Ryan Tepera gives bulletin board material for the Astros

After Sunday’s contest, Chicago White Sox reliever Ryan Tepera took the mic to say, “They’ve had a reputation of doing some sketchy stuff over there. We can say it’s a little bit of a difference. I think you saw the swings and misses tonight compared to the first two games at Minute Maid” about the Houston Astros.

The right-hander pitched in his team’s 12-6 victory over the Astros with two scoreless innings, punching out two. The accidental MVP vote getter was born in Houston and is from southeast Texas, but he isn’t going lightly with his libel accusations.

Ryan Tepera thinks the Astros are still cheating, but in reality, the White Sox are hitting better at home.

The Astros are averaging seven runs per ALDS game this postseason with six, nine and another six in each contest. On the other hand, the White Sox scored one run in Game 1, four runs in Game 2 and then jumped to 12 runs in Game 3.

Regular Season                    Home                       Road

Astros                                     19.1 K%                   19.8 K%

White Sox                               21.7 K%                  23.9 K%

Tepera is looking to stir the pot, since he has been vocal about the Astros’ sign stealing scandal in the past. In all reality, teams play better at their own ballpark, but Houston’s splits are closer together with a home OPS of .787 and a road OPS of .780 (both above the league average).

Chicago had a .789 OPS at home during the 2021 regular season, while they had a .729 OPS on the road. Read it how you want, but the outlier is how the White Sox play on the road compared to how the Astros do.

The Astros struck out a season-high 16 times in Sunday’s contest, while also managing 22 swing and misses. After the fourth inning, they didn’t manage to put a runner on base. The four-hour and 27-minute contest ended in favor of the White Sox, but after Tepera’s comments, you can imagine the Astros will have his quote lingering in their minds as they look to advance with a Game 4 victory.

Astros players and staff later responded to Tepera’s comments.

Alex Bregman noted that “people can say whatever they want. It’s all good” to reporters on Monday. He also added, “the mentality for us is execution. It’s baseball. Not anything that’ said or written.”

The third baseman hasn’t been active in phone usage as well recently, as he looks to focus on the task at hand. His manager, Dusty Baker, is not an active social media peruser, and also mentioned that he didn’t know who Ryan Tepera was until the days before the ALDS started.