It appears that Joe Kelly clearly won’t be forgiving the Houston Astros anytime soon.
The Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher was suspended by the MLB for throwing at and taunting Astros players during a July 28 game as an apparent response to Houston’s 2017 sign-stealing scandal and subsequent lack of punishment for the players involved.
No active Astros players were suspended. Instead, it was various managers, coaches and executives who either were suspended or lost their jobs once the findings of the MLB investigation were released earlier this year.
Kelly joined The Big Swing podcast to talk about that incident plus his overall disappointment in how the cheating investigation was handled and he didn’t hold back with his comments.
“The people who took the fall for what happened is nonsense,” Kelly told podcast host and current teammate Ross Stripling. “Yes, everyone is involved. But the way that was run over there was not from coaching staff. … It’s the players. So now the players get the immunity, and all they do is go snitch like a little (expletive) and they don’t have to get fined, they don’t have to lose games.”
The Dodgers were defeated by the Astros in the 2017 World Series, but Kelly wasn’t on that team. Kelly was on the Red Sox at the time and won a World Series in Boston in 2018 under manager Alex Cora who had served as the Astros bench coach during that 2017 campaign.
Cora ended up losing his job with the Red Sox prior to the 2020 season due to the fallout from the cheating scandal and that, in particular, didn’t sit well with Kelly.
“When you take someone’s livelihood to save your own ass, that’s what I don’t like,” Kelly said of Astros players. “Cheating? They cheated. Everyone knows they’re cheaters. They know they’re cheaters. It’s over. That’s been there, done that, but now they mess it up by ruining other people’s lives, so they (expletive) it up twice.
“When you taint someone’s name to save your own name, this is one of the worst things that you could probably do. … That really friggin’ bugs me. I think I’ll be irritated forever.”
Kelly’s suspension, which he called “crazy,” was originally eight games but it was reduced to five games after an appeal.
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