“We could hear it from their dugout”, Nationals speak up on Astros cheating
The Washington Nationals should be the talk of Major League Baseball. After all, they’re the defending World Series champions. Fittingly a throng of media have assembled at West Palm Beach but not for the champs. Instead, they’re covering the scandal that is the trash can banging Houston Astros. It was a method they used to win the 2017 World Series and a method they tried to replicate in 2019 but the Nats were prepared.
“Oh, yeah, no question. We could hear it from their dugout. We heard their whistling. What are you going to do,” said Nationals catcher Khurt Suzuki.
“We got a couple of big strikeouts when their crowd was so loud they couldn’t hear. The whole thing was crazy. I got messed up on signs a couple of times, had to call time and take us out of rhythm. I kept thinking, ‘We have to go to the field and work early on our signs in the World Series just to stop their cheating.'”
Max Scherzer and Sean Doolittle echoed similar statements.
“They crossed the moral line and cheated, but they got to answer to it. It’s not really for us to speak to them. They need to speak for themselves. They need to talk to the fans of baseball and explain what happened,” said Scherzer.
“It is unfortunate that we have to answer questions about that. But there’s also questions like this being answered in every clubhouse around baseball, so we’re not the only ones getting it just because we share a complex with them,” added Doolittle.
On the other side of the clubhouse players have apologized but it has been seen across MLB clubs as a half assed “apology” with some players showing arrogance and denying they ever did something wrong.
Nationals general manager Mike Rizzo explained his disgust and wasn’t satisfied with that said apology.
“They cheated. They were found guilty of it… The thing that pains me the most is it puts a black cloud over the sport that I love. And that’s not right. The commissioner did an investigation and found that they cheated in 2017 and 2018. Somebody’s got to say the words over there: ‘cheated.’ And that’s important to me,” said Rizzo.
“”For the sport to move on, which is what I’m most concerned about, we have to make sure that all the i’s are dotted and the t’s are crossed on this investigation before we end it.”
The Nationals will open up spring training against the Astros on Saturday Feb. 22nd. They’ll meet in the regular season in D.C. on the Fourth of July weekend.
Photo: Brett Coomer
