Charlie Morton Says He Regrets Not Doing More to Stop Astros' Sign Stealing

Rays starter and former Astro Charlie Morton is the latest player to weigh in on Houston's sign-stealing scandal.

On Saturday, Morton addressed the incident with the media at the Rays' Fan Fest and expressed remorse for not speaking up while playing with the Astros.

"I was aware of the banging," Morton said, per the Tampa Bay Times. "Being in the dugout you could hear it. I don't know when it dawned on me, but you knew it was going on.

"Personally, I regret not doing more to stop it. I don't know what that would have entailed. I think the actions would have been somewhat extreme to stop it. That's a hypothetical."

Morton said he couldn't comment on whether Astros players should have been punished because there were "different levels of involvement," according to the Times. He added that Major League Baseball did a "thorough" investigation of the scandal and he was not interviewed.

Morton played for the Astros in 2017 and 2018 before signing a two-year deal with the Rays. He said he was confident the Astros had stopped cheating when he returned to Minute Maid Park with the Rays in August 2019.

As a member of Houston's World-Series winning squad, he understands why fans now have a different perspective on the team's success in 2017.

"Certainly the public perception of that win has changed, and my peers, too," he said. "People have weighed in on this. That's the reality of it. There are moments during the World Series that will always be special to me, that won't be quote unquote, tainted. But certainly that's justified, that's a justified perception to have, and what people have expressed."

On Jan. 13, MLB released a report detailing the Astros' cheating operation that involved the team stealing opponents' signs with the use of an outfield camera during the 2017 and 2018 seasons. Video was fed to an monitor near the club's dugout, where players communicated to the batter that an off-speed pitch was coming by banging on a trash. No banging meant the pitch was a fastball. 

Bench coach Alex Cora and designated hitter Carlos Beltrán were the only participants named in the report. No players were disciplined by MLB, but were given immunity for their testimony.

Along with the report's release, commissioner Rob Manfred suspended manager AJ Hinch and general manager Jeff Luhnow through the World Series. However, owner Jim Crane subsequently fired Hinch and Luhnow, and Cora and Beltrán later lost their managerial roles with the Red Sox and Mets.

"From a personal standpoint, good people make mistakes. It's as simple as that," Morton said of the scandal. "I really don't have anything else to say about it. I think mistakes were made and everybody is just trying to move on. I think it is one of those things where I know those guys, I went through a lot with those guys, so I feel like I have a little different perspective on who they are as opposed to someone that is just reading that the Astros cheated in 2017."

This week, Hinch sat down for an exclusive interview with Sports Illustrated's Tom Verducci that aired on MLB Network Friday night, making the manager person disciplined for the scandal to speak publicly about it. He repeatedly apologized and expressed his regret for not stopping his players from cheating.

About an hour before the interview aired, the Wall Street Journal reported the origins of Houston's electronic sign-stealing operation, a scheme that was first conceived in the front office with the development of an Excel-based application programmed with an algorithm to decode a catcher's signs.