MLB News: 2017 Astros Outfielder Implies Yankees Cheated, Slams Ex-Teammate

The Houston Astros’ run to a World Series title in 2017 is still tainted in the eyes of many fans.

This week, we learned just how polarizing a subject it is among some of the principals involved.

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The Astros’ hitters used an illegal system to steal opponents’ signs in real-time during 2017 and 2018 games, as revealed in a report by The Athletic and further detailed in a Major League Baseball investigation. Players and staff utilized a center-field camera to capture opposing catchers’ signs, relaying them to batters via a series of loud bangs on a trash can.

Six years later, New York Yankees general manager Brian Cashman is still embittered by losing to the Astros in the 2017 American League Championship Series.

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In an interview with High Heat’s Christopher Russo on MLB Network on Wednesday, Cashman launched without prompt into a tangent about the 2017 Astros’ misdeeds.

“I hate the 15-year thing,” Cashman said of the Yankees’ time between World Series appearances, “because it completely forgets and discounts that some other organization cheated us when we were all the way in the end. If you knew what was going on, I don’t think they would be advancing during that time. I think we would have been advancing.

“I hate that 15-year thing because I don’t think it accurately reflects history.”

Retired major league outfielder Josh Reddick, a member of the 2017 and 2018 Astros squads, did not take Cashman’s comments sitting down.

“Hey Brian,” Reddick asked rhetorically on his Twitter/X account, “why did your team score less than 5 runs at Minute Maid but scored all those runs in New York?”

The implication of Reddick’s comment is clear.

The Yankees scored three runs combined in four games in Houston during the 2017 ALCS. They scored 19 runs in three games in Yankee Stadium during the same series. Why? Among Astros supporters, it is practically canon that the Yankees had a sign-stealing system of their own that they employed at their home park.

The Yankees were fined $100,000 by Commissioner Rob Manfred for using their dugout phone to relay information about opposing teams’ signs during the 2015 season, and part of 2016. The fine was disclosed in a Sept. 14, 2017, letter from Manfred to Cashman that was set to be unsealed in U.S. District Court in New York in 2022.

Although no schemes were ever uncovered implicating the 2017 Yankees, Reddick is hardly alone in stoking the flames of suspicion.

“Beyond crap,” Astros podcaster Walt Penberthy said of Cashman’s comments. “And while he’s at it, he can explain their own sign-stealing scheme.”

Reddick wasn’t done pointing fingers.

When a Twitter/X user replied to his original post by asking him to explain how “every other team” cheated, Reddick replied, “Naw, I’m not a snitch.”

The same user pointed out that a tip from former Astros pitcher Mike Fiers led to the original report in The Athletic implicating the team for illegally stealing signs — a tip corroborated anonymously by other Astros teammates. Reddick then said Fiers “was a 💩 teammate even before snitching.”

Exchanges like these between athletes and fans do not typically play out in public. Without details, fans are left to speculate about the substance of Reddick’s comments.

Still, it’s further proof of just how deep the feelings run about what transpired in the dugouts of the 2017 postseason participants, and just how difficult it is for principals on both sides to simply “move on.”

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