CC Sabathia was on the mound for Game 7 of the 2017 ALCS at Houston’s Minute Maid Park, and the retired Yankees hurler is beginning to wonder what could have been — or should have been — if not for the Astros’ sign-stealing program that has come to light more than two years later.
“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 said on Tuesday night’s episode of “Inside The NFL” on Showtime.
Major League Baseball completed its investigation and announced Monday that the Astros had in fact used electronic equipment to steal signs, which were then relayed to batters by banging on garbage cans.
Manager A.J. Hinch and general manager Jeff Luhnow were suspended one year and subsequently fired by Astros owner Jim Crane. The franchise also was fined $5 million and had its first-round and second-round picks in each of the next two years taken away.
That punishment may be of little solace to the Sabathia and the 2017 Yankees, who were one win away from advancing to the World Series. Instead, the Astros got to Sabathia for one run over 3 1/3 innings and went on to win Game 7, 4-0.
Sabathia — who will be a special adviser to Yankees GM Brian Cashman, The Post’s Andrew Marchand reported Monday — wouldn’t mind seeing the Astros’ 2017 World Series title vacated.
“Maybe, yeah. I mean, why not? …Vacate it,” Sabathia said. “I wouldn’t be mad at that.”