Stench of scandal still lingers
As the New York Yankees’ pitchers and catchers reported to spring training this week, they had plenty to be excited about.
With their talented roster largely healed from the injury nightmare that was the 2019 season, and the addition of perhaps baseball’s best pitcher in Gerrit Cole, the Yankees entered camp as the favourites to win the 2020 World Series just a touch ahead of the Los Angeles Dodgers.
But on day one of spring training, they weren’t quite ready to talk optimism and championship dreams. They still had some grievances to air.
Like everyone around the baseball world and beyond, Yankees players and coaches have spent much of the offseason watching the fallout from the Houston Astros’ electronic sign-stealing scandal. And as they reconvened in Tampa, Florida, this week for the first time since being eliminated by the Astros in the American League Championship Series last year, manager Aaron Boone said it was important for any of his players who wanted to get something off their chests to do so now.
Some, Boone said, had already done so over the winter, in text messages or conversations with him.
‘‘The range of emotions has been huge,’’ he said. ‘‘You’re mad, frustrated, disappointed.’’
Because the Yankees have been processing the Astros scandal and the what-ifs for weeks, Boone said some players had already moved on, while others still wanted to voice their feelings. ‘‘But at some point, very soon, it’ll be important for me that we move forward,’’ he added.
Soon after commissioner Robert Manfred issued his report on the scandal and punished the Astros, CC Sabathia, the longtime Yankees starter who retired after last season, said he felt he and his team-mates had been cheated out of a World Series by the Astros, who also beat them in the 2017 ALCS. Masahiro Tanaka, the normally reserved Yankees pitcher, agreed earlier
New York Yankees manager
this week.
Gary Sanchez, the Yankees’ starting catcher, and thus the person most responsible for helping protect his team’s signs, said it was tough learning the truth about the Astros’ schemes.
‘‘We thought we were doing things well, but they had something else to decipher what we were doing quickly,’’ he said.
Manfred’s report said the Astros had illegally used a livevideo feed during games to decode opponents’ signs and immediately communicate the next pitch to their hitters, sometimes by banging on a trash can.
Sanchez said he might have heard those sounds during the 2017 season, but since he was only in his first full season in the major leagues, he didn’t have much experience with sign stealing.
But he learned a lot this offseason, he said, watching any videos detailing the Astros schemes that popped up on his social media feed over the winter. And even though MLB said it had found no evidence of Houston cheating in 2019, many remained unconvinced, including some of the Yankees.
Boone said he still wasn’t sure the Astros did not use hidden buzzers to communicate the signs in 2019 – a much-discussed but unproven theory that emerged after Manfred’s report.
‘‘That’s certainly one of those great unknowns, and I’ve spent time, as I’m sure a lot of people have, wondering all the things that could’ve potentially been going on,’’ Boone said, ‘‘and probably we’ll never know for sure’’.
Asked if he thought Jose Altuve knew which pitch was coming when he slammed a game-winning home run off Aroldis Chapman in game six of the 2019 ALCS, Sanchez said he wasn’t sure. But he offered one humorous thought on a scene that has spurred much of the discussion of hidden buzzers: Altuve’s refusal to let his teammates rip off his jersey in celebration after he hit that homer was a clue to Astros doubters that Altuve had something hidden underneath (Altuve has denied using a buzzer).
‘‘If I hit a home run at Yankee Stadium to send my team to the World Series, if they want to, they can take off everything, even my pants,’’ Sanchez said.
Luis Severino, the Yankees pitcher who allowed six runs in 13 post-season innings against the Astros in 2017 and 2019, said he was angry when he first learned of the cheating, especially because he had spent so much time trying to figure out if he was tipping his pitches. But he struck a far more conciliatory tone this week.
‘‘They don’t have to apologise to me,’’ he said. He commended a former Astro, Marwin Gonzalez of the Minnesota Twins, for apologising for his role in the cheating scheme. ‘‘For me, it’s already in the past. I have to focus on 2020. Because we can get mad, we can get anything, but we can’t change the past.’’
‘‘The range of emotions has been huge. You’re mad, frustrated, disappointed.’’ Aaron Boone
New York Times