SCAREDY RAT

Mike Fiers (pronounced "fires") is a MLB pitcher who is in his 11th season. An average pitcher as his 101 career ERA+ would attest. A 100 ERA+ is exactly average. 2 1/2 of those seasons he spent as a member of the Houston Astros. Fiers came to Houston in 2015 when the Astros traded with Milwaukee for him and Carlos Gomez. In just his 4th start with the Astros after that trade, Fiers threw a no hitter.

Fiers stayed with Houston until the end of the 2017 season, when he became a free agent. 2017 is, of course, the year the Astros won their 1st World Series, and though Fiers wasn't on the post-season roster, he did play a part in getting the Astros to that point that season, pitching very effectively during a stretch where the Astros were dealing with some injuries to their rotation. So Fiers still received a World Series ring, and full playoff bonus money, when the Astros won it all.

In 2018, Fiers signed with Detroit. The Tigers traded him to Oakland in August of that season where he has remained ever since. Since leaving the Astros, Fiers has faced them 6 times, once in 2018, and 5 times in 2019. In those 6 starts, the Astros have roughed him up pretty good, scoring 5 runs or more in 3 of those starts. In fact, Fiers has an 8.38 ERA against the Astros in his 6 starts against them. But it wasn't until his last start against them that saw the baseball world get rocked.

September 9, 2019 is the last time Fiers faced the Astros. In that game, the Astros pummeled him for 9 runs in the 1st inning. Shortly after that, reports started coming out that a player had ratted out the Astros, accusing them of using cameras in centerfield in 2017, to steal signs from the opposing catcher, then relaying those signs via trash can bangs, to the Astros batters, so they'd know what pitch was being thrown. That rat as it turned out, was Mike Fiers.

That kicked off a MLB investigation that saw several teams using some sort of the same system, but in the end, it was the Houston Astros that got the blame and the punishment for it all. At first, MLB suspended both their dynamic GM, Jeff Luhnow, who rebuilt a perennial 100 loss team into World Series contenders, and their rising star manager A.J. Hinch, for 1 year. Astros owner Jim Crane went even further by firing both. The Astros also lost 1st and 2nd round draft picks for 2 years, which has had an impact in their once plentiful farm system becoming one of the least plentiful. It was one of the most severe penalties MLB has ever dished out. And we're talking about an organization who turned a blind eye to one of the biggest scandals in the history of all sports - steroids. Not to mention an entire history laced with cheating from vaseline on baseballs, scuffing balls, corked bats, to pine tar concoctions, with the latest involving Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Trevor Bauer.

Meanwhile, the social justice warriors were getting on their horses and thumbing away at their devices about their disgust of the Houston Astros. The mainstream sports media piled on too, for you see, it was the lowly Astros who had beaten ALL of the media darlings that year, the Red Sox, the Yankees, and the Dodgers. And this is despite both the Red Sox and the Yankees getting caught in an Apple Watch scandal that same season. Cheating was prevalent throughout the league, but it was only the Astros who got hammered for it, mainly because of a rat - Mike Rat Fiers.

Fans were worked up about the the scandal and were looking forward to letting the Astros have it when they were on the road. But COVID happened and ruined their plans. So the players didn't have to deal with the idiot fans during the COVID shortened 60 game season in 2020. But here at the start of the 2021 season, where fans have been allowed back, the fans have been brutal to the Astros players on their 1st 2 road trips of the season, Oakland and Anaheim (LA suburb). They've even been giving it to players who weren't even on that 2017 team, but that's how dumb fans are.

Ever since the scandal broke loose, after that September 9, 2019 game where Rat Fiers was pummeled for 9 runs in 1 inning, he has yet to face the Astros since. And he's had plenty of opportunities to do so. In the COVID shortened 2020 season, including the playoffs, the A's played a total of 67 games. They faced the Astros 14 times in those 67 games, including a 5 game series, and not once did Rat Fiers take the bump against them. The Astros have faced the A's 7 times in Oakland's 1st 10 games this season with no Rat Fiers facing them. Of course, he's conveniently out with an injury. Since that Sept. 9th game, the A's have played 96 games, 24 against the Astros, exactly 25%, and the Rat hasn't faced them once. It gets worse.

The Astros opened their 2021 season on the road in, of all places, Oakland, where they played a 4 game series against them, and then went to play 2 games against the Angels, all the while getting pummeled with boos and vitriol from the fans in all 6 games. The Astros responded by going 5-1. Now they come home to make their home opener. Opening Day is special in that all the players, coaches and trainers have their opportunity to be announced to the fans, and they get to take the field and lineup down the base lines. Every person taking the field on BOTH teams gets announced. This is the case as well for home openers. Not everybody can play their 1st game of the season at home, so when they start on the road and come home for that 1st home game, it's treated the same as Opening Day.

The Astros opponent for their home opener? Why that would be the Oakland A's. I've personally attended 19 straight Opening Days, 6 of those have been home openers, and EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. EVERYBODY on BOTH teams gets announced to lineup along the base paths. Coaches, trainers, assistant trainers, all the reserve players, and then the manager and starting lineups. The visiting team goes first. 

When the PA announcer introduced the A's, he announced them as reserves, trainers and coaches. THEY ALL CAME OUT AT ONCE! No individual names like has been done, again, EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. since eternity. Among that group of trainers, coaches and reserves, was, of course, the Rat himself. After what the Astros have had to face in their 1st 6 road games, due in large part to that snake in the grass, he's too chicken bleep to have his name announced in Houston, and take his from the fans? What a freaking puss.

He's apparently too afraid to even pitch against the Astros ever again, and now he's too afraid to take some boos from Houston fans. I have never in my life seen such a fragile, chicken bleep little scaredy rat in my entire life. Of course, the rat has no problem hanging on to that bonus money and that World Series ring.