Mike Trout Speaks Out On The Astros Sign Stealing Sitch
I haven't really opined on the Astros' punishments or lack thereof yet. What I do know is this: players league wide were issued signed documents from MLB that granted them full immunity if they spoke up on the Astros' sign stealing scandal. Most players signed said document and sang like canaries.
Now do I think the Alex Bregman, Carlos Correa, Jake Marisnick and everyone else who was found guilty of cheating for however many games or years should be punished? 100%. But there is SO MUCH goddamn gray area involved in this.
For one... a lot of the players who were cheating are on different teams. Sure, some of them went into statistical free falls after signing with new teams (Marwin Gonzales) but how are you going to suspend a player not on Houston? All that does is punish a different team. Soo.... you can't really go that route.
And because you can't really punish someone like Marwin Gonzales, you can't just up and punish Alex Bregman or whoever else still on Houston because you have to keep uniformity in these instances. So for MLB to grant immunity to all who spoke out on the cheating and to not suspend anyone... I kinda get it. At least from their perspective.
But I'm a fan. I want blood. I want heads on stakes. I want talking points and blog material, and at this point we know, at the very least, three different superstars are/were sickened by the entire saga too:
Cody Bellinger:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9acHgEHtUU&feature=shareKris Bryant:
and now the unquestioned best player in baseball, Mike Trout:
Now the players are obviously looking at it from different perspectives than fans and Rob Manfred are. Manfred is worried about fucking over teams that didn't have anything to do with it. That'd create a whole shitstorm that would make Manfred's job impossible. That, and him and his office figured, "arrest the drug supplier, not the drug dealer" in a sense, so that's where Hinch and Luhnow's punishments came from. Fans are worried that their favorite teams were cheated out of Ws. Players? Yeah they're worried about getting hurt both financially and in the win/loss column. If anyone is thinking rationally in this, it's probably the players. It's their livelihood that was affected first and foremost. Not Rob Manfred, who referred to the World Series trophy, ironically named after his office, as a "piece of metal"
That piece of metal is quite literally what every player plays the game for. If any given player feels he was cheated out of it, he's going to be fucking pissed.
So Mike Trout? Yeah ima side with him
If anything, Mike Trout is kinda boring. I don't mean that in a bad way, but the dude hasn't done anything remotely controversial in his entire life. His image is crystal clean. So for him to speak up and say that Manfred failing to reach down, grab his sack and hit anyone caught cheating with a massive suspension and fine was a pussy move? Yeah, I'll go with that too.