Recently retired New York Yankees pitcher CC Sabathia didn’t mince words when sharing his thoughts on the recent fallout of MLB’s investigation into the Houston Astros and the Boston Red Sox for cheating, which resulted in some rather questionable punishments.
In fact, Sabathia, who was a member of the Yankees teams that fell to the Astros, and Red Sox, during the playoffs during the timed of the cheating, believes that the Bronx Bombers were “cheated” out of a World Series championship.
“It’s weird, like it changes all the time,” Sabathia said, during an appearance on Showtime’s “Inside the NFL” (h/t ESPN). “When I first heard it, I was upset, and then as investigations went on … I was like, well, we can’t go back and play the games. … But as more information started to come out, I’m like, we played a seven-game series in 2017, ALCS, and we lost really on kind of like one pitch.
“As everything’s been coming out and the more facts that we get, it’s getting frustrating, man, to sit here and know that late in my career I could’ve had a title, maybe ’17 or maybe ’18. But we got cheated out of a team kind of doing something that’s not within the rules of the game.”
Sabathia, who retired following the conclusion of the 2019 season, is now a special adviser to the team, according to the New York Post, and he is not alone in feeling that the punishments levied on the Astros, which were announce earlier this week, lacked any teeth. In fact, Sabathia believes the Astros’ title should be discredited.
“Vacate it,” Sabathia suggested. “I wouldn’t be mad at that.”