TORONTO — Randal Grichuk isn't mad, he's disappointed.
The Toronto Blue Jays outfielder spoke out on Saturday about the sign-stealing scandal surrounding the Houston Astros and Boston Red Sox, expressing his disappointment in the those involved and noting how the entirety of Major League Baseball is affected by the affair.
"It's frustrating," Grichuk told reporters at the Blue Jays' annual Winter Fest fan event. "We thought they were so good and kind of head and shoulders above [everyone else], and just maybe their talent's better. Maybe they have an analytics department which is better, you know? They beat the curve, and to find out it's this, it's definitely saddening.
"I think a lot of people don't realize how much it actually affects the game, [and] not just wins-losses effects. The guys in Triple-A trying to [make it to the majors], guys that are compared to [Astros players] in arbitration [and] how much they make, now they're going to make less. I just think it's just bad for baseball."
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Grichuk grew up in Rosenberg, Texas, just 35 miles outside Houston. However, he didn't mince words when asked what should happen to the Astros next.
"I think they need to come down heavily on them," Grichuk said. "I think the [loss of] first-round picks, second-round picks for the next two years, that's big. Obviously that hurts your farm system and you're not going to be able to get the Alex Bregman first-rounders, the George Springers, the [Carlos] Correas, so you know that rebuild that they kind of went through isn't going to be able to happen [again]. So hopefully that hurts.
"But I just hope they go hard and even harder."
Just how hard does Grichuk mean? Well, the 28-year-old said he wouldn't mind if Houston was stripped of its 2017 World Series title, which came via a dramatic seven-game series against the Los Angeles Dodgers.
"I mean, I would like to see that obviously. I bet the Dodgers would like to see that," Grichuk said. "I've got a few friends on the Dodgers that are very disappointed that possibly two years in a row they lost due to a team going against rules (LA fell to the Red Sox in five games in the 2018 championship). So I think the bigger [the punishment] the better, just due to the fact that more teams will then say, 'we're not going to take a risk at [doing] that.'"
As disappointed as the former St. Louis Cardinal is, Grichuk said he wasn't terribly surprised when the news broke.
"There's definitely things that we've heard," he said. "I've heard this since the 2017 offseason so I know it's been rumoured about. I'm interested to see what else comes out. You know, a lot of the buzzer stuff that's going to come out, to a certain extent, I know they did an investigation on that already. So I don't know.
"Like I said, it's just frustrating for baseball and it's bad for fans, to be able to say we're going to a game to see our favourite player now [only] to realize he might be cheating."