Carlos Correa rubbed a lot of people the wrong way with his comments following the Houston Astros’ wild-card series win over the Minnesota Twins, advancing to meet the A’s in the ALDS.
Correa essentially said that baseball fans no longer can say anything negative about Houston, because they advanced in the postseason without the use of sign-stealing.
Vallejo native and former New York Yankees pitcher CC Sabathia didn’t appreciate Correa’s statements and called out the Astros’ shortstop on his “R2C2” podcast with Ryan Ruocco.
“They cheated and then they’re mad at us, like get the f–k out of here,” Sabathia exclaimed. “It’s a f–king joke. And then you finish under .500 this year, like shut the f–k up.
“The kid’s a clown man, I’m sorry.”
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Houston became the most infamous team in professional sports earlier this year after a systematic sign-stealing scheme was revealed, leading to the firings and suspensions of manager A.J. Hinch and general manager Jeff Luhnow, as well as major fines for the organization.
Houston and Oakland have been the class of the AL West for the past five years, and their rivalry reached new heights in the aftermath of the scandal. A’s starting pitcher Mike Fiers was on the 2017 Astros team that won the World Series, and was the whistleblower that made the scheme public. In a game this season, A’s outfielder Ramon Laureano got into a shouting match with an Astros coach and was provoked to charge the mound, leading to one of the few bench-clearing brawls in MLB this season.
Sabathia isn’t the first to express this kind of frustration about the Astros, and he won’t be the last. Correa has been as defiant as any member of the organization who has been implicated in the scandal, and we’ll see how much he exchanges words with the A’s in what should be a contentious series to say the least.