The St. Louis Cardinals are having a dismal season and their fans have not been taking it well.
It led to some Cardinals fans trolling pitcher Adam Wainwright after his start in London on Saturday to such an extent that he deleted his Twitter profile.
The career Cardinal had one of his ugliest outings, giving up 11 hits for seven runs against the Chicago Cubs, but he has been far from the only reason St. Louis has struggled this year.
Fox 2 in St. Louis confirmed that the righty had deactivated his account “after the amount of negative comments following Saturday’s game.”
The Cardinals’ Spanish language broadcaster, Polo Ascencio, tweeted out photos of Wainwright interacting with fans during the team’s trip to London while bemoaning those who led to his social media departure.
“Woke up to the news Adam Wainwright deactivated his Twitter after his last start. As some #cardinals fans decided to hate, be ruthless against him. He was as usual, spreading joy and happiness,” Ascenio tweeted.
Another social media user also lamented the news that Wainwright had been subjected to such harsh criticism that he felt the need to shut down his account.
“If you are one of the people who troll/harass athletes or anyone on social media, remove me from your list of people to follow,” @CardinalHistory tweeted. “Seeing Adam Wainwright shutting his account down should make us all mad at these people. Wainwright is a class act. We have been lucky to have him.”
Wainwright is in the final season of his Major League Baseball career and stands just two wins shy of reaching 200.
When he crosses that plateau he will be just the third Cardinals pitcher to do so, with only two other St. Louis pitchers recording more wins than Wainwright.
Legendary pitcher Bob Gibson (251) and Jesse Haines (210) are the two Cardinals pitchers to eclipse the 200-win mark.
The 41-year-old has been with the Cardinals since 2005 and has been with the team for their last two World Series titles in 2006 and 2011.
The Cardinals entered Tuesday with a 32-45 record and sat in last place in the NL Central.