First off, let’s get the appeal result out of the way: Joe Kelly’s suspension’s been reduced to five games. Still significant, but at least not eight. Looks like we’ll get him back during the last full week of August, provided his IL stint is just ten days.
Secondly, now that the appeal’s over, Joe Kelly is able to talk. And yesterday, Joe Kelly talked.
On Ross Stripling’s podcast, our hero let loose on the Astros, shared his thoughts on Alex Cora (having won a World Series for the man in 2018), and alleged a few allegations about the Astros’ conduct on that fateful night a few weeks ago. There’s a lot of good bits of the interview in the CBS Sports recap if you don’t want to listen to the full thing, but here are the highlights:
- Kelly seemed to attribute the “Just get on the mound, little fucker!” comment earlier in the inning to Dusty Baker, whom you may remember told reporters Kelly calling Correa a “bitch” took things too far.
- Kelly alleged that Carlos Correa spat at the Dodgers dugout. (Nice social distancing, Carl!)
- Kelly didn’t like that a player-run sign-stealing system resulted in only executives and coaches receiving punishment.
- Kelly didn’t like that people’s livelihoods and legacies were hurt by both the cheating and the MLB’s decisions on immunity/punishment.
- Kelly thinks Alex Cora and others deserve apologies from the Astros’ players for being the ones who took the fall (though he didn’t say Cora was innocent or anything like that, and Cora himself has of course both taken responsibility and pointed out the system was much broader than just himself and Carlos Beltrán).
- On the pouty face directed at Correa: “It’s not like you gameplan for that kind of thing.”
