Brewers' infielder Hernan Perez hit Dodgers' C Austin Barnes with a 48 mph pitch.

Getting hit with a Major League Baseball pitch can often be painful, and sometimes leads to serious injury. But then there’s what happened to Los Angeles Dodgers’ catcher Austin Barnes Sunday; the only injury it might cause is a busted gut from too much laughter. With the Dodgers up 11-2 on the Milwaukee Brewers in the top of the seventh inning, the Brewers decided to bring in infielder Hernan Perez to pitch to give their bullpen some relief. And Perez wound up hitting Barnes with a pitch that Statcast clocked at just 48 miles per hour:

While 48 miles per hour still sounds fast by everyday standards, that’s less than half the speed of a lot of MLB pitches. So it’s not a bad one to get hit by, and Barnes certainly wasn’t going to charge the mound after this.

However, it should be noted that this pitching outing went much better than this on the whole for Perez. In fact, he threw two shutout innings. And catcher Erik Krantz added a third, complete with a nasty knuckleball:

So maybe having position players pitch isn’t so bad for the Brewers. Even if it leads to the occasional 48-mile-per-hour hit-by-pitch.

[MLB.com]

About Andrew Bucholtz

Andrew Bucholtz has been covering sports media for Awful Announcing since 2012. He is also a staff writer for The Comeback. His previous work includes time at Yahoo! Sports Canada and Black Press.