The Top 5 Idiots of May

No one should be on this list because they injured themselves.

Unless… they did so in extremely idiotic ways.

May I present to you, dear reader, three MLB players who hurt themselves in astoundingly stupid scenarios.

Let’s start at the beginning of the month.

May 1 Jesús Luzardo, Video Games: Hours before his start, the A’s pitcher slammed his throwing hand on a table while playing a video game. Hours later, he found a way to pitch through the pain. But after the ball game, an X-ray revealed a broken bone in his pinky.

“It was an immature mistake and it was a stupid mistake,” he said, days later. “But I still made a mistake and that’s something that I’m going to learn from and I’m not going to do again.”

May 16 Huascar Ynoa, Punching Bench: Baseball is a frustrating game. And over the course of a 162 game season, the fucking slog can make you snap.

The dugout is the place, it seems, where you can just let go. Go ahead, throw that water cooler! Mash that bat! Yeah, scream into the void on the way into the tunnel. As long as you don’t hurt yourself or anyone around you, everything seems fair game.

But Braves pitcher Huascar Ynoa did not follow the first half of that final rule. After allowing 9 hits and 4 runs in 4 1/3 innings, he punched the dugout bench and broke his right hand. It will take months for the young pitcher to recover.

May 23: Zach Plesac, “Aggressively” Ripping Shirt Off: Oh, Zach, a friend of Deadspin’s Idiot series. Welcome back, old pal!

Last week, Cleveland manager Terry Francona revealed that he put Plesac on the injured list after fracturing his thumb while “rather aggressively ripping off his shirt.”

Thankfully, the pitcher won’t need surgery and will begin throwing again in three weeks.