A’s Mike Fiers Has Moved On From Astros Cheating Scandal

It wasn’t exactly the 2020 debut Mike Fiers had spent an interrupted spring training and abbreviated summer camp envisioning. When he finally got on the mound for a real game on Major League Baseball’s opening weekend, Oakland’s right-handed pitcher allowed seven hits and four runs — three of them on a mighty home run by Mike Trout. Despite his ordinary performance, the Athletics still beat the Los Angeles Angels, 6-4.

Fiers will take it.

Before the coronavirus pandemic begot a shortened, crowdless M.L.B. season, Fiers stood as one of the most polarizing figures in the modern era of America’s pastime.

Depending on your point of view, Fiers was the courageous truth-teller who exposed a cheating scheme that his former team, the Houston Astros, used en route to a now-tarnished World Series title in 2017. Or, as Phil Garner, who managed Houston from 2004-07, declared, he was a “rat” who broke the clubhouse code and brought shame to the sport. In February, Fiers told The San Francisco Chronicle he had received death threats after he detailed the cheating in an article by The Athletic.

Opinions aside, the fallout was immediate and disruptive. After an M.L.B. investigation bore out Fiers’s allegations, Houston’s manager, A.J. Hinch, and general manager, Jeff Luhnow, were suspended and then subsequently fired, and the former Astros bench coach and then-Boston manager Alex Cora also lost his job. Carlos Beltran, another ex-Astro who played on the 2017 team, was ousted from his job as Mets manager before ever coaching a game.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/06/sports/as-mike-fiers-astros-cheating.html