Fiers goes silent on Astros’ sign-stealing investigation
OAKLAND >> Mike Fiers blew the whistle on the Houston Astros’ sign-stealing practices, explaining the monitorfed, trash-can banging scheme to The Athletic back in November.
Fiers has nothing left to say on the matter. It’ll be baseball questions only moving forward.
“I appreciate the question, I’m just not talking about that right now,” Fiers said to a media scrum on Friday a day before FanFest in Oakland. “I’ll talk about baseball and my team moving forward, but right now I just want to focus on this team and not the past.”
Reporters posed a few more angles, different kinds of questions on the matter, but Fiers kept to his statement. Fiers doesn’t want to distract from the team with this matter anymore.
Still, Fiers’ words gave credence to contentious murmurs of an unfair advantage in Houston. His words prompted Major League Baseball’s investigation, which found the players and team officials guilty of using technology to steal signs. It led to the suspensions and firings of two Astros officials — manager AJ Hinch and general manager Jeff Lunhow. It also led to former Astros bench coach Alex Cora’s departure from the Red Sox manager’s chair. Former Astros
player Carlos Beltrán never got to manage a game for the New York Mets. Both were named in the report, too.
And trickle down effects this may have in Boston are to be seen.
Even if Fiers is letting the embers of his words simmer, his teammates and Oakland A’s team officials have his back.
“Ultimately, yes, what we and most people want is for there to be a level playing field and those are the words Mike used,” general manager David Forst said. “Frankly what I think Mike did was brave. When all is said and done, he should be lauded for what he did. Players in this game will look back and appreciate it.”
For the A’s, this investigation capped years of suspicion that an unfair advantage was tilting toward Houston, particularly at Minute Maid Park. Reason for the Astros’ now noticeably inflated home statistics seemed clear.
“Just felt different at their place,” manager Bob Melvin said. “Just like any team, we had some suspicions for a couple years, then Mike came over to us. You look at the games there and you see guys giving multiple signs with no one on base, it’s a dead giveaway.”
Melvin wasn’t surprised by the investigation fall out.
“This was way over lines, this is a line that’s been crossed that’s never been crossed like this before,” Melvin said. “It should be an even playing field, and Mike did the right thing.”
He offered a suggestion for how to mitigate future violations.
“I think maybe the league looks at shutting down the video rooms during the game, potentially,” Melvin said. “I think sometimes it’s a distraction anyway, you go up and all you look at are the bad calls you’re getting and that can affect you as the game goes along.”
“There’s a certain amount of things players realistically need to do their jobs, for years we’ve had guys go and watch their at bats and try to make adjustments,” Forst said. “I think where we got in trouble was trying to find the line between development and using it in game, and that’s’ how we got to this point.”