reactionary to the events I saw on the news and were worded poorly at best and I can see how and why someone could read into my tweets far more deeply than how I actually feel," he wrote, adding that he is "sickened" that anyone would think of him as a racist because of their content.
Clevenger has played in 22 games for the Mariners this season after previous stints with the Orioles and Cubs. He has been on the disabled list since the end of June with a broken hand and is out for the rest of this season after suffering an elbow flexor strain during his rehab.
