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For several years, Cincinnati Reds pitcher Trevor Bauer expressed his belief that the Astros were cheating.
After the bombshell reports by The Athletic, exposing Houston’s illegal electronic sign-stealing scheme, Bauer felt very, and rightfully, vindicated.
However, he wasn’t happy about being right, writing in an article for The Player’s Tribune, “I do feel vindicated. But I wish I had been wrong.”
In addition to the article for The Player’s Tribune, Bauer also posted an almost seven minute video denouncing MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred and the way he has mishandled the Astros scandal as well as several other aspects of his job as the head of Major League Baseball.
Friday afternoon, C. Trent Rosecrans of The Athletic asked Bauer, “Why is it important to you to speak out?”
10 minutes later, Rosecrans had his answer.
“Because for two years, three years, they mocked me for bringing up the fact that they could possibly be cheating,” Bauer began his impressive diatribe.
“I’m not going to let them forget the fact that they are hypocrites, they are cheaters, they’ve stolen from a lot of other people and the game itself was completely unfair,” Bauer continued. “They’ve negatively affected the fans, they’ve negatively affected players, they’ve negatively affected kids and the future of baseball – which is what I’m most upset about. Now all the things they do really well as an organization are going to get completely washed away and forgotten about so the next generation of kids gets set back five or 10 years on the analytics, training and health and all the different stuff they do really well.
“It pisses me off because all we want to do – everyone comes here to win, but we agree to play by a set of rules and we want to play fairly and compete and see are we better than you or not? So we all assume that’s what’s going on. When it’s not, it’s, ‘Hold on a second, why is it that I have to abide by the rules? That guy has to abide by the rules. That team has to abide by the rules but you guys think you are better than everyone and you don’t have to abide by the rules?’ Fuck you. You know? That’s how I feel about their whole operation, especially, especially when you’re so outspoken against stuff. If you take a stand and you’re so firmly against stuff, you better fucking make sure that you’re not doing the stuff that you’re talking about.
“I mean, I don’t know anything about the whole (Roberto) Osuna situation, right? But if you’re Justin Verlander and you decide to take a stance against domestic violence and speak out 100 percent against it and then you flip-flop your opinion when someone is now on your team and it’s affecting you, that’s not having character. That’s not taking a moral stand, that’s just pandering to the public. It’s the same thing as cheating. If you’re going to sit there as A.J. Hinch and tell me that I should probably sweep my porch and my accusations are unfounded and you’re going to laugh in the face of the media about the Yankees saying that he may be doing something in the postseason and saying, ‘Oh if I knew it was going to get in their head, then we probably would have done something.’ Like, fuck you! How are you going to say that when you know damn well that you’re doing what they’re saying? I don’t know.”
I’m big on honesty and having character and treating people well.”
He also brought up valid points about how “Whit Merrifield was not an All-Star because Jose Altuve was” in 2017, and “Aaron Judge did not win the MVP because Jose Altuve did.”
“So now Whit Merrifield, when he goes to sign his long-term extension, doesn’t have ‘All-Star’ next to his name. ‘All-Star’ probably makes him a lot more valuable in arbitration, which perhaps makes him not sign that deal or maybe sign the deal for that many more million dollars,” he explained. “Aaron Judge doesn’t have ‘MVP’ next to his name. What is he worth in his first year of arbitration? That’s millions of dollars. The trajectory of the career, too. It’s not the first time where it’s a million or two, but then the next year it’s two or three and the next year after that, it’s four or five.”
Bauer also ripped Ryan Braun and the steroid era, praised Mike Fiers for calling out the Astros, continued to call MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred “a joke,” and destroyed Astros owner Jim Crane for his horrible press conference addressing the scandal.
“‘We don’t think it affected the game.’ You’re either lying or you’re a fucking idiot,” Bauer said about Crane’s ridiculous statement. “And you don’t become a billionaire owner of a team by being a fucking idiot. So, you’re lying. I don’t know. How can you not think that affected the game when you know what pitches, that’s just so ridiculous.”
Bauer had much, much more to say and if you’re a baseball fan then you really should read his full responses. They’re dead solid perfect.