After insisting last week that he wasn’t angry about the Astros’ sign-stealing scandal, former Yankees manager Joe Girardi now believes there won’t be a deterrent for players to stop the practice as long as MLB doesn’t punish them for cheating.
“There’s some people that lost their jobs that really were the people that had to pay for it, but there were a lot more people involved,” the current Phillies skipper said Wednesday morning on ESPN’s “Golic and Wingo Show.”
“The financial gains for the players are substantial, if they have big seasons because of this. So if there’s no punishment for them, I’m not sure that it stops.”
Girardi was fired by the Yankees less than one week after their Game 7 ALCS loss in Houston in 2017 and served as a television analyst last season before he was hired by Philadelphia in October.
Girardi also compared the lack of punishment meted out by commissioner Rob Manfred to the Houston players involved in the sign-stealing scheme to the steroids era from his playing days.
“The financial gains, similar to the steroid era, it’s very similar,” Girardi said. “If you know what (pitches are) coming and you have a big year and you’re a free agent, there’s a lot to be made there, and players want to take care of their families. So I’m not exactly sure what the right answer is, but I don’t know how much of a deterrent it is for players right now.”
Girardi had said last week at Phillies camp that he was at peace with what had come out about the Astros, despite his firing after their ousting of the Yankees in 2017.
“I’m not [angry],” Girardi said. “I’m a man that has a lot of belief in the man upstairs. Things happen for a reason and I’m here in Philadelphia for a reason. And it’s been really good.”
Still, adding to criticisms directed at the Astros by various stars across baseball – and even NBA star LeBron James — current Yankees slugger Giancarlo Stanton said Wednesday he would have belted 80 homers if he had known what pitches were coming during his 2017 NL MVP season with the Miami Marlins.
“He would’ve broken the home-run record,” Girardi said. “There’s not a huge deterrent for the players, and I think there has to be to make sure that it stops. I think it’s something we really have to look at.
“I don’t know how, if you’re not in the clubhouse and you don’t admit yourself that you did it, how you take the word from another player that he was doing it. That’s the hard part. Like, If you got caught with something on your body, that to me definitely should be a suspension and a huge fine. But to say that someone was using it, it’s his word against his word, that’s pretty tough to penalize a player. So I think it’s really difficult.”