Miguel Cabrera on Astros Sign-Stealing Scandal: ‘I Don’t Care About That’

Ernst Peters /The Ledger via Imagn Content Services, LLC

Tigers slugger Miguel Cabrera dismissed the Astros sign-stealing scandal on Tuesday by noting "I don't care about that."

"That's bulls---. ... I don't care about that,"  Cabrera told ESPN's Marly Rivera. "In the end, it's baseball."

Cabrera will play for former Astros manager A.J. Hinch in 2021. Hinch was hired by Detroit in October 2020 after he served a yearlong suspension for his role in Houston's sign-stealing scandal. Houston was additionally stripped of its first-round and second-round draft picks in 2020 and 2021, and MLB fined the Astros $5 million. 

Hinch was fired by the Astros in January 2020 along with general manager Jeff Luhnow. Houston's former general manager has since sued the Astros for breach of contract, alleging that he was painted as a scapegoat as Astros owner Jim Crane and MLB commissioner Rob Manfred negotiated the penalties the team would face.

"We put ourselves in a situation at the end for it to be really ugly. And we deserved everything that happened," Hinch told Rivera. "But we did a lot right. We got [an Astros] team from the rebuilding stage all the way to the top for a few years in a row. And the work that the players did, the work that the staff did, the front office, gets a little muddied with the way that it ended. And that's unfortunate."

"But we have to answer a lot of questions about that entire time because of what we did at the end."

Cabrera enters 2021 eyeing a pair of career milestones in his 19th season. He is 13 home runs short of 500 for his career, and he needs 134 hits to join the 3,000-hit club. Cabrera is an 11-time All-Star and two-time MVP, sporting a .312/.391/.540 career slash line. 

The Tigers finished 2020 last in the AL Central at 23–35. They enter 2021 seeking their first playoff berth since 2014.