The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal recently went on the “Nothing Personal with David Samson” podcast to reminisce on his groundbreaking 2019 reporting about the 2017 Houston Astros cheating scandal.
Rosenthal and fellow reporter Evan Drellich produced a comprehensive story detailing the Astros’ electric sign stealing while placing it in the context of other controversies in MLB history.
One of the key figures in the story was former Astros pitcher Mike Fiers, who provided Rosenthal and Drellich with an inside scoop on the process as he was a member of the 2017 squad.
On the podcast, host David Samson recalled a potential trade that fell through that would have sent Fiers to the Marlins. He openly pondered if the cheating allegations would have come forward without Fiers’ insight, since he wouldn’t have had the experience with seeing the sign stealing firsthand.
However, Rosenthal refuted this claim, saying that the Athletic already had all of the details.
“Now when we had him on the record, then it became a much more effective story,” Rosenthal said. “When people are on the record putting their name to something, it makes something that much stronger. … I am, I would say, 95% certain that story would have run without Fiers.”
Rosenthal went on to admit that he did not fully grasp how monumental his reporting would be for baseball.
“There had been other hints of this scheme that the Astros were doing – nothing like along the lines of what we had had – but there were pieces of it kind of coming out, and I saw our story as the culmination, the one story that put the pieces together,” Rosenthal said. “But what I failed to realize was it really had this monumental impact on the sport because it led to rules changes, and it led to hopefully a different culture. It definitely did, and at the time, in that moment, I did not realize it.”