Lance McCullers on what the Astros’ critics don’t understand
By Jayson Stark Aug 18, 2020 415
It’s nine months since The Cheating Story
first appeared in The Athletic, and the Houston Astros can still feel the target on their backs — or at least the target behind Alex Bregman’s helmet.
It’s seven months since Rob Manfred announced the penalties that led to the firing of their manager and general manager, and the Astros still get the vibe that for many people, inside and outside baseball, those penalties and those firings didn’t come close to covering the “crime.”
It’s six months since their stormy press conference in West Palm Beach, and the Astros didn’t need to hear it from Joe Kelly to know that their fellow players, on those 29 other teams, aren’t ready to move on.
It’s August now, and the Astros are playing baseball. But that’s actually not the only game they’re playing. All these months later, they’re still playing a game they take a lot less joy in — the one in which they are forced to try to defend their side of this never-ending story.
“I know that a manager got fired,” Astros pitcher Lance McCullers Jr. told me and Doug Glanville this week on the latest edition of
The Athletic’s
“Starkville” podcast. “I know that a GM got fired. … And it’s never going to be good enough. The whole franchise could be dismantled, and it wouldn’t be good enough.”
As you’ve noticed, their not-dismantled franchise continues to field a team. But it took less than a week of this season for the Astros to get the message that, for the rest of baseball, this wasn’t over.
That message came in the form of a
Joe Kelly fastball that went whooshing past the back of Bregman’s head in a July 28 Dodgers-Astros game. That pitch stopped flying three weeks ago. But the words and the anger? They’re still flying.
In an appearance last week on the
“Big Swing” podcast hosted by fellow Dodgers pitcher Ross Stripling, Kelly verbally delivered three more purpose pitches directed at the Astros:
• That they’re “cheaters” who ruined other people’s lives to save their own name.
• That they “snitched” on their manager, coaching staff and front office — particularly Kelly’s former manager in Boston, then-Houston bench coach Alex Cora — to evade punishment.
• And that during the July 28 bench-clearing ruckus, various Astros — specifically Carlos Correa and manager Dusty Baker — spit and cursed at him, so it was “bull-bleep” that only he got suspended.
After Kelly’s remarks were played for him on “Starkville,” McCullers responded with a number of pointed remarks of his own. A reminder: He’s a pitcher, so this sign-stealing controversy had nothing to do with him. But he’s also a teammate, so he defended the guys he plays alongside, with these strong words:
• He said that if Kelly threw at Bregman in the name of allowing the game to police itself, firing a 97-mph fastball behind anybody’s head “isn’t the way it’s done. And if you are going to be the person that carries the big stick, if you are going to be the holier than thou, you better do it the right way.”
• McCullers mocked Kelly’s claim that he was maintaining social distance after the benches cleared, following a strikeout of Carlos Correa that Kelly punctuated with a gesture and some choice words for the Astros’ dugout: “He started that issue with what he said after he struck Carlos out. You know, I’m not going to repeat it. But citing the ‘oh, I didn’t get close’ — I mean, Joe was scared. Carlos isn’t the right dude to mess with. So it is what it is. You know, I’m beyond it. He got his five games. And it is what it is.”
• McCullers also raised questions about why it was Kelly who initiated the hostilities when he was actually a member of the 2017-18 Red Sox team that was also punished for sign-stealing: “People are going to feel how they want to feel. I mean, I made the (statement) that Joe wasn’t on that (2017 Dodgers) team (that lost to Houston in the World Series). Joe was actually on a different team that was also investigated for the same thing. And their (video-room operator was) penalized. And he was on that team. So baseball got it right? I don’t know.”
• Later, McCullers revisited that angle when the topic turned to whether the Astros’ bench-clearing confrontations with other teams are now over, following the Dodgers incident and a later fracas with Ramón Laureano and the A’s: “We’re not trying to go out here and start anything. We’re trying to play ball. And I don’t know. You guys should maybe have Joe on your podcast. He seems very Chatty Katty about it. And you guys can ask him if it’s done. And you guys can also ask him about their (the Red Sox) investigation while you’re at it.”
• And McCullers recoiled at the accusation the Astros were “snitching” on anyone. In fact, he pivoted by turning the tables on ex-teammate Mike Fiers, who was quoted by name in
The Athletic story that revealed the Astros’ sign-stealing techniques. Other sources, who asked not to be named, said the same as Fiers, both to
The Athletic and to Major League Baseball. Nevertheless, McCullers made it clear the Astros haven’t forgotten what Fiers did, by saying: “By the way, there was only one snitch. And that’s the person who spoke to
The Athletic.”
The accusation that the Astros “snitched” to evade punishment also rankled McCullers. He said it was a “misconception” that the Astros weren’t punished for sign-stealing only because they “negotiated immunity” from discipline from MLB; the league offered Astros players immunity from the outset. The Red Sox players received the same offer. And that same immunity likely would have applied to any similar investigations involving any of the other 28 teams, sources say.
That won’t be true in the future, however, because MLB has since negotiated an agreement with the union that allows the commissioner to impose discipline for future transgressions involving electronic sign-stealing. So McCullers was asked how likely the Astros would have been to answer questions truthfully if they’d known it could have led to suspensions and other discipline.
“I don’t know,” he replied. “I wasn’t asked anything. I’m a pitcher. I mean, I was on the team. But like I said, one of the things I’ve continued to see, one of the biggest issues other players seem to have, is this notion that we or the (union) negotiated immunity in that instant moment and that we all just, like, rolled. And I mean, that’s not the case at all.
“These (opposing) players have no idea what this investigation was like. They have no idea the lengths that the MLB went to beyond speaking to players. Actually, speaking to players was probably the least part of their whole investigation. I can’t go into it because I don’t know how much I am or am not allowed to say. But I’ll say that … the notion that, oh, players negotiated immunity, players then were interviewed and rolled on everyone just to save themself, isn’t the case. And that’s as much as I can say. That’s not what happened. That’s not how this went down. So if that’s what people are upset about, then I guess we can all move on because that’s not how it happened.”
Because he and his teammates never had to ask for immunity, McCullers said the constant criticism from other players for “snitching” is ill-founded.
“There’s a new agreement that’s now in place that, in the future if this happens, they can be (disciplined). So I just over and over and over again, see players bitching about that specific thing. And if that’s what they’re mad about, then they can just stop being mad, because that’s not how this went down.
“And once that report came out in
The Athletic, I mean, that was it. There’s no need (for MLB) to talk to players when you had that information. So like I said, that’s not what happened. Players are continuously … (and the) media is continuously running this false narrative. They’re continuously advocating for this head-hunting season of the Astros. And I don’t know if I can cuss on this podcast. But it’s absolutely (bleeping) ridiculous.”
It’s all these months later now. The Astros are playing baseball again. McCullers is back from Tommy John surgery and spinning off his lethal knuckle-curve again. And there is so much more going on in his world, their world and our world than a sign-stealing investigation that goes back three years.
But there are some topics in life that no one can escape. And for the Houston Astros, this otherwise-uplifting interview with Lance McCullers Jr. was a reminder that this sign-stealing conversation is going to top their list of inescapable subjects for a long, long time. Well, if that’s the deal, McCullers said, it’s not going to be because the Astros can’t get enough of it.
“I’m never going to tell someone how they should or shouldn’t feel,” he said. “They have their right to be however they want to be, as long as nothing physically harming is going to come into play.
“We’re moving forward,” McCullers said. “The world doesn’t have to move forward with us.”
