Cardinals’ broadcaster Chip Caray repeatedly mistook Mets’ pitcher Austin Adams for teammate Nolan Clenney

Player identification mistakes happen, but it’s certainly rare to see them continue for a full half-inning. And it’s maybe odder still to see that repeatedly happen with a pitcher, with their stats typically displayed elsewhere in the stadium throughout in addition to on-broadcast graphics. But on the Bally Sports Midwest broadcast of the St. Louis Cardinals’ Spring Training clash with the New York Mets Thursday, Cardinals’ play-by-play voice Chip Caray kept calling Mets’ pitcher Austin Adams (who struck out all three batters he faced) by the name of one of his teammates, Nolan Clenney:

Chip Caray spent an entire half-inning mistaking Mets pitcher Austin Adams for Nolan Clenney pic.twitter.com/RikbuOIyOg

— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) March 14, 2024

And it continued into the seventh pic.twitter.com/Q1YKlkts5k

— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) March 14, 2024

As that last clip shows, this continued even after Adams left the game. So that’s quite the run of misidentification from Caray.

Of course, Adams (listed as 6’3”, 220 pounds) and Clenney (6’2”, 214) are both big right-handed pitchers, and neither’s that prominent. The 32-year-old Adams made his regular-season major-league debut with the Washington Nationals in 2017, but has only appeared in 132 career regular-season games, and he’s in his first year with the Mets. The 27-year-old Clenney has been in the Mets’ organization since 2021, but hasn’t yet pitched in a regular-season game.

Still, it was curious to see this kind of misidentification, and to see it continue for so long. Perhaps the smaller names on the much-hated new jerseys added to the problem. But “Adams” still appears pretty clear on his shirt on the camera feed while Caray is calling him “Clenney.” The Mets.com box score does confirm this was Adams (although Clenney was added to the spring training roster this week), so this does seem like a notable mistake from Caray; it’s unclear where he got it from that this was Clenney, but he certainly kept repeating that.

[Awful Announcing on Twitter/X]