Giants Pitcher Sean Hjelle Accused of Abuse, Abandoning Family By Wife

Getty / TikTok @carolinehjelle Composite
A San Francisco Giants relief pitcher is being accused of abandoning his family ... with his wife saying he left after she discovered numerous alleged affairs.
Caroline Hjelle, wife of Sean Hjelle -- a four-year MLB vet -- took to her TikTok Friday to call out her fastball-slinging partner ... sharing a clip where she's laughing and playing with their kiddos.
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While it's a cute clip of the three of them, the accompanying message is decidedly less fun ... with Caroline writing it was taken one week before Mother's Day -- when she claims Sean bailed on her and their children.
Caroline claims he left after she "found about [sic] his affairs and stopped putting up with his abuse so I've been raising my two boys alone."
She posted this Friday afternoon BTW ... hours before Sean gave up a home run to Boston Red Sox centerfield Ceddanne Rafaela during one inning of work. He was saddled with the loss.
Sean and Carolina married in November 2021 ... and, he made his MLB debut with the Giants in May of the following year. The 28-year-old has pitched in 87 games with the club across four seasons to a 4.80 ERA.
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In a statement to TMZ, the Giants organization says, "We are aware of these serious allegations. We have been in contact with MLB. These type of allegations fall under their jurisdiction and we won't be commenting further."
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We've reached out to Sean and Major League Baseball ... so far, no word back.

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DaVita said in a statement that its "dedicated clinicians consistently deliver high-quality, individualized care in a complex clinical and regulatory environment." A health care "duopoly" The two companies dominate the national landscape of clinics where kidney patients come to receive regular dialysis treatments — crucial to keeping them alive. Roughly 90% of patients get their treatment in the outpatient clinics. And together, the two for-profit companies own nearly 75% of all U.S. clinics — nearly 5,600 in total. The companies have become what Mueller calls "a duopoly" as the industry has consolidated over the past three decades. The share of independently owned dialysis facilities fell from 86% to 21% during that period. In over 2,500 cities around the U.S., a single company owns every clinic. That industry dominance has a cost, according to Ryan McDevitt, a Duke University economist who co-authored a study released this month looking at the toll of the scarce competition. "This is the most concentrated health care sector across the entire U.S.," McDevitt said. McDevitt argues that Medicare's limits on how much it reimburses clinics per patient have incentivized DaVita and Fresenius to focus on filling chairs to increase their profit margins. Both companies reject that characterization. Last year alone, DaVita delivered more than 29 million dialysis treatments, earning $391 in revenue per session. That includes providing home dialysis treatments, like Goldring receives through Fresenius. Together, Davita and Fresenius reported a total of $33.7 billion in revenue from all of their businesses. McDevitt said his research found that when independent clinics are acquired by DaVita or Fresenius, their transplant referrals drop by about 10%, their patient survival rates fall by 2%, hospitalizations increase by 5%, and infection rates go up by about 12%. While kidney specialists typically dictate the type of care they want for their patients, some doctors told CBS News they felt pressure from the companies running the dialysis clinics to move patients through faster. Dr. Leonard Stern, a nephrologist now at Columbia University, said even if he believed a patient needed five hours of dialysis treatment, there were times that DaVita would refuse. "We have a corporate model that provides the least amount of care for the most amount of profit for shareholders," Stern said. Stern served as medical director of an independent for-profit dialysis center until 2005, when it was sold to DaVita. After the acquisition, he said there were times the company instructed him to make more room for new patients. He said that sometimes meant more billing for DaVita, even if it resulted in unnecessary complications and return visits for his patients. Stern left the clinic in 2013. Dr. Jeffrey Gold, a kidney specialist in Royal Oak, Michigan, said the doctors feel pressure to "get the next patient in — and make sure everybody has a spot to dialyze." McDevitt described the one-size-fits-all approach as inconsistent with patient needs. "They call it bazooka dialysis, where they pump you through the station as quickly as possible," McDevitt said, comparing the turnover model to any other volume business. "They need to turn over stations multiple times a day to hit those profit numbers, to keep shareholders happy." Reports of deficiencies Most dialysis patients rely on the federal government to pay for the treatment. The costs add up to about $40 billion a year, according to the American Association of Kidney Patients. "It's actually one percent of the entire federal budget, which is a staggering statistic," McDevitt said. Despite the expenditures — about $100,000 per patient, according to McDevitt — the U.S. has among the highest death rates for patients on dialysis among developed nations. For years, health surveyors from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) have conducted routine monitoring of dialysis clinics to assess their performance. Since 2013, those officials have cited U.S. dialysis centers for more than 115,000 deficiencies, including poor hand hygiene, unsanitary conditions while handling IV medications, and inadequate training. CMS assigns every facility a "Total Performance Score," evaluating them annually on measures like patient safety, infection control and hospitalization rates. If the score is below CMS standards, the clinic is hit with a financial penalty. A CBS News review of federal data found more than 40% of the clinics run by the nation's two largest dialysis providers — DaVita and Fresenius — failed to meet those same standards this year. That's nearly 1,600 clinics. In separate statements to CBS News, both companies highlighted their performance, saying the data reflects a track record of "exemplary care." Fresenius noted that more than 65% of its dialysis centers received three stars or higher on Medicare's five-star scale — a rate the company said is higher than the national average of all U.S. dialysis providers. The company also said its employees "take immense pride in providing best-in-class, high-quality care to our patients." DaVita said in a statement to CBS News that problems in clinics were "rare and isolated" and represent "exceptions and do not reflect the exemplary care we consistently provide." "We take every concern seriously, and if we make an error, we work immediately to resolve it," DaVita said in its statement. "To mischaracterize such anomalies as systemic care failures is reckless, fear-mongering, and puts patient well-being at risk." 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Which is why Mueller said he was not unnerved as he exchanged emails with a Miami-based medical resident who had taken an interest in dialysis — and specifically, the use of a specific medication he thought could be harming patients. "The kinds of emails he sent were totally rational, very thoughtful, extremely data-driven," Mueller said, calling Andre Obua "the last person in the world I would think to commit a violent act." Over dozens of pages, the letters Obua sent to CBS News from jail describe how he grew up in a low-income household in Ann Arbor, Michigan — a background that "shaped my world views and motivates me to advocate for the less fortunate," he wrote. He says he first heard during an internal medical rotation about the use of a medication being prescribed to kidney patients to speed up the dialysis process, which he speculated could be endangering their health. It appears from his writing that this concern went from being an interest to being an obsession. 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