Yu Darvish and Christian Yelich engage in a Twitter spat amid sign-stealing talk: ‘Nobody needs help facing you,’ the Brewers star tells the Cubs pitcher
By Paul Sullivan
Chicago Tribune | Nov 15, 2019 | 8:15 PM
The hot stove league might be off to a slow start, but Yu Darvish and Christian Yelich are doing their best to keep the Cubs-Brewers rivalry heated this offseason.
The two stars of the National League Central rivals engaged in a Twitter spat Friday after Darvish responded to a video showing him stepping off the mound during a matchup against Yelich, who apparently thought the Cubs pitcher was accusing him of stealing signs.
“Be better than this," Yelich tweeted. "Nobody needs help facing you.”
twitter.com/ChristianYelich/status/1195462269594812417
The controversy stemmed from a report in the Athletic this week in which former Astros pitcher Mike Fiers claimed the Astros stole signs from opposing catchers using a center-field camera during the 2017 season and relayed the pitch calls to their hitters.
MLB and the Astros are investigating the incident, and the Athletic later reported that Red Sox manager Alex Cora and new Mets manager Carlos Beltran, both of whom were employed by the Astros in 2017, are being interviewed by MLB along with Astros manager A.J. Hinch about the allegations.
Sign-stealing always has been part of the game, but modern technology has taken it to a new level that threatens to impugn the integrity of baseball.
Enter Darvish, who pitched against the Astros in the 2017 World Series while playing for the Dodgers. The right-hander — who signed a six-year, $126 million deal with the Cubs that offseason — decided to put in his 2 cents with a YouTube video in which he expressed his feelings about the Astros pummeling him in his two Series starts. He went 0-2 with a 21.60 ERA in Games 3 and 7.
In a translation provided in the Los Angeles Times by columnist Dylan Hernandez, Darvish said what the Astros were allegedly doing, as depicted in the Athletic report, "was so high level that I can’t honestly say there’s no chance they were also doing it on the road.”
But Darvish also blamed himself for losing Game 7, refusing to point to the alleged sign-stealing as the reason the Astros pounded him.
“If you ask me if I got hit in Game 7 because they stole signs, I don’t think so,” he said. “The Astros have great players who don’t have to do that. So I think whether or not they stole signs, the results wouldn’t have changed.”
Darvish also alluded to a game this season with the Cubs during which he stepped off the mound multiple times after noticing players looking into left-center field during their at-bats, suggesting they might have been getting signs from someone. He didn’t mention the opposition, but the Cub-friendly website Bleacher Nation posted a video from a Cubs-Brewers game at Miller Park in 2019 in which Darvish stepped off the mound after Yelich seemed to divert his eyes briefly during an at-bat.
Darvish responded to a tweet containing the video, writing: “I’m not sure what he is trying to do. But to be clear his eyes move first. That’s why I step off.”
Darvish then tweeted: “But that’s not mean Brewers stealing signs.”
Shortly afterward, Yelich retweeted Darvish’s response and added his "be better than this” comment.
Darvish, seemingly taken aback, responded to Yelich by tweeting: “Easy man. I’m not saying your stealing signs.” He later tweeted to Yelich: “I don’t think you need help either.”
Free-agent slugger Josh Donaldson then joined in the fray with a wry tweet at Yelich saying: “I could use some help off him whatcha got?”
Darvish, who has 2.1 million Twitter followers, is no stranger to social media spats. After he and local TV-radio personality David Kaplan went at each other on Twitter in a lighthearted manner in August over Darvish’s pitch selection, the pitcher told me he enjoyed engaging with his critics.
“It’s just if I want to tweet, I’m going to tweet,” he said. “Sometimes I get in trouble, especially with my wife. Sometimes I post stupid things.”
Darvish added he had been clapping back at people since 2010 when he joined Twitter while pitching in Japan.
“I did that the whole time (in Japan),” he said. “Some media wrote stupid things, and I always responded to them. I always did that.”
Now he’s in the middle of a Twitter beef with one of the best hitters in baseball, and the ramifications of the Darvish vs. Yelich spat might be felt all the way till opening day in Milwaukee, when Darvish figures to take the mound against the Brewers.
Poster Comment:
"Naughty, naughty, naughty you. That's another foul on you." An old High School basketball cheer at home games.