Dodgers Digest Los Angeles Dodgers Baseball Blog
Joe Kelly was a recent guest on Ross Stripling‘s podcast with Cooper Surles called Big Swing, and it was about as good as one could expect, with Kelly going into the stuff everybody wants to hear about from the mess with the Astros, his suspension, and even the Red Sox‘s own scandal.
It’s definitely worth listening to in full, as they expand on most of the stuff in this post, but the highlights can certainly deliver the message.
After talking about the Tyler Austin incident, which was cited by MLB as a reason for Kelly’s longer suspension, they dive into the Astros incident. Amusingly, Joe mentioned that his people made a compilation of pitches where he was wild, which was basically what fans were meme’ing about every time he misfired on a pitch after that mess.
Joe talks about the MLB’s COVID-19 protocols because it was part of their reasoning for suspending him. He also provided the detail that Carlos Correa spit at them and calls out Dusty Baker for swearing at him just like he did at Correa, yet apparently only Kelly’s words were worthy of punishment for inciting the confrontation.
Kelly also provided a quip regarding MLB blaming everything about the COVID-19 spread in baseball on the players when MLB don’t seem to care much about actually insulating teams.
As far as the Astros cheating scandal stuff, Kelly basically said he has been told it was player driven and he’s pissed that said players snitched for immunity instead of taking responsibility. Kelly talks about Alex Cora having to basically flee to Puerto Rico, and says the public should know the real story, so I have to believe he’s getting most of this from Cora.
Jumping off that point, Kelly says Cora wants to give his side of the story publicly at some point.
Stripling talks about the weirdness of interacting with the Astros, and him and Joe get into what their issue with the Astros players are. They talk about how what happened with the cheating was wrong, but it was less about that than how they handled it.
Kelly then addresses the refrain of Astros fans saying that other teams cheated too by clarifying what they actually did (read the report on the Red Sox here), denying that it was in any way comparable.
The conversation about the Astros concludes with them basically reiterating that they felt the players skirted responsibility and that the Astros apologies were eyewash.
The podcast in general is usually quite good, and obviously this got into a lot of stuff Dodgers fans wanted to hear, but it also provided some insight on the Astros scandal from a unique viewpoint. Obviously it’s just another perspective in the end, but I thought it was especially interesting because Kelly is kinda stuck in an awkward middle ground but explains his views on everything well.
Rob Manfred is definitely suspending Joe Kelly for life after this.
