Anthony Bass was not the only Toronto Blue Jays player following accounts promoting hate targeting the LGBTQS+ communities, and baseball fans are starting to peel back layers and look deep into the social media activity of other members of the team.

Over the weekend — which also marked the team's annual Pride celebration — Twitter user @nessuhhr shared a screenshot of the account whose video Anthony Bass shared on Instagram, which set off a media firestorm at the end of May.

The screenshot is timestamped May 29 at 5:15 p.m., the same day that Bass shared the video calling on Christians to boycott Target and Bud Light and calling the brands "evil," "demonic," and "satanic." The image shows that the account was at that time followed by another Jays pitcher, Canadian reliever Zach Pop.

could just be a coincidence but i took this screenshot the day bass shared the video 🤔 he unfollowed after the drama but now that we know someone had sent it to him it ain’t a good look. do with this what u will https://t.co/kxSCQ0SlDt pic.twitter.com/3lpWA39I0O

— vanessa (@nessuhhr) June 9, 2023

Drafted by the Toronto Blue Jays late in the 2014 MLB Draft, the Brampton-born pitcher initially opted to walk from a contract offer with the team and instead play college ball. Pop was later drafted by the L.A. Dodgers in the seventh round of the 2017 MLB Draft.

Pop was a teammate of Anthony Bass on the Miami Marlins in 2021, and the pair were dealt to the Jays along with a player to be named later in exchange for prospect Jordan Groshans in August 2022.

In the wake of Bass' bigotry scandal, the since-DFAd pitcher made a point of saying he would not throw the person who shared the video with him under the bus. However, Pop's following of the same account is leading a few fans to suggest that Bass may have learned of the video from a bullpen buddy.

I actually thought of this person when Bass talked about not throwing anyone under the bus.

— Carol Schneider 🥑 (@auntcarol2) June 9, 2023

A delve into Pop's Instagram follows reveals that, while he has since unfollowed the account responsible for the video that got Bass into hot water, he continues to follow other similar accounts sharing far-right extremist views.

Among the accounts Pop follows, one known as theos_and_theology posts vile and hateful content, including homophobic videos claiming that AIDS is a "warning from god."

Pop also follows an account called jesusendlessgrace, which recently posted a video of a Pride celebration with the caption, "YOU WILL HAVE ALL ETERNITY TO REAP YOUR WICKED CONSEQUENCES."

Anti-LGBTQ+ memes recently shared by two accounts followed by Jays reliever Zach Pop as of June 12, 2023. Images via Instagram.

It's important to note that many, if not most of us, rage-follow accounts with differing views, which could very well be an explanation. There is also really no way to know for certain whether the pitcher is actively consuming these hateful memes or just passively following accounts for their less-inflammatory religious content.

But it's not just Bass and Pop having their social media presences dredged up, and a third bullpen pitcher on the Jays was called out this weekend for past online activity.

Adam Cimber was called out by dozens of commenters for a tweet he sent way back in 2014 stating "#AllLivesMater," a statement often used by groups attempting to undercut the Black Lives Matter movement.

Cimber was just fine leaving that tweet on his account for nine years, and only deleted it after fans piled on and slammed his views following a disastrous outing on the mound this weekend.

Unfortunately for Cimber, screenshots are a thing.

A screenshot of Adam Cimber's "All Lives Matter" tweet, which was visible for almost nine years before being dredged up by fans and deleted. Image via Twitter.

Cimber also tweeted "Shut up Kaepernick," in a 2014 tweet that has not yet been deleted, referencing the Black NFL player who, at the time, had drawn the ire of the political right for his choice to take a knee during the U.S. anthem.

Among the commenters responding to the nearly-decade-old tweet, a few tagged Jays President Mark Shapiro, calling on him to oust Cimber.

@MarkShapiro get him off the Jays!

— b (@__bwhy__) June 10, 2023

blogTO reached out to the Toronto Blue Jays via email just after noon on Monday seeking a statement on players' past and present social media activity, but the organization has not responded as of writing.

Factoring in other known information about the organization, like members of the Rogers family posing with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago and Jays' second baseman Whit Merrifield's vaccine hesitancy prior to joining the team, one would be fair to come away with the interpretation that the team was hesitant to denounce far-right thinking during the Bass debacle.

However, Scott MacArthur, co-host of the Exit Philosophy Podcast alongside Richard Griffin, explained to blogTO that he doesn't believe that organizational culture all the way to the top is necessarily what allowed Anthony Bass to feel emboldened to post the content he chose to share.

"But it can be insidious, and we can, at the very least, question the culture, because questions produce answers," said MacArthur, who speaks with the insight of being an openly gay man working in the sports commentary biz.

MacArthur adds that he is "hesitant to draw a direct link that because somebody at the very top believes something, it gets licensed to players in the clubhouse many rungs down the ladder, to just post what they want to post."

"I think they live in their own silos, and follow what they follow as everybody else does on social media. A lot of them clearly are ignorant, and some may be hateful, but at the very least, they are ignorant."

To illustrate his point of how silos or echo chambers can breed this type of thought across a group — like a team's bullpen, for instance, MacArthur poses a hypothetical scenario, seeing the world through the eyes of a player who may have been brought up from a young age with religious teachings that would be considered as bigoted to those on the other side of the fence.

"Let's use this as an example. I'm a baseball player. And I'm a religious person who feels that I can claim that, because of my faith, I can call an entire community of fellow human beings demonic satanic or that their 'lifestyle decisions' are 'demonic and satanic,' and that they will burn in hell for the rest of eternity when they leave this Earth."

MacArthur says that in this exercise in outside thinking, this player "could do that, because I'm walking into my workplace — a professional sports clubhouse — and I am not encountering any known members of the LGBTQ+ community.

"I may have a Queer teammate and not know it," says MacArthur, continuing, "but the reason I don't know it is because the actions of people like [this hypothetical version of] me, make it impossible for that teammate – who I quite like and care about, and see as a fellow human being — to be themselves. And I don't even know that I'm part of the problem."

As for the Blue Jays organization's unconvincing public stance in the wake of the Bass circus, MacArthur acknowledges that in-stadium Pride events like the one celebrated this past weekend are not enough in making the sport feel more welcoming.

"It is not enough to consider yourself an ally, simply because you're willing to go to a baseball game on a Friday night or Saturday afternoon, once a year in June and wave a rainbow flag that a baseball team has handed out, or filled corporate coffers by buying a Pride Blue Jays hat or t-shirt."

"And it isn't necessarily that someone like me is asking you, a straight ally, to stand at the vanguard, the front of the line and take the first bullet for us," pleads MacArthur, "but I'm simply asking that people be aware and accept and understand, firstly, and foremost."

He argues that "it isn't that you need to force players into rainbow pregame skate jerseys or what have you. But we need to have an understanding that human beings are human beings. We are all created equally. And yet we are all created differently."