Barber: A's Mike Fiers has no more to say on Astros' sign stealing

OAKLAND - The most controversial athlete in America placed himself in a corner booth Friday afternoon, doing his best to blend in with the rest of the players and coaches assembled for the A's annual pre-Fan Fest media obligation.

Before the hourlong mingling session began, an A's PR representative informed reporters that Mike Fiers would talk about “the extracurriculars” when the 60 minutes had elapsed. During the meat of interview time, Fiers would not be talking about the Houston Astros' complicated and thorough effort to steal catchers' signs, or Fiers' role in exposing it.

This seemed reasonable, even preferable. Since he was quoted in a story by the Athletic in mid-November, Fiers has been in the swirling center of the biggest scandal in sports. Everyone in baseball, it seemed, had an opinion of the 34-year-old pitcher. Some hailed him as a hero. Others suggested he was a “bad teammate” (as Pedro Martinez called him) or a “rat” (as Phil Garner suggested).

All that had been missing was Fiers himself. He had not spoken publicly since the story broke. It made sense, then, to separate him from the A's players discussing more mundane topics like offseason workouts and launch angles on Friday.

When the time came, though, Fiers demurred. What had the past few weeks been like for him?

“Just training, trying to keep my mind straight,” he said. “Just want to do my job and get ready for the season.”

Had he been surprised by the media firestorm and the fallout in Major League Baseball, which included the firing of three managers and one general manager?

“Listen, I appreciate the question,” Fiers said. “I'm not talking about that right now. I'll talk about baseball, I'll talk about my team moving forward. But right now I just want to focus on this team and not the past.”

Are your teammates behind you?

“I appreciate the question, I know you guys gotta ask, it's your job,” Fiers said. “But baseball. Baseball questions, please.”

The entire group interview last about 3 minutes, 20 seconds, and revealed little. Fiers was asked about this being a distraction, about helping to clean up baseball, about whether he'd do the same thing again given the choice. He stood with hands in his pockets, voice at a low register, and discussed “pitching for this team and leading them the right way,” and how his goal was “to be ready for spring training and eventually for the season.”

Fiers had opened one of the biggest cans of worms in MLB history, a can the size of Minute Maid Park. And when asked to comment on it, he basically said, “Look, I don't want to talk about the millions of worms gumming up the works of America's national pastime. Baseball questions, please.”

I understand the impulse. This is a squirmy, uncomfortable topic. Fiers directly implicated one of the A's American League West rivals (and one of his former employers), the Houston Astros, in going to incredible lengths to game the system. To game the game. It would be a stunning move in any profession. In baseball, with an unwritten code of conduct that would be thicker than the sport's official encyclopedia, Fiers' revelations bordered on heresy.

I don't know if it was Fiers' decision to clam up, or if the A's made a suggestion he couldn't refuse, but I'd call it a mistake. The pitcher could have aired his laundry before a relatively compact and friendly group of interrogators, then spent the rest of the season saying, “Look, I've already addressed this.” As it is, he'll be asked in spring training, on opening day, and in every stadium the A's visit in 2020. He doesn't have to answer those questions, but the drumbeat - pun only retroactively intended - will get old, for him and his teammates.

Fortunately, some of Fiers' teammates were willing to answer the questions he refused to touch.

Such as: Is it strange to see Fiers, a supportive teammate and soft-spoken conversationalist who only looks like a hard-ass on the mound with his full-sleeve tattoo and shaved head, in the middle of a media conflagration?

“He knew exactly what he was getting himself into when the announcement came out,” A's reliever Liam Hendriks said. “But he also knew there needed to be a player with his name attached to it to get any traction. So for him standing up and doing that, it didn't necessarily show a different side of him, but it gave a new perspective on him, just the fact of how strong emotionally and everything he had to be to go through that. In a similar situation, I don't know if I would have been able to do the same thing.”

Here's another question: Is stealing signs really such a huge transgression?

“If hitting's timing, pitching's disruption of timing,” Oakland pitching coach Scott Emerson said. “Well, if those guys are doing what has been alleged they're doing, we didn't have any chance of messing up their timing.”

Is there a risk even greater than that?

“When we take batting practice every day, the pitchers have a (protective) L screen for a reason, the guys throwing BP,” Emerson said. “You don't know how much harm you could do to a guy when you know a pitch is coming. That's the one thing that scares me. A guy's knowing a fastball's coming, or he's knowing off-speed's coming, and he can time it up a lot easier.”

Has the technology in baseball gotten out of hand?

“It's hard to say no if we got to this point,” A's general manager David Forst said. “Look, there's a certain amount of things the players realistically need to do their jobs. We for years had situations where guys come up and watch their at-bats between innings and try and make adjustments. I think where we got into trouble was trying to figure out where the line was between development and using it in-game.”

It's too bad Fiers wouldn't open up about his decision to go public, because he owns the moral high ground. There's a difference between a snitch and a whistleblower. The former tells stories for personal gain, or to take an enemy down a peg. The latter does it because (s)he sees a wrong being committed and feels compelled to make it stop.

Mike Fiers is much more whistleblower than snitch. Houston's sign-stealing operation was a fundamental perversion of the game. It tarnished careers (ask Clayton Kershaw) and perhaps got people fired (ask Joe Girardi). Somebody had to say something. Fiers did. He should be proud of that. He should keep talking about it.

You can reach columnist Phil Barber at 707-521-5263 or phil.barber@pressdemocrat.com. Follow him on Twitter: @Skinny_Post.