Another can of worms: Were Astros cheating vs. Rays in ’19?
New book cites a list of specific concerns the team expressed to MLB
ST. PETERSBURG — Were the Houston Astros still cheating when they faced the Tampa Bay Rays in the 2019 playoffs?
Major League Baseball’s official report in January 2020 detailed the Astros’ sins in 2017 and concluded they stopped during the 2018 season.
Rays officials did not make any public accusations going into the 2019 American League Division Series, nor afterward, even with pitcher Tyler Glasnow being hit curiously hard in the decisive fifth game.
But a new book by New York journalist Andy Martino, Cheated: The Inside Story of the Astros Scandal and a Colorful History of Sign Stealing, details just how worried several teams were facing the Astros in 2019. It cites how the Rays “expressed to MLB a list of specific concerns.”
Among them:
■ To be extra vigilant that aces Justin Verlander and Gerrit Cole were not getting balls that had been treated with mud or were different from what other pitchers were using.
■ To look out for Astros players using vibrating Band-Aids that alerted them to the coming pitches.
■ That the Astros were using some type of signals in their scoreboard to similarly alert hitters.
■ That the Astros were using hidden cameras in centerfield to gather information.
■ And that the Astros had a secret video room for sign stealing.
MLB officials, per Martino, “looked into the allegations and said it found no proof of any of them.”
The Rays weren’t the only ones with suspicions. The Astros’ ensuing postseason opponents — the Yankees and the Nationals — also were concerned.
Martino wrote that before the ALCS “an MLB official approached a member of the Yankees’ front office and posited that the Rays had been so distracted by sign-stealing paranoia that they hadn’t been able to play as well as usual. They had been knocked off their game.”
Did the Astros’ actions impact the outcome against the Rays?
This was the series where the Rays lost the first two games in Houston (6-2 and 3-1), won the next two at home (10-3 and 4-1), then went back to lose Game 5 (6-1), with Glasnow hit early and often.
Rays officials said then, and reiterated now, the issue was due to Glasnow tipping his pitches based on the position of his hands.
“Glasnow was throwing a curveball [with his hands down] here and a fastball [up] here. There was a tell,” pitching coach Kyle Snyder said last week.
“If [the Astros] were doing other stuff, I’m not aware of it.”
One Rays source confirmed their concerns but said nothing was found and disputed that the players and coaches were distracted, noting the presence of MLB staff monitors in both dugouts and clubhouses to enforce rules.
“We were concerned,” Rays president Matt Silverman said Saturday. “A number of specific accusations had come our way, and we funneled them to MLB so we wouldn’t obsess about them.”
A few months after the 2019 playoffs ended, when the MLB official report was released, some of what the Rays and others alleged was proved true as the Astros were found to have used an elaborate system, including cameras and video room communications, to cheat, though only in 2017-18.