Chase Burns almost learned a painful lesson from Bryce Harper, and manager Terry Francona had an amusing but pointed response
The former Vol almost learned a terrible lesson the hard way on the mound.
Ex-Tennessee Vols pitcher Chase Burns is having quite the start to his 2026 season with the Cincinnati Reds.
Burns has become one of the best pitchers in all of Major League Baseball in short order, and the Philadelphia Phillies became the latest victim on Tuesday night. Burns, whose ERA is second-best in the NL at 1.83, went 6.0 innings on 86 pitches with one earned run allowed on three hits and nine strikeouts.
However, he’s still a young player, and as such, has some things to learn. Included among them is wearing a protective cup, and Phillies superstar Bryce Harper almost made him pay for that in a big way on his final pitch of the game.
In the bottom of the sixth with two outs and nobody on, Burns threw a pitch, and Harper sent it screaming right back at him. It struck Burns in the leg and just missed his groin, bouncing close enough for Burns to pick it up and flip it to first.
Burns would say after the game that he’s fine and that he would be able to make his next start. But his manager, Terry Francona, relayed a different conversation he had with his star pitcher.
Terry Francona said Burns told him he wasn’t wearing a cup, and implied he should be
“It hit him in the meat of the — hamstring, kind of,” Francona said. “Man, I’ll tell you what. That was scary. He ran off the mound, and I thought he was okay, and then he got in the dugout and he looked like he was dead.
“I asked him, I said, ‘hey, man, please tell me you have a cup on.’ And he said no. And I was like, ‘Chase, I don’t even watch a game on TV without wearing a cup.’ I said, ‘golly, man, you guys are crazy.’”
It goes without saying that a 100 mph line drive off the groin could cause some serious and debilitating damage that could put a pitcher on the shelf for quite a while, so Francona’s concerns are completely warranted. Fortunately for Burns and the Reds, the former’s twist to protect himself was just barely enough to avoid disaster.
We’ll see moving forward if Burns will heed his manager’s advice and avoid any unnecessary risk to himself of an injury that no man could even think about without wincing.