Joe Kelly Cirticizes Astros Handling Of Cheating Scandal: ‘Everyone Knows They’re Cheaters’

Dodgers relief pitcher Joe Kelly earned himself an eight-game suspension last week for causing the benches to clear during a Dodgers-Astros when he hit Astros batters with a few pitches and then visibly mocked the team to their faces. A week later on a podcast hosted by his teammate Ross Stripling, Kelly explained his anger and criticized the Astros over their handling of a cheating scandal that broke this offseason. “The people who took the fall for what happened is nonsense,” Kelly said. “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. 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.”

This was reportedly taped earlier in August before the MLB heard his appeal to his suspension and the result of that appeal is still to be determined but these comments likely won’t do much to help his case since he continued to criticize the Astros and the MLB’s handling of the situation as a whole.