RandBall: Everyone is still mad at the Astros, and it's glorious
This Wednesday, Feb. 12, 2020 photo shows the outside of the Houston Astros spring training facility at the Fitteam Ballpark of The Palm Beaches in West Palm Beach, Fla. (Karen Warren/Houston Chronicle via AP)With spring training complexes opening around Major League Baseball for pitchers and catchers this week, a new wave of players — some with direct involvement, some just with big opinions — are being asked about the Astros' elaborate cheating scheme involving stealing signs with technology.
Maybe at some point MLB will be able to get the spotlight off this story — the league got a one-day break earlier this week so that everyone could talk about how bad and weird its new playoff proposal is — but that time is clearly not now.
And that's glorious.
Let the Astros bathe in this filth. They deserve nothing less. And let MLB take its share of the blame, too, if their cheating really was an "open secret" about which the sport's top executive knew for a long time before they did anything to stop it.
Angels pitcher Andrew Heaney probably spoke for a lot of players with his expletive-filled interview that laid bare just how he feels about all this.
The money quote, cleaned up (full version with language warning here): "For nobody to stand up and nobody to say we're cheating other players, that (stinks). That's a (bad) feeling for everybody. I hope they feel (bad)."
There has been a lack of contrition from most Houston players, save for current Twin Marwin Gonzalez who at least gets points for saying he's sorry.
Still, as La Velle E. Neal III and I talked about on Wednesday's Twins Insider podcast, it's going to be an awkward year for him — particularly with two current teammates who were on the 2017 Dodgers team that was defrauded out of a World Series title (Kenta Maeda and Rich Hill).
The Astros ducked the media on Wednesday but gave a news conference Thursday morning that felt very sanitized and mostly likely will open them up to another round of criticism.
Good. Let this fester so it never happens again, or at least until MLB has the sense to take away Houston's World Series title.