Kenley Jansen calls out cheating Astros nearly a decade later

2 days ago

Kenley Jansen calls out cheating Astros nearly a decade later originally appeared on The Sporting News
The 2010s were a period of time where two major sports leagues in the United States — the NFL and MLB — were mired by cheating scandals.
In the professional football world, it was "Deflategate," the allegation that deliberately deflated footballs were used in the New England Patriots' 2014 AFC Championship Game win over the Indianapolis Colts. And in baseball, it was the Houston Astros' sign-sealing that made major waves when news of the scandal broke late in 2019.
The Astros' scandal has stood the test of time and vehemently remains in the public conscience. On Sunday, Carlos Correa launched a home run against the New York Yankees and mimicked a gesture Jose Altuve made during a similar celebration after hitting a walk-off round tripper against the same team in Game 6 of the 2019 American League Championship Series.
Just two days later, a video of current Los Angeles Angels closer Kenley Jansen reacting to old footage of himself playing for the Los Angeles Dodgers was posted on the Jomboy Media "Talkin' Baseball" podcast's official page on X, formerly known as Twitter.
The video, specifically, showed Jansen forcing then-Arizona Diamondbacks first baseman Jake Lamb to hit an infield pop-up to earn a critical out in the ninth inning of a 1-1 game in 2017, which Jansen described as "the Cy Young-type, Mariano Rivera Kenley Jansen year."
That season proved to be Jansen's best in the big leagues, as he pitched to a 5-0 record, 1.32 ERA and 0.75 WHIP; earned 109 strikeouts to just seven walks across 68.1 innings pitched and converted 41 of his 42 save opportunities.
Jansen was so dominant that year that he claims that no one could have bested him — except for hitters on one team.
"The only team who could've beat me that year was the Houston Astros. Nobody else," Jansen said. "We all know [why]."
The Astros went on to win the World Series in 2017, and the validity of their victory has since been questioned as a result of the scandal. There is a reason why Jansen's dislike of the Astros, now a divisional rival, remains to this day — his Dodgers team were defeated by the Astros in that series, thereby extending his wait for a championship title, which he eventually got in 2020.