It’s been a wild, dark week in Major League Baseball.
Unfortunately for the game, the biggest headlines haven’t been free-agent signings or what team is favored to win the World Series with spring training right around the corner. Instead, it’s been a circus of cheating accusations, managerial firings and social media conspiracies that threw the baseball universe into a tailspin.
A recap of the madness:
On Monday, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred issued a report outlining how the Astros illegally used technology during their 2017 championship season. The investigation, which granted immunity to Houston players, resulted in the team being fined $5 million and forfeiting its first- and second-round picks in the 2020 and 2021 MLB drafts.
About an hour after the penalties were levied, Astros owner Jim Crane announced that manager AJ Hinch and general manager Jeff Luhnow — both of whom were suspended for a year by the MLB -— had been fired.
But those dismissals were just the beginning of this week’s drama.
On Tuesday, the ax came down on Red Sox manager Alex Cora. Boston is under a separate investigation by MLB for illegal use of technology during its 2018 title season, and although those findings have not yet been released, Cora was fired anyway. Cora was Houston’s bench coach in 2017 and was named extensively in Manfred’s report.
Two days later, it was time for Mets manager Carlos Beltran, who played for the Astros in 2017 and was also named in Manfred’s report, to face the music. He stepped down from his position less than three months after he took it, leaving without having managed a game.
But Beltran’s resignation was far from the only fireworks on Thursday. Earlier in the day, on ESPN’s “Golic and Wingo,” analyst Jessica Mendoza criticized former Astros pitcher Mike Fiers for initially whistleblowing Houston’s cheating scheme in a story published by The Athletic.
Later on Thursday — after Mendoza’s comments and Beltran’s ouster already had the baseball world humming — an anonymous Twitter account claiming to come from Beltran’s niece threw gasoline on the fire. The account, since deactivated, claimed Astros stars Jose Altuve and Alex Bregman “wore devices that buzzed” under their uniforms to tip them off on what kind of pitch that was coming.
The buzzer claim, which was met with widespread backlash on social media, was completely unsubstantiated. It was also met with a swift public rebuttal by Altuve. The infielder, who won the 2017 American League MVP, issued a statement through his agent that he “has never worn any electronic device. Ever.” MLB then released its own statement saying that there was “no evidence” Houston ever used wearable devices to steal signs.
Finally, as if the day and week couldn’t get any weirder following “buzzgate”, David Brosius — son of Yankees World Series champion Scott Brosius — levied a serious PED accusation at baseball’s best player, Mike Trout. On Instagram, Brosius alleged that Trout “takes HGH for a ‘thyroid’ condition,” arguing that Trout found a loophole in the league’s anti-PED rules.
Brosius walked back his accusations on Friday with a follow-up post on Instagram.
“I’d like to clear the air about a comment made earlier this week about Mike Trout potentially using HGH,” Brosius wrote. “The statement in question was taken from a conversation where I was explaining how there are certain situations in which actions that would usually be against the rules and considered cheating, are deemed okay for medical or other reasons, thus not cheating. The example I used of Mike Trout does not stem from information from my dad or sources within the MLB and has no evidence behind it.”
How’s that for a baseball week in January?
