The MLB levied its punishments against the Houston Astros for their sign-stealing scandal on Monday, suspending Astros GM Jeff Luhnow and manager AJ Hinch (both fired by the team shortly after) as well as slapping the team with a fine and stripping them of multiple draft picks.
Of course, you knew the internet detectives would come out for this one. There are multiple instances of Astros players and staff commenting on sign-stealing, both in relation to the scandal as well as just in general, and let’s just say that those... haven’t aged well.
This one’s just from October of last year! Hinch really tried to play the investigation off like itw as nothing serious. Oh, man. Not a good look at all.
We imagine Cincinnati Reds pitcher Trevor Bauer has been waiting on this day for a while. Vindication. He even had this video of Hinch rolling his eyes at the accusations of sign-stealing in the queue ready to go.
Back in 2018, Justin Verlander was asked about pace-of-play changes in baseball. You know, a fairly innocuous question. He decided that it would be fun to go out of his way and highlight sign-stealing as a bigger problem in the game, and, oh, the irony.
It’s rare that large-scale scandals in sports like these are uncovered, and, man, the tea is FLOWING right now.
