2017 Astros World Champion insinuates that Yankees cheated in embarrassing rebuke

I'm so tired of talking about the Houston Astros. The Houston Astros were in the World Series four times from 2017 to 2022. They won two of those titles. They didn't make it this season. In fact, they disappeared early, unable to defeat the Detroit Tigers. That's how it goes sometimes. Unfortunately, New York Yankees GM Brian Cashman cannot seem to let go of the Astros' blatant (and semi-punished) cheating that extended his team's World Series drought, bringing it up once again while speaking to Mike and the Mad Dog this week.

On the one hand, we completely understand why he re-lit the Astros-resenting flame this week. Commissioner Rob Manfred let the players off the hook for their brazen acts. Alex Cora is still here causing trouble. So is AJ Hinch. Carlos Beltran is in the Mets' front office now. It's hard to move on, no matter how forcefully the league tells you to.

On the other hand ... now, the cloud is back. Now, the same repetitive back-and-forth discourse is happening once again. "You cheated!" followed by "Well, what if you also cheated?!" followed by "Why are we deflecting? You were punished for cheating!" followed by, of course, 7,000 Texan Charlies in front of conspiracy theory corkboards sharing "Cloverfield"-style shaky videos of a cameraman's shoulder. It's positively exhausting.

Anyway, as per usual, convicted cheater Josh Reddick of the Houston Astros, who certainly cheated in 2017 and may have cheated in 2018 and 2019, clapped back in much the same way any fan who didn't want to take responsibility for their team's actions would. Instead of looking in the mirror, he raised baseless accusations about Cashman's 2017 club.

Yankees enemy Josh Reddick is "just asking questions" about cheating in 2017 ALCS

"Well, what if you did what it's been confirmed we did?" Reddick asks, sounding exactly like Reddit.

The reality is, in this particular series, the Yankees won all three home games and lost all four road games, struggling to score. But the scope of the Astros' darkness extends far beyond the ALCS itself. The team's dominance through 2022 indicates that they had no reason to cheat and were too talented for it to be necessary, but still did so, just to rub it in. People who lost to the Astros lost jobs. Players who couldn't solve the Astros' scheme changed careers. The full scope of the impact will never be known, but it represented a massive net negative and ill-gotten gains.

And, one final time, for good measure: the Yankees didn't score much, but lost Game 2 on a walk-off smash. When the difference across an entire series is one hit, the cheating scheme that made hitting easier just might have mattered a little bit. Sorry, Reddick. Cashman probably shouldn't have spoken, but he was not wrong.