2019 MLB Thread

[bustaheims]

Pretty tough to punish players for something sanctioned by the manager and organization. You'd effectively be asking guys, and most of the Astros that year were young and or fringey players, to be crossing their employers.

Yeah. Also, any serious punishment for the players would have been met with strong resistance from the union for those same reasons - not to mention the difficulties MLB might have in identifying which individual players to target for this, how they'd justify that (especially if they have suspensions of varying lengths), etc. Going after the manager and GM is the path of least resistance, and, along with the loss of draft picks, sends a pretty strong message - and, as long as the Red Sox face similar punishment, it's a clear and consistent message. Stripping them of their titles would be the only thing that I'd like to see added.

[Nik]

I mean, let's be clear about this. This was not a significant punishment. The Astros fired their Manager and GM. Managers and GMs get fired every year. They lost 4 draft picks in a sport where draft picks are a bigger roll of the dice than any other. They got fined 5 million dollars which is the equivalent of a bad speeding ticket for someone like Jim Crane.

There's no real organizational consequence here. If you were the owner of another team and saw having to fire two employees, lose some draft picks and an insignificant fine as the punishment would it really deter you from cheating?

[hockeyfan1]

Pretty well sums it up:

Giving the players a free pass is the cost of doing business and it should allow the league to move on quicker than it otherwise would. Still, this cannot and should not be used as precedent to allow players to escape from future punishment. Whether they organized it, or were simply complicit, is irrelevant. The players are just all guilty, if not more, than Cora, Luhnow and Hinch and they should feel fortunate to have gotten away with it.

https://www.thestar.com/sports/bluejays/opinion/2020/01/14/while-astros-front-office-takes-the-fall-for-sign-stealing-scandal-the-players-get-a-free-pass.html

[Highlander]

No way the players should have been given a free pass.

[Nik]

Also some other guy on the Yankees.

[hockeyfan1]

Wow.  Just wow.

The scope of the Astros cheating is huge, as can be seen by an Astrosā€™ fanā€™s study of the teamā€™s sign-stealing tactics via electronic means:

Iā€™m an Astros fan. To understand the scope of the Astros cheating & the players involved, I logged every trashcan bang from every Astros 2017 home game w/ video available. Over 8,200 pitches watched and over 1,100 trashcan bangs found. The results are at https://t.co/kVtisgUo74.

— Tony Adams šŸ§© šŸ˜· (@adams_at) January 29, 2020

A number of Houston players are particularly culpable, thus making the depth of this whole scandal ever more ā€œinfuriatingā€:

The findings quickly made the rounds, re-infuriating those who were wronged. Learning of how the Astros cheated was bad enough. Seeing everything laid out pitch-by-pitch and outcome-by-outcome made it all the more maddening.

Yulieski Gurriel, the older brother of Blue Jays left-fielder Lourdes, turned changeups he knew were coming from Valdez into a homer in the first and a single in the third. Tyler White homered off a J.P. Howell cutter he was expecting in the eighth and singled on a Bolsinger curveball in the fourth. Josh Reddick singled on a Matt Dermody hook while Jake Marisnick did the same on another Bolsinger curve that same inning.

Pretty damning stuff.

The sign-stealing noise signals:

Shit makes sense now. I remember wondering how these guys were laying off some of my nasty pitches. Relaying all my signs in live speed to the batter. Ruining the integrity of the game. These dudes were all about the camera and social media. Now, theyā€™re all quiet! Lol šŸ˜‚ https://t.co/DuknUCQaRb

— Marcus Stroman (@STR0) January 20, 2020

https://www.sportsnet.ca/baseball/mlb/pitch-catalogue-astros-sign-stealing-angers-17-blue-jays/