Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Joe Kelly may be one of the more popular players during the 2020 MLB season after he got into it with Houston Astros players during a game earlier in the season, sparking a bench-clearing confrontation, and leading to a suspension.
Kelly was suspended for eight games and fined after throwing a ball near the head of Astros third baseman Alex Bregman and then taunting shortstop Carlos Correa, which sparked the confrontation.
Kelly didn’t hold back in sharing his opinion of the team, the sign-stealing scandal, and how the “punishments” were handed out to the organization.
“The people who took the fall for what happened is nonsense,” Kelly said during an appearance on”The Big Swing,” a podcast hosted by teammate Ross Stripling (h/t ESPN’s Buster Olney).
“Yes, everyone is involved. But the way that [sign-stealing system] was run over there was not from coaching staff. … They’re not the head boss in charge of that thing. It’s the players. So now the players get the immunity, and all they do is go snitch like a little b—-, and they don’t have to get fined, they don’t have to lose games.”
“When you take someone’s livelihood … to save your own ass, that’s what I don’t like,” Kelly said. “Cheating? They cheated. Everyone knows they’re cheaters. They know they’re cheaters. It’s over. That’s been there, done that. But now they mess it up by ruining other people’s lives, so they f—ed it up twice. … When you taint someone’s name to save your own name, this is one of the worst things that you could probably do. … That really friggin’ bugs me. I think I’ll be irritated forever.”
“Maybe they have called [Cora] and said, ‘Hey, I’m sorry.’ Or called Luhnow and said, ‘Hey, I’m sorry.’ Or called Hinch, and Beltran. … If they had said, ‘Hey, I’m super-scared, I didn’t know what to do, I didn’t want to lose money, I had to rat.’ … Grow a pair of balls and say that.”
Kelly also called out MLB and their determination that Kelly incited the Asros to leave their dugout with his actions, which he calls “completely bullshit”.
“I socially distanced. I walked away. I didn’t get close, and I followed all the guidelines of the CDC, and people on the other side [the Astros] didn’t,” he said. “… They walked out of their dugout, walked toward us. Carlos Correa f—ing spit at our team. I don’t know if it was [at] me. He spit out of his mouth. … This guy walks over to our dugout and then spits, while I follow all the rules, and I get eight games.
“They have a manager [Dusty Baker] on their side, verbatim, yelling at me, ‘Get your little skinny ass on the mound.’ So my cuss words get eight games, and his cuss words get zero? That makes complete sense, right? Welcome to planet Earth. A debacle.”
Kelly also talked about the viral photo of his facial expressions made towards Correa.
“When Carlos was tripping back at me,” Kelly said, “the boo-hoo face felt right, because it just sounded like he was complaining. I was like, ‘Ohhhh, boo-hoo.’ For me, it sounded like a bunch of whining, and I know exactly what my wife feels like.
“It just felt right in the moment. It was spur of the moment; it’s not like you game-plan for that kind of thing. … It was my interpretation of him acting like a child at that point, and I wanted to give him a little child’s face.”
