White Sox announce Tony La Russa's hiring ... with disgraced Astros manager A.J. Hinch's signature

A.J. Hinch can now say he knows how it feels to have his sign stolen.

The former manager of the Houston Astros remains a free agent after the Chicago White Sox opted to fill their manager position by coaxing Hall of Fame manager Tony La Russa out of retirement, but one flub on Thursday seemed to indicate the team was quite interested in Hinch.

Specifically, the team sent out an email announcing La Russa’s hiring, but with Hinch’s signature, as one fan noted on Twitter.

Other fans have said they received an email with the same error.

The White Sox at least had it fixed when they tweeted out the La Russa announcement, this time with the correct signature.

While this might be a harmless error of graphic design, it stands to reason that Hinch’s signature would not have been in the White Sox’s system had he not been a serious candidate.

Hinch and Houston general manager Jeff Luhnow were both hit with one-year suspensions by MLB and fired by the Astros in the fallout of the cheating scandal that rocked the baseball world last offseason. Hinch was never reported to be an active participant in the Astros’ illegal sign-stealing scheme, but he has conceded he knew of the scheme and took responsibility for not stopping it.

Hinch is now one of two managers coming off one-year suspensions from the scandal looking for work in baseball again — the other being ex-Red Sox manager Alex Cora, his former bench coach.

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