Pedro Martinez: 'Fiers broke the rules' in the clubhouse
Pedro Martinez agrees with Major League Baseball cleaning up the game and punishing the Houston Astros for illegal sign-stealing, but he doesn't like the way Mike Fiers went about his whistle-blowing.
"If he was to do it when he was playing for the Houston Astros I would say Mike Fiers has guts. But to go and do it after you leave the Houston Astros because they don't have you anymore, that doesn't show me anything," the Hall of Fame pitcher recently told Rob Bradford, Lou Merloni, and Mike Mutnansky of WEEI. "You're just a bad teammate."
Martinez added, "If you tell me that Mike Fiers is coming to my team and you already threw your team under the bus, the team that you used to play for ... Now everybody knows you are going to have a whistle-blower in any other situation too. Whatever happens in the clubhouse stays in the clubhouse and Fiers broke the rules."
In November, Fiers told Ken Rosenthal and Evan Drellich of The Athletic that the Astros stole signs in 2017 using outfield cameras, which spawned an MLB investigation.
The results of the investigation led to the suspensions and eventual firings of Houston manager AJ Hinch and general manager Jeff Luhnow, as well as the loss of draft picks and a substantial fine.
Additionally, Boston Red Sox manager Alex Cora and New York Mets manager Carlos Beltran parted ways with their clubs because of their involvement in the scheme.
Fiers, who now plays for the Oakland Athletics and pitched for the Astros in 2017, has mostly received praise for his whistle-blowing. However, he's also been criticized recently, with Sunday Night Baseball analyst Jessica Mendoza notably speaking out.
Martinez also said that if he was playing on the same team as Fiers, he'd find it difficult to trust him.
"If you have integrity you find ways to tell everybody in the clubhouse, 'Hey, we might get in trouble for this. I don’t want to be part of this.' You call your GM. You tell him. Or you call anybody you can or MLB or someone and say, 'I don't want to be part of this,'" the three-time Cy Young winner continued. "Or you tell the team, 'Get me out of here, I don't want to be part of this.'
"But if you leave Houston and most likely you didn't agree with Houston when you left and then you go and drop the entire team under the bus I don't trust you," he continued. "I won't trust you because we did have that rule."