Aaron Boone hints it's possible Astros were stealing signs during victory over Yankees in 2019 ALCS
TAMPA, Fla. — The Yankees committed $324 million this offseason in adding Gerrit Cole to a team that won 103 games last season, a free-agent signing that made them the overwhelming favorite to win their first AL pennant since 2009.
And yet, much of Aaron Boone’s spring training kickoff news conference Wednesday afternoon at Steinbrenner Field dealt with the Astros' sign-stealing scandal and ensuing fallout still being felt across the sport.
Though the scandal covered illegal sign-stealing from 2017 and part of 2018, Boone wouldn’t go so far as to say he was convinced the Astros weren’t engaging in some kind of nefarious activity during last year’s ALCS in which Houston prevailed in six games.
“No,” said Boone, entering his third season as Yankees manager. “That’s certainly one of those great unknowns. Certainly, I’ve spent time, as I’m sure a lot of people have, wondering all the things that could have potentially been going on, and probably will never know for sure, frankly.”
The series, as no Yankee or Yankees fan needs reminding, ended when Jose Altuve pounced on a 2-and-1 Aroldis Chapman changeup in the bottom of the ninth. But what happened in the immediate aftermath of the homer is video that has made the rounds in recent weeks— from organization to organization and from player to player.
The part of the clip many fans find most interesting — as do more than a few MLB players — is Altuve going to great lengths to avoid having his jersey removed. That has been cited as strong circumstantial evidence of Altuve wearing a wire of some kind to have signs relayed to him (MLB said it found no evidence of such a scheme but, given what’s transpired with the Astros, many in the sport outside of Houston remain skeptical).
And while catcher Gary Sanchez didn’t outright call Altuve a liar for his reasoning — that Altuve’s wife didn’t want to see the shirt ripped off — the Yankees catcher smiled when pressed on the topic.
“I don’t know [if he was wearing a wire], but I can tell you that if I hit a homer and I get my team to the World Series, they can rip off my pants,” Sanchez said through his interpreter Wednesday. “They can rip everything off.”
Sanchez, as a catcher, is at the forefront of the battle to protect signs.
“We had a really good system in place to protect our signs, I really believed that,” Sanchez said. “But then you get this investigation and all the results come out and you’re like, ‘wow, what do we have to do?’”
Luis Severino said he had moved on — “we can’t change the past,” he said Wednesday — but said he was angry when MLB released the findings of its investigation in January, findings that resulted in penalties against the Astros for engaging in illegal electronic sign-stealing schemes in 2017 and part of 2018.
“I was mad at the beginning because there were a lot of things that go through your mind when you’re pitching against a team that good,” Severino said. “Sometimes you’re thinking, ‘I’m tipping, what am I doing?’ You spend hours in the video room looking at yourself, saying, ‘what am I doing?’ Hearing that that[(the sign stealing] was the problem, I realized I wasn’t tipping. That wasn’t the problem.”
The topic will dominate Yankees camp a bit more Thursday when Cole, an Astro in 2018 and last year, addresses the media, and it will get another healthy workout when the full squad reports in five days.
Boone is fine with that, so long as players speak their mind — should they so choose — and then, as Severino said, move on.
“We have a great team in that room, and we know the sky’s the limit for that team,” Boone said. “We have championship aspirations, so as we kick things off in earnest tomorrow, the focus is on eliminating distractions and making sure we’re in position to start laying the foundation to be a champion.”
