Every member of the 2017 Houston Astros is going to be ridiculed for their sign-stealing actions that helped them to them win the World Series. No fanbase in the sport should feel more upset by this cheating scandal than Los Angeles Dodgers fans, who fell to Houston in the Fall Classic in seven games. The 2017 Dodgers were special, and they still took the Astros to the brink.
Dodgers fans still are not over it and will probably never get over it. They proved that by serenading Carlos Correa with boos when he came to LA as a member of the Minnesota Twins earlier this summer.
Some players from that Astros team are more hated by fans than others, and perhaps the most hated player of them all is Josh Reddick. The veteran outfielder played the second half of the 2016 season (and playoffs) with the Dodgers before signing a four-year deal with Houston prior to the 2017 season. He was acquired at the 2016 deadline in trade with the Oakland A’s.
Not only was Reddick really bad when he was with the Dodgers, but he decided to go after the fans once he was an Astro. That already made him one of the most hated players on the Astros, and the cheating scandal only made it worse.
Now, Reddick is continuing to dig himself into a deeper hole (not that he cares) with LA fans. Over the weekend, he accused the Dodgers of cheating as well.
When asked for proof of the team cheating, Reddick had a very simple, dumb response.
Just quickly, here’s Reddick’s career season, which came during the 2017 campaign in Houston, where there was proven, ongoing cheating:
- .314/.363/.484 (.847 OPS), 130 OPS+, 77 runs scored, 13 homers, 82 RBI in 134 games
- Career-high 150 hits, career-high .314 AVG, career-high .847 OPS, career-high 130 OPS+, career-high 34 doubles
- He had two others seasons with 32 and 20 homers (2012 and 2015 in Oakland), but in those years only his power was mostly highlighted
Josh Reddick accuses the Dodgers of cheating in big Twitter thread
Reddick joins the Milwaukee Brewers as parties that are concerned with the Boys in Blue stealing signs in Los Angeles. Back in the 2018 NLCS, it was reported that members of the Brewers organization believed that LA might have been using cameras to steal their signs.
The New York Mets added fuel to that fire, as they too reportedly felt like Dodgers hitters knew what pitches were coming in a regular-season series between the two teams earlier that year.
There were also the allegations from noted Astros defender Ryan Spaeder, who alleged that a Dodgers employee was caught setting up cameras illegally during the 2020 World Series while wearing an MLB polo.
Spaeder later deleted the allegation — along with several others that included a ridiculous allegation suggesting Adrian Beltre had a fan in center field with binoculars that would wave a tank top in the air to signal that a certain pitch was coming (I am not kidding) — and apologized for his tweets.
Just like all the others, this allegation from Reddick will get lost in the shuffle. Until the league comes out and proves that the Astros weren’t the only ones that were going to this extent to live-relay signs to its hitters, then LA obviously deserves to be viewed as innocent until proven guilty.
Plus, you would’ve thought that Reddick would’ve at least had better than a .643 OPS in LA if he was really cheating there, too.
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