Gary Sanchez reignites Astros’ buzzer controversy with Jose Altuve ‘pants’ dig

TAMPA — It was Gary Sanchez’s turn to bash the Astros on Wednesday morning, and the Yankees’ catcher made an entertainingly skeevy promise that his teammates would love to put to the test.

“I can tell you that if I hit a homer and I get my team to the World Series, they can rip off my pants. Everything. They can rip everything off,” a smiling Sanchez said, through an interpreter, at George M. Steinbrenner Field. “If I get my team to the World Series, hitting a walk-off homer like that, they can rip anything off.”

Sanchez naturally was referring to the much-discussed and -scrutinized video of Jose Altuve, after rounding the bases in the wake of his walk-off homer against Aroldis Chapman to catapult the Astros over the Yankees in last year’s 2019 American League Championship Series, warning his teammate to not take his shirt off — therefore spurring speculation that Altuve was wearing a buzzer that alerted him to Chapman’s slider which the Houston second baseman clobbered to end the Yankees’ season.

Rob Manfred’s investigation of the Astros’ sign-stealing practices, released last month, found the team guilty of illegally stealing opponents’ signs throughout 2017, including the postseason, when the Yankees previously fell to their rivals in the ALCS. However, the commissioner’s office has said that it investigated allegations that the Astros used wearable devices, including last October, and found nothing to substantiate such charges.

That won’t stop folks from publicly wondering. Even the normally taciturn Sanchez, who started every game behind the plate in both the 2017 and 2019 ALCS, seemed to enjoy this discussion topic. Asked if he thought Altuve was wearing a device when he went deep, Sanchez said, “He stayed back pretty well on that pitch. But they asked (Altuve), ‘What were you looking for in that at-bat?’ And he said he was looking for an off-speed. I don’t know. It’s a good question.”

Asked if he had seen the video of Altuve, Sanchez smiled again and said, “I’ve seen a lot of videos. So many. So many. So many. I’ve seen them all. People send them to me all the time. I’ve just got to say, ‘Wow.’”

Sanchez felt similarly about the 2017 cheating that Manfred detailed in his report.

“It’s tough after you learn everything about the investigation,” said Sanchez, who added that “Maybe I heard some of” the infamous trash-can banging.

“And not just for us, but for everybody that faced them. Like you said, we were very careful with signs and our system of signs and we thought we were doing a great job and you learn more how they were deciphering the signs, kind of like instantaneous. It doesn’t feel good. As a ballplayer, when you hear something like that, it doesn’t feel good.”

Asked whether he thought the ‘17 Yankees were cheated out of a pennant, Sanchez said, “It’s hard to say, but at the same time, if you analyze the advantage, I can tell you that as a hitter, if I know something is coming, I’m going to have a higher percentage of being more successful, right? That’s plain and simple. At the end of the day, who knows, right?”

He sure doesn’t mind speculating about it, though.