D-backs’ Vogt: Astros knew what was coming when he caught against them
Feb 19, 2020, 2:38 PM | Updated: 2:49 pm
Oakland Athletics Stephen Vogt (21) celebrates with teammates after defeating the Arizona Diamondbacks 7-4 during a baseball game, Sunday, Aug. 30, 2015, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Rick Scuteri)
(AP Photo/Rick Scuteri)
As a member of the Oakland Athletics, catcher Stephen Vogt spent four and a half years in the American League West with the Houston Astros.
Now with the Arizona Diamondbacks, Vogt recalls poring over his performances against the Astros after the game because it seemed like they knew what he was calling, he told Bickley & Marotta on 98.7 FM Arizona’s Sports Station on Wednesday.
“Countless nights I’d wait, I’d have coaches looking at video, I’d have other pitchers looking at video, I’d have people – ‘Am I setting up wrong? Am I tipping what pitch is coming? Because I feel like they know what’s coming,'” Vogt said.
Turns out, they probably did. The Astros were found to have used technology to steal signs and then bang on trash cans to relay the pitch to the batter during the 2017 and 2018 seasons.
“The word that keeps popping in mind is just ‘unfathomable.’ I cannot believe that this has been going on,” Vogt said. “I am in utter shock that people think they can compete at this level, at any level, and sleep at night.”
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Vogt caught two games at Minute Maid Park against the Astros in 2017, the first of which was a 9-4 loss. The second was a 2-1 victory. In his five total games catching against the Astros that year, Houston scored 32 runs.
As a team, Oakland went 3-6 at Minute Maid Park that year and was outscored 27-46.
“I’m such a small part of it, you’re not talking about my career being affected — I mean, it did in a sense — but there’s, the levels and ripple effect of this are so big that none of us will ever understand the magnitude of what was going on,” he said.
The scandal is a stain on the game and the players involved.
“Unfortunately this is going to be a huge blemish on our game for a very long time,” Vogt said. “We’ve had so many people in our game that their reputations have been tainted and are affected, good friends of mine, that I’ve played against for years, they were on that team, that I don’t know how I’m going to react when I see them for the first time.”
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