Ex-White Sox catcher, Pitt star Kevan Smith at center of Astros’ sign-stealing: ‘We knew they had something’

A former WPIAL baseball star is speaking out about the Houston Astros sign-stealing scandal.

He was a first-hand witness to it and was prominently featured in the exposure of it.

I spoke with Seneca Valley alum and former Pitt quarterback Kevan Smith on Thursday. You can hear the entire conversation in our Friday “Breakfast With Benz” podcast.

LISTEN: Ex-WPIAL, Pitt standout opens up about being at center of Astros controversy

Smith, now a catcher with the Tampa Bay Rays, broke into Major League Baseball with the Chicago White Sox in 2016.

Two months ago, Smith was unwittingly thrust into the center of the Astros controversy, essentially as a public victim of how Houston was stealing signs.

On Nov. 12, 2019, “The Athletic” broke the story of how Houston was apparently relaying the signals of opposing catchers to their own hitters via a center-field camera, and a corresponding monitor in the tunnel between the dugout and clubhouse.

An Astros employee would allegedly watch the screen and bang on a trash can to alert the hitter as to what type of pitch was coming.

Since then, the Astros have been fined $5 million. They’ve lost draft picks. Manager A.J. Hinch and general manager Jeff Luhnow were suspended for the 2020 season and subsequently fired.

Alex Cora and Carlos Beltran were both dismissed from their positions as managers of the Boston Red Sox and New York Mets, too. They had been members of that Astros team.

Shortly after “The Athletic” story was published, Hardball Talk posted video that clearly depicted the “trash-can method” of sign stealing being employed against the White Sox in September 2017.

Smith was the catcher behind the plate at the time. And the audio on the tape is clear.

“I vividly remember that exact point (in the game),” Smith said. “I was in Montana when (the article was published). When I got back into (cell) service, my phone was exploding with people sending me all these videos. And it all came back to me.”

The video focused on an at-bat between White Sox pitcher Danny Farquhar and Astros hitter Evan Gattis. You can see the whole at-bat starting at the 2:56:02 mark of this video.

In this isolated clip you can hear banging coming from the dugout.

Turn volume up and listen closely right when catcher gives the signs pic.twitter.com/OuDwoiKtrO

— ??????? ?????????? (@YanksEnthusiast) November 12, 2019

That was the second time during the at-bat when you could make out the noise.

Here is the third time. Farquhar has clearly figured out Houston’s routine. He steps off the mound and Smith comes out to visit.

Then Danny Farquhar picks up on it, is clearly on to them and steps off immediately to change signs after he hears the garbage cans again bc he realized he would only hear them when an offspeed pitch was called. That’s as Busch league as it gets. I’m sorry. That’s pathetic. pic.twitter.com/50bBcXmOE5

— ??????? ?????????? (@YanksEnthusiast) November 12, 2019

At that point, with Smith at the mound, Farquhar verbally set up the pitch sequence so no signs were given.

“He called me out (to the mound),” Smith recalled. “And the conversation was, ‘They for sure have something.’

“I said, ‘I know. But what do you want to do? We’ve changed signals. We’ve done different things.’”

So the two just verbally decided on the mound what the next four pitches would be.

As you can see in the video, Smith went back behind the plate. Didn’t give a sign. And Gattis struck out on the next pitch.

Badly.

“I’m not here saying 100% that’s what they were doing,” Smith said. “But the video is comical. There is a reason why we punched him out kind of embarrassingly after Danny and I talked about the next couple of pitches.”

Smith says that across baseball, clubs feel that some teams are more proficient than others when it comes to sign stealing. But there was something heightened about the Astros.

“We knew that they had something,” Smith insisted.

“It is very obvious on the video versus when you are out there playing.”

Smith stopped short of blatantly accusing the Astros of doing something nefarious and beyond conventional means of sign stealing. And he says he can’t remember hearing the trash can himself. But he made his suspicions clear.

He went so far as to say even when he went to the Los Angeles Angels last year, players on that team were convinced Houston was doing something odd as well.

“Even last year with the Angels, we (said to each other), ‘Man, they have something.’ We just couldn’t figure it out,” Smith remembered.

He promised he’d drill new Tampa Bay teammate Charlie Morton about the process in Houston.

Morton — a onetime Pirate — won the 2017 World Series in Houston. Smith will now be his catcher in Tampa. Smith wondered how some of the Astros pitchers reconciled the unfair advantage their hitters may have been getting.

“I’ll ask him all sorts of questions this spring about what he knew,” Smith said with a laugh. “Were these guys OK with it? Did they genuinely know what was going on? Did they just want it to happen so they could get to the World Series?

“No one knows the motives. It’s honestly starting to sound like a great Netflix documentary.”

Yup. I’d binge watch this.

Smith insisted that his two previous organizations in Chicago and Los Angeles didn’t use technology to steal signs.

But he said whenever players switch teams, it’s always a curiosity to see how it’s being done in a new clubhouse. He frowned on the practice of sign stealing illegally, saying that illegal sign stealing “can put careers in jeopardy.”

“Everybody becomes so paranoid that these (batters) have (their signals),” Smith said. “Whether they are (pitch) tipping or getting the catchers’ signs. It takes the talent right out of the pitcher. They become head cases. Mental cases, that these hitters have them.

“For these pitchers, they played their whole careers. They’ve worked hard. They’ve developed their craft. These (hitters) are messing with their families. They are messing with their well-being and how they are providing for their families. The deeper you dig into it, you feel sorry for these guys. It resembles taking steroids.”

Maybe the biggest question is, why haven’t more former Astros besides the apparent whistle blower, Mike Fiers, said something?

“I’m shocked no one has come forward,” Smith declared. “Why are these guys not being exposed? It almost sounds like guys who are reluctant to call out (other players) who use pine tar. It’s part of the game now.

“If they get checked, then these guys are gonna start checking the other guys. And so forth. And it is going to be a domino effect.”

Smith also gives his thoughts about another stadium where he thinks some strange activity took place. He goes into graphic detail about how catchers and pitchers change their signs to prevent such problems. And he reacts to Thursday’s news about the Houston players perhaps wearing wires in 2019.