Covering the Mariners for a few years now, I’ve often thought how fortunate we are to so rarely find ourselves in the middle of true controversy. Outside of Milton Bradley and Julio Mateo, the team’s employees have, by and large, done an excellent job staying out of the Wrong Kind of News.

Today, that changed. It changed because injured backup catcher Steve Clevenger, who is by most accounts a bad baseball player, who was already arguably Jerry Dipoto’s worst trade prior to using Twitter to say breathtakingly insensitive things about complex, difficult subjects his no doubt extremely small, ignorant brain grasps about as well as a three-week old comprehends shapes, decided to tweet:

I'm not going to expound overly on the subject matter of Clevenger's thoughts here. Regardless of whatever my or your personal feelings are regarding the issues surrounding police treatment of minorities, and the way those who feel oppressed choose to demonstrate, the real story in this particular instance is simple:

Steve Clevenger is a moron.

Last Friday, at the Mariners' Social Media Night, team General Manager Jerry Dipoto told us that the team has a preseason workshop on what is expected for players who choose to use social media, and a reminder that they are a reflection of the Seattle Mariners organization. Given that context, and the beautiful diversity of the Mariners' big league and Double-A rosters (the two teams that Clevenger has played for this year) Clevenger's comments stand out, first and foremost, for their incredibly poor judgment.

There's not a whole lot else to say, at this point. We have reached out to the Mariners, and have been told the team is aware of the issue and is currently formulating a response. This post will be updated if/when we have that response.

For now, Steve Clevenger has proudly shown the world his ignorance in clear and indisputable fashion. What an idiot.

UPDATE: Statement from the team

Statement from Jerry Dipoto, Executive Vice President & General Manager of Baseball Operations on Tweets from catcher Steve Clevenger. pic.twitter.com/1xWk6dy5ap — Mariners (@Mariners) September 23, 2016

UPDATE #2: Steve Clevenger has apologized

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