CHICAGO — Houston Astros owner Jim Crane doesn’t want to hear Brian Cashman complain about the Astros’ 2017 sign-stealing scandal anymore — and he has an odd reason why.
Earlier this spring, Cashman told The Athletic “the only thing that stopped us [in 2017] was something that was so illegal and horrific. … The only thing that derailed us was a cheating circumstance that threw us off.”
Crane told USA Today he disapproved of Cashman still criticizing the World Series-winning Astros team that used an illegal sign-stealing scheme during their championship run because the Yankees were found to have made transgressions in previous years.
“I found his comments to be extremely strange,” Crane told USA Today in a story published Wednesday. “There’s the letter, and you were doing it, too. You were there, dude. What are you talking about?”
Jim Crane, Brian CashmanGetty Images; Christopher Sadowski“The letter” is the one MLB commissioner Rob Manfred sent to Cashman which said the Yankees used their video replay room to decode signs and then relayed that information to the dugout.
Additionally, when the Yankees were in certain road stadiums where the video room was not close to the dugout, they also used the phone in the replay room “to provide real-time information” on their opponent’s signs to coaches on the bench, the letter said.
The transgressions occurred during 2015 and the first half of the 2016 season, according to the letter, which was dated Sept. 14, 2017. And the Yankees were fined $100,000.
It was recently unsealed after the Yankees spent nearly two years trying to keep its contents private, since it was a confidential letter that only came to light due to a dismissed lawsuit involving the Astros and Red Sox.
A day after writing the letter, Manfred established that future sign-stealing schemes would be met with harsher punishment, which was the case for the Astros’ infamous sign-stealing scheme that spanned from 2017-18 and included the use of technology and banging trash cans.
“If I was one of the teams, and I knew our team was doing it, I’d keep my mouth shut and just go about our business,” Crane said. “But listen, I can only control what’s going on here. I can’t control what the other guys do.”
