High, hard: Indians’ Clevinger takes aim at cheating Astros

Indians pitcher Mike Clevinger doesn’t know exactly how he’ll react the next time he’s on the mound facing the Houston Astros.

They cheated, and he doesn’t like cheaters. On Friday night, he took aim at them.

“We’ll see,” he said. “It’ll be fun.”

Clevinger has been one of the most outspoken critics of the Astros since their sign-stealing scandal broke earlier this month and rocked baseball, leading to suspensions, managerial firings in Houston, Boston and New York, and blanketing the sport in a net of suspicion as spring training approaches.

Once the season begins, the Astros will be under more scrutiny and they might have to deal with some high, hard pitches.

“I think players will deal with it the way it should be across the league,” Clevinger said. “I don’t think it’s going to be a comfortable few ABs (at-bats) for a lot of those boys, and it shouldn’t be. They shouldn’t be comfortable.”

Asked what bothered him most about the scandal, Clevinger said, “Probably them accepting an award and cracking a joke about it without an apology.”

Clevinger, who went 13-4 last season for Cleveland, has long wondered about Houston’s hitters and their uncanny ability to hit tough pitches. He and former teammate Trevor Bauer raised concerns in the past about the Astros, and the revelation that they were using a camera in center field and banging trash cans to alert teammates of incoming pitches, gave the right-handers some vindication.

“I wouldn’t say it was common knowledge, but it’s been going around the league for a while as far as rumors there’s been a lot more substance involved,” Clevinger said. “It’s just, we didn’t have the smoking gun ... and it finally came out and it was a reiteration of how cocky they were and how they treated other guys around the league. And for that to be going on just struck a chord with me.”

Clevinger said he was confident the Astros’ secrets would eventually leak. It was former Houston pitcher Mike Fiers, now with Oakland, who revealed that Houston used a video feed sent to a monitor near its dugout to decode signs and relay them to hitters.

“Me and Trevor Bauer since 2017 have been waiting — there’s no way they can keep this glued together,” Clevinger said. “There’s no way everyone’s going to keep their mouth shut. There’s no way they can keep not picking up contracts, not giving free agents money and no one is going to say anything. We knew something was going to happen and sure enough, it did.”