~ we wouldn't want a letter acknowledging the pet teams were doing it when the narrative we want is that only Astros cheat.~
Beltran - NYM 2006 WAR jumped from 2.9 to 8.2 SFG, STL, NYY. TEX are where he went to school on cheating. He just fell apart and couldn't make use of the info. Souza, Jr. - WAS, TBR, ARI, CHC, LAD Bassitt - CHW, OAK, NYM A mix of personal knowledge and insider belief.
He didn't wait till 2019. He was telling eveybody who'd listen to him as soon as he got the A's. No one cared - probably becasue everyone already knew that it was a league-wide issue, not just the Astros. Then in 2019 when Manfredo saw that it might ensnare his beloved Dodgers, Yankess and Red Sox he brought the hammer down on Houston. I don't get why you're defending Fiers here. The guy was a known shithead long before he bacame a rat. And he likes to sext teenage girls, another well-known fact.
I’m not defending him at all. I’m genuinely questioning the motive of breaking the code amongst players, beyond simply being bitter about not being on the roster. Also if he truly was writing a tell-all before it was finally published, it gives more credence to the Astros handling of the Osuna/Taubmann fiasco, and their brain-dead response to the media, as being the true inciting factor that led to the Athletic piece moving forward.
He got pissed because we torched him in a game during his career year. It was all about self preservation. "I don't suck, they just cheated" Edit: I just wanted to add that we were responsible for 24 of the 82 runs he gave up in 2019 and more than half of those 24 were in the first inning of 2 games. We tagged him for 9 runs in an one inning.
I know this is a Yankee thread, but Cody Bellinger is a dick. He and the Yankees were made for each other.
It wouldn't shock me to learn that Fiers traded the sign stealing info to the media in exchange for them not running with the underage stuff. Though I did read somewhere (probably CF?) that he told management in Detroit about the sign stealing and they told him to keep quiet because they were doing something similar lol
The piece came out when it did for the reason I mentioned already. If more digging and reporting had been done, a lot of teams would've been implicated and Manfredo couldn't allow that. The Taubmann event was a bit of a fiasco, but signing Osuna was a good baseball move. All the self-righteous hand-wringing bullshit was just that - bullshit. Why don't the Yankees get **** for Chapman? Why is Ozuna still with the Braves. Urias (Dodgers), Germain (Yankees) have been arrested after Ozuna and people are still harping on the Astros.
Why is Luhnow still unemployed, despite having more success than any GM over the last 10 year (with his product still going to WS), with his minions still employed as GM's for other teams, and with Cora/Hinch/Beltran all employed again after serving their time? The answer is this was more than just Fiers... more than just a cheating scandal... the Astros were a prime target due to the media market makeup and their over-arching success, while the match to light the flame was struck by Luhnow's reputation amongst the media and his peers, and their handling of the aftermath of the Osuna shenanigans. You can sign DV abusers... you can say all the PR stuff you need to to justify it... but what you can't do is rub that signing in the face of a media member who was directly impacted by DV and was very vocal about her stance from the get-go. Then after that, you can't accuse another media member (also female) of getting the reporting wrong and trying to minimize the whole event.
honestly... this bothers me so very much more than the trash can banging. Not that they acquired Osuna, but that Taubman did that, and moreso the way the Astros "handled" the thing afterward.
Agreed. At the time, I thought it was a little “in the moment” revelry right after they just won a series in the most awesome of fashions… but everything about it ended up being toxic.
Yawn. If you really want to get into conspiracy's against the Astros, you neeed to go farther back than Luhnow. Selig ****ed the Astros for years.
