Former Detroit Tigers and current Houston Astros ace Justin Verlander found himself in some hot water with the MLB following his comments about alleged juiced baseballs.
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“It’s a f—— joke,” Verlander said ESPN. “Major League Baseball’s turning this game into a joke. They own Rawlings, and you’ve got Manfred up here saying it might be the way they center the pill. They own the f—— company. If any other $40 billion company bought out a $400 million company and the product changed dramatically, it’s not a guess as to what happened. We all know what happened.
“Manfred the first time he came in, what’d he say? He said we want more offense. All of a sudden he comes in, the balls are juiced? It’s not coincidence. We’re not idiots.”
According to The Athletic’s Jayson Stark, Joe Torre, Jim Leyland and at least one other MLB official paid Verlander a visit on Monday afternoon to address his comments.
Fellow Houston Astros starting pitcher Gerritt Cole said after Tuesday night’s All-Star Game that he was the one who told Verlander that MLB officials were waiting to talk to him.
“I may actually have facilitated that meeting,” Cole said. “I saw Jim and Joe were in (manager Alex Cora’s) office. And they said hi. Then Jim, in not a profanity-laden way, said, ‘Get Justin in here right now.’ So I came out and said, ‘Hey, Skip wants to see you.’ And he said, ‘OK.’ Then he comes back and he goes, ‘Man, I just got chewed out.’”
