Indians take jab at Bautista's 'excuse' with fan poll
During the American League Division Series, the Cleveland Indians were implicitly accused of stealing signs from the Boston Red Sox, whom they swept in three games.
On Sunday, Toronto Blue Jays star Jose Bautista cryptically blamed "circumstances" for some of the pitching success that has helped Cleveland grab a 2-0 lead in the ALCS.
What next?
Well, that's the question Cleveland - two games shy of their first pennant since 1997 - posed to the Twitterverse on Monday ahead of Game 3 of the American League Championship Series at Rogers Centre.
We've had sign stealing and circumstances.
— Cleveland Indians (@Indians) October 17, 2016
POLL: What will our opponents' next excuse be? #RallyTogether
Though the Indians appear determined to discredit Bautista's remarks, which most interpreted as a criticism of the strike zone, ESPN's Mark Simon observed that Cleveland's pitchers have gotten 7.4 more called strikes than the average pitcher would have gotten on the same set of pitches through the first two games of the ALCS
In case you missed it, here's what Bautista - 0-for-8 with five strikeouts and a pair of walks in the ALCS - had to say:
"I'm having great at-bats. It's just sometimes the elements and the circumstances that we have to deal with as hitters sometimes doesn’t necessarily go our way," Bautista said, according to the Toronto Star's Bruce Arthur. "But I'm not trying to really get into that. All you have to do is go look at video and try to count the number of pitches they have thrown over the heart of the plate. It hasn't been many.
"But they've been able to do that because of the circumstances."
That may or may not have been simple gamesmanship on Bautista's part, especially with the series heading back to Toronto, but his comments definitely provided some trolling fodder for the Indians' social media team. Case in point:
