The Houston Astros are public enemy No. 1 across Major League Baseball for their sign-stealing scandal in the 2017 and 2018 seasons, but they were not the only team doing it.
Erik Kratz, a retired journeyman catcher who played with nine teams — most recently the Yankees — claims that while he was with the Milwaukee Brewers in 2018, they noticed the Colorado Rockies had a similar sign-stealing scheme as the Astros.
“I can tell you that a team, that has been to the World Series often, recently, we caught them doing something almost similar,” Kratz said on the YES Network’s “Curtain Call” podcast, per CBS Sports. “I can also tell you, because I don’t know anyone over there, the Colorado Rockies were doing the exact same thing in 2018, and we caught them, and we played them in the playoffs.
“They used to take a Theragun [massage device] and bang it on their metal bench. And they were doing the exact same thing, from the TV. So, there you go."
The Rockies, led by manager Bud Black, went 91-72 that year and beat the Cubs in the NL Wild Card Game before getting swept by the Brewers in the NLDS.
Since the Astros scandal broke, there have been reports and allegations of other teams devising sign-stealing schemes, including the Red Sox who were also disciplined, but none were believed to be as advanced as what the Astros were doing.
“If you think no one else is doing it, you are wrong. The difference is, the Astros may have taken it a little too far,” Kratz, who played with the Astros in 2016, said. “Maybe a little bit too far. Maybe continued to do it. Or maybe it’s just the fact that they won the World Series and everybody’s pissed about that.”
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