Shaikin: ‘No one should forget.’ How the manager of the AL’s best team is shedding his asterisk

It has been eight years since the Houston Astros cheated their way through a year that included a World Series victory over the Dodgers. It has been five years since commissioner Rob Manfred publicly detailed the scandal and sanctioned the Astros and their leaders, if not their players.

Does A.J. Hinch, the manager of those Astros, still hear about it?

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“Every day,” he said.

Hinch now manages the Detroit Tigers.

“As a manager, my name gets announced in every stadium, every night,” he said Friday at Angel Stadium. “So it gives everybody an opportunity to remind me that no one has forgotten.

“And no one should forget.”

Read more: Shaikin: The Dodgers are good, and old. Should they try NBA-style load management?

We’ll get back to those Astros. But, first, we ought to tip our cap to these Tigers, the team with the best record in the American League.

The Tigers have surrendered the fewest runs in the AL and scored the third most through Friday’s games.

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Their starting rotation includes defending Cy Young winner Tarik Skubal (2.21 ERA), former Dodger Jack Flaherty (3.34) and former first-round pick Casey Mize (2.70).

Mize preceded sluggers Riley Greene and Spencer Torkelson as first-round picks in Detroit; Greene and Torkelson have combined for one more home run (17) than the Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani and Teoscar Hernández (16).

Hinch is something of an accidental manager. In 2009, he was the minor league director of the Arizona Diamondbacks when general manager Josh Byrnes asked him to manage the team.

“I thought he was crazy,” Hinch said.

What Byrnes saw and many others in baseball did not: The traditional wall between the front office and the coaching staff was crumbling. The analyst or executive coming into the clubhouse might be there to help the manager and coaches, not to usurp their authority.

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“I think the Diamondbacks, for the first time, were ahead of the curve,” said Angels pitching coach Barry Enright, then a Diamondbacks pitcher. “It was rare back then to see a front-office member come into the coaches’ room. Now it’s all one big unit.”

Innovation is great when you win. The Diamondbacks did not, and Hinch did not manage even one full season before he and Byrnes were fired.

Look at Hinch now: The Tigers earned their first playoff berth in 10 years last season, with a fraying rotation held together by Skubal and duct tape. In the first round, they beat the — dramatic pause — Astros. Two ex-Dodgers on the current Detroit roster compare Hinch favorably to Dave Roberts.

“Two incredible managers,” Flaherty said. “I’ve been lucky enough to play for both of them.”

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“The Dodgers, they can just go out there and roll out their guys: We’re here, we’re going to beat you,” said utilityman Zach McKinstry, who ranks eighth in the AL with a .311 batting average.

“The way we play the game, the way we know the game, the way we know our opponents beforehand, it’s just unmatched. It’s something I’ve never been a part of. We have to strategize and bring our best game every night.”

McKinstry is sensitive to the unfortunately common perception: How good a manager does Roberts have to be if he can write Ohtani, Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman atop his lineup card every night?

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“Managing superstars like that definitely comes with different challenges,” McKinstry said. “The way he uses his bullpen; he’s really good at that. Super good manager.

“He can control the media. He controls his players. He controls that locker room. All good things.”

When McKinstry was traded to Detroit in 2023, he was apprehensive about Hinch. McKinstry made his major league debut with the Dodgers in 2020, the year the Astros’ scandal exploded into view and Dodgers fans gathered to jeer the Astros’ team bus, even as pandemic restrictions prevented them from entering Dodger Stadium.

“You come over here and you’re like, ‘What am I going to think?’” McKinstry said. “I just kind of erased all that and came over here with open eyes and an open heart.”

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Perhaps we all should, at least with respect to Hinch.

Manfred suspended Hinch and Jeff Luhnow, then the Astros’ general manager, for one year. Jim Crane, the Astros’ owner, then fired Hinch and Luhnow.

In his report, Manfred said Hinch did not devise, participate in or approve of the scheme to intercept the pitch calls of opposing teams on live video and communicate the upcoming pitch by banging on a trash can. However, Manfred said, Hinch did not put a stop to it.

“As the person with responsibility for managing his players and coaches,” Manfred said, “there simply is no justification for Hinch’s failure to act.”

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In a year the American League is down, the Tigers are up. Does Hinch believe a World Series championship in Detroit would confer legitimacy upon him that the title in Houston might not, at least not to some fans?

“I don’t want to win for me, or for my story, or because of what we did previously in my career,” he said. “I want to win because of all the work that we put into it, and I want everybody to experience the feeling of being on top of the sport.”

His remorse sounds sincere, not coming in a scripted statement but as we talked in the visiting dugout Friday afternoon. Hinch could have declined to talk about the scandal, or he could have offered some version of “I’ve put that behind me,” but he did neither.

“It was wrong, and I should have handled it better,” Hinch said. “I understand my role in my time in Houston, but my goal is to always own it, and do everything I can to show people that I can impact a team.”

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If adversity reveals character, as those of us in the sports world like to chirp, consider the reaction of the three most prominent men Manfred cited in his report.

Crane said: “I don’t think I should be held accountable.”

Luhnow said he had been held out as “the scapegoat for the organization” and sued the Astros.

Hinch said he was wrong.

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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.