MLB: The long, winding, painful reach of the sign-stealing scandal
By Jeff Kallman
MLB: The long, winding, painful reach of the sign-stealing scandal
One Mets pitcher thinks getting a sign-stealing scandal gumshoe in his 2017 backside might have changed his working life from the starting rotation to the bullpen. The problem is that Seth Lugo, perhaps like more than a few pitchers, didn’t catch onto anything suspicious when he went to work on September 2, 2017, in Minute Maid Park.
Almost a full month after the game former Toronto Blue Jays pitcher Mike Bolsinger says put paid to his major league career, Lugo started against the Astros’ Brad Peacock. The husky right-hander more or less cruised through five innings, his only previous struggle being when he and Peacock swapped troublesome but scoreless half-innings in the second. Dominic Smith put the Mets on the board first with an RBI double in the top of the sixth. But Lugo ran into disaster in the bottom.
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Alex Bregman led off with a base hit and Altuve worked out a walk to follow immediately. Then Josh Reddick singled Bregman home, Marwin Gonzalez singled Altuve home, and the Mets went to the bullpen, from which Hansel Robles got a run-scoring ground out (Brian McCann) and a sacrifice fly (Davis, of all people) to make it 4-1, Astros, which proved the final score.
Lugo still can’t forget that game. “I remember pitching really good the first half of the game, and then I don’t know why, they knocked me out of the game in one inning,” he told Newsday‘s Tim Healey this week. “I pitched that inning. I was making good pitches. And when you execute a pitch, you shouldn’t give up good hits. Maybe a little bloop or a ground ball up the middle or something. But their whole approach changed.”
Did the Astros simply adjust to Lugo? Did the sign-stealing scandal start banging the can slowly after Smith’s double gave the Mets that extremely short-lived lead? Impossible to say. Adams couldn’t find video of that game, and running a general search for it produces no results, either. But Lugo can’t help wondering even now, even at a time when he’s arguably the Mets’ best relief pitcher.
He knows he had other inconsistencies as a starter, but he still can’t help wondering whether he’d have stayed in the Mets’ rotation long enough to turn things around if he hadn’t gotten swatted in that game. That’s allowing for two of the four runs hung on his jacket coming home when he wasn’t even on the mound.