Red Sox release prospect after series of racist, anti-Semitic tweets
The Boston Red Sox released prospect Brett Netzer on Saturday after he posted a series of racist, homophobic, transphobic, and anti-Semitic tweets, CBS Boston reports. Several of the tweets were directed at Red Sox Chief Baseball Officer Chaim Bloom.
The Athletic’s Chad Jennings was the first to report that the Red Sox officially released the former third-round draft pick.
The 25-year-old last played in 2019, hitting .247 in 130 games at Double-A Portland.
“chaim bloom is a bad actor. dude went to hebrew school and studied the torah growing up but sold his soul to the sodom and race groups. good thing he is good at whatever he does in baseball,” Netzer wrote in one of many tweets attacking Bloom, who is Jewish.
Netzer also sent out tweets attacking Black people and transgender people.
After a fellow Twitter user questioned if Netzer was hacked, Netzer wrote back, “not hacked.”
Netzer also tweeted in a reply to another Twitter user, “I am a racist. I do sometimes make assumptions based on a person’s race/ethnicity/culture. Glad that is out of the way.”
Netzer did not play in 2020 due to the minor league season being canceled because of the pandemic. He spent all of the 2021 season on the restricted list for undisclosed reasons.