Houston Astros: Former pitcher takes the cheaters to court
The Houston Astros murdered Mike Bolsinger on August 4, 2017. Now he wants them to pay for their subterfuge in court. Does he have a case?
Mike Bolsinger was last seen on a major league mound in Toronto Blue Jays fatigues, facing the Houston Astros on August 4, 2017. At age 29 at the time, Bolsinger clung to the hope that he could remake himself into a useful relief pitcher following four years’ worth of bouncing between the Show and Triple A. The Astro Intelligence Agency banged his final hope to bits.
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Now Bolsinger wants payback. Specifically, in the form of a lawsuit charging unfair business practices and negligence, among other things. A lawsuit he filed quite cleverly in Los Angeles, for whose Dodgers Bolsinger once pitched, for the two seasons before they lost the 2017 World Series to the Astros.
And the former righthander—whom the Dodgers traded to the Jays for Jesse Chavez—wants not just for damages for himself but for $31 million worth of Astro bonus monies from their World Series win to be forfeited and distributed 1) to assorted Los Angeles children’s’ charities; and, 2) to a new fund to be established specifically toward aiding retired baseball players in severe financial straits.
It may or may not have been a matter of time before somebody might think about sending Astrogate to the courts. But if a former player who took an AIA gumshoe in the backside was going to do it, you might be hard-pressed to find a more pronounced victim.
Houston Astros: Former pitcher takes the cheaters to court
Mike Bolsinger’s Final MLB Game
Bolsinger entered that game in the bottom of the fourth in Minute Maid Park. The Houston Astros led 3-2 when the inning opened. They were up 6-2 when Bolsinger relieved Toronto Blue Jays starter Cesar Valdez‘s relief Matt Dermody, with Yuli Gurriel checking in at the plate, two out, and Josh Reddick aboard first. Gurriel walked on five pitches and Marwin Gonzalez stepped up to bat. On 2-0 Gonzalez hit a three-run homer. Make that 9-2, Astros, who batted around the order and a half in the inning.
Carlos Beltran followed by hitting a first-pitch, line double, Brian McCann followed with a full-count walk, Tyler White rapped a ground single on 0-1 to right to send Beltran home, and Jake Marisnick hit a 2-1 service for an RBI single. Bolsinger followed by walking Derek Fisher on 3-1 before he ended his inning and, it turned out, his major league career by retiring Alex Bregman for the side on a first-pitch fly out to center.
“I remember saying, ‘It was like they knew what I was throwing. They’re laying off pitches they weren’t laying off before. It’s like they knew what was coming’,” the former pitcher tells USA Today columnist Nancy Armour. “That was the thought in my head. I felt like I didn’t have a chance.”
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He didn’t, really. Thanks to Tony Adams, the fan who went to work analyzing the 2017 Houston Astros, including every game in which they banged the can slowly to transmit stolen electronically from off the field, we know exactly how little chance Bolsinger really had that day:
- Gurriel—He took the first pitch for ball one with no bang. Bolsinger then threw him three curveballs, each one of which got banged to Gurriel and the second of which landed for balls a called strike between balls two and three. Gurriel then took a cutter for the walk with no percussion accompaniment.
- Gonzalez—He saw two curveballs for balls one and two, then caught hold of a cutter and drove it over the right-field fence. The AIA operative in the clubhouse didn’t swing on the can once.
- Beltran—He saw a four-seam fastball to hit to the back of right-center field and heard no bang. (Remember: the AIA banged the can slowly on breaking stuff and changeups. No bang equaled fastball.)
- McCann—Bolsinger started him with a curveball for which he was banged before delivery. Ball one. The next three pitchers were slider (swinging strike), cutter (called strike), and slider (ball two in the dirt). No bangs. Then, it was: bang, slider (ball three); bang, slider (foul); no bang, cutter (foul); and, bang, curveball (ball four).
- White—In order: two bangs, cutter (called strike); one bang, curveball, ground RBI single.
- Marisnick—Bolsinger started him with two cutters, no bangs, and a foul strike followed by ball one. Then, it was bang, cutter (ball two); and, bang, curveball, line drive, base hit, RBI
- Fisher—Called strike followed by four straight balls. The strike was a four-seamer; the balls, back-to-back cutters, a slider, and another cutter. And no bangs.
- Bregman—Bang, curveball, fly out, side retired. Considering Bregman knew what was coming, Bolsinger was probably lucky Bregman didn’t hit it into the seats.
Bolsinger threw 29 pitches in the inning and twelve of them got banged. It was the most bangs for Astro hitters against any of the Jays’ six pitchers on the day.
Bolsinger was sent back to Triple-A after the game and didn’t get a hoped-for September call-up despite going the rest of the way with a 1.93 ERA. Neither the Jays nor anyone else in the majors offered him a new deal at season’s end.
“I was an older guy,” he tells Armour. “They had younger guys to call up. Let’s say that (game) doesn’t happen . . . I probably don’t get sent down. But at that point, they probably lost faith in me and were over it.”
Bolsinger went to Japan instead, pitching for the Chiba Lotte Marines, posting a serviceable 3.87 ERA in two seasons with Chiba Lotte, and doing it largely on edge. His wife was pregnant with their son in the first season. His translator lived an hour away from the couple. And the pitcher feared trouble getting her medical attention during her pregnancy or during their son’s first year of life.
Houston Astros: Former pitcher takes the cheaters to court
Seeking Accountability From the Astros
When Mike Fiers first blew the whistle on Astrogate to The Athletic, his reasons included him saying, “I just want the game to be cleaned up a little bit because there are guys who are losing their jobs because they’re going (against theAstros) not knowing.” Indeed.
Back in December, The Athletic‘s Molly Knight identified Bolsinger as one of at least nine pitchers whose careers got torpedoed by the AIA—including Matt Dermody, the pitcher he relieved in that fateful fourth inning.
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Want to know how Dermody took it up the tailpipe?
- Fisher, with second and third—He saw a pair of unbanged fastballs and pushed McCann home on a ground out to second.
- Bregman—no bang, two-seam fastball, ball one; bang, curveball, taken in the dirt; bang, slider, called strike; no bang, four-seam fastball, two-run homer.
- Reddick—bang, curveball, base hit, end of Dermody’s assignment. And, as it turned out, his major league career, too. The Jays optioned him to the minors the following day, then designated him for assignment the following spring training. He didn’t do very well down there, either. At this writing, he was a free agent as of last November.
Whenever any pitcher went against the 2017 Astros on the margins already, a send-down following an AIA-instigated roughing up cost them considerable money. The difference between a major league minimum salary or a $1-$2 million salary and the average minor league salary is the difference between a supermarket chain raking millions and a family grocery making high ten figures at best.
Astro players got immunity to spill to commissioner Rob Manfred and his bloodhounds. Manfred suspended general manager Jeff Luhnow and manager A.J. Hinch and Houston Astros owner Jim Crane saw and raised, canning both post haste. Bolsinger wants the Astros held far more accountable and far more heavily penalized for Astrogate than baseball held and penalized them. By that light alone he may well garner a large crowd of sympathisers.
It’s pointless for now to guess how far his lawsuit goes before it’s either dismissed or ruled in his favor. Some might call it frivolous. Some might call it a bottom-of-the-ninth desperation stand from a pitcher who was marginal at best. Some might ask whether Bolsinger was a little too clever by half, considering the sentiment in Los Angeles for restitution and legitimate questions as to whether the case can have a truly fair hearing there.
Bolsinger doesn’t pretend that he was a great pitcher, even if he believes in his heart of hearts that he could have lived to pitch another major league day otherwise if things were played fair. But even marginal players have a right to know that, if they’re going to get driven right out of the majors, they got it because the other guys played straight, no chaser and really were better than him on the day of reckoning.
He’ll never really know whether the bang pitches the Astros did lay off would have been swung on and missed or put into play for outs if they had to guess what was coming. Which raises yet again the great unanswered question, whichever way Bolsinger’s suit goes.
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The question that most needs to be asked, and answered, about a baseball team you’d have thought was the last team on the planet to need espionage to triumph the way they did—why?