St. Louis Cardinals rookie Masyn Winn made his MLB debut Friday against the New York Mets. With family in attendance, he got to celebrate his first Major League hit, an infield single, in the fifth inning. That is, until Mets first baseman Pete Alonso inexplicably chucked the ball into the crowd.

It has become standard practice in baseball to save the baseball from a rookie's first hit, or his first home run, in the event that it ends up back in the field. Same goes for major milestones, like a player's 1,000th hit, or 2,000th, etc… Masyn Winn won't be going home with the ball from his first MLB hit, however, unless the fan who caught it is nice enough to return the ball.

Two possibilities here: One, Pete Alonso was frustrated by the ground ball resulting in a hit and threw the ball away out of spite. That would be a pretty classless move and seems sort of unlikely. On the other hand, this might have been a complete accident.

Even if Alonso didn't know it was Winn's debut, it's still a bit odd to just throw the baseball into the stands in the middle of an inning. Players do this all the time at the end of an inning, but it's not really clear what Alonso was thinking here.

The Cardinals drafted Winn out of high school in the second round of the 2020 draft. They called him up today and put him straight into the lineup, batting ninth and playing shortstop. Winn finished his debut 1-3 with the one single and a strikeout.