Well Astros fans, prepared to be mad or disappointed. Espn reported tonight that Boston is confident that any punivhment will be light. Benintiendi said that the team knows they did nothing wrong and they can investigate all they want, and Jackie Bradley junior cautioned reporters to not assume stuff. This reporting and public statements tell me that if anything, Cora is going to get hammered but the team won’t be touched. The original report by the athletic said three unnammed sources who were former Boston Red Sox said some players went back to the video room during games to get information on sign sequences. My guess is that MLB will say there werea Few isolated incidents of this involving a few players, but not them wide and the league found no evidence of knowledge or wrongdoing by the rest and it was a Cora driven situation.
“They won like that ... that’s bull---- for a lot of players,” Choo said. “I always respected every one of them, but I’ll be honest with you, I don’t feel like that anymore. It’s hard to take.” Choo said that the Rangers openly discussed their suspicions as they watched Astros hitters take pitches or put the right swing on pitches. “Now we’re 100 percent sure they were using technology,” he said. “In between pitching changes, we always talked about in 2017 the Astros hitters, ‘They know what’s coming.’ They did their A swing with two strikes.” Choo also believes the drastic swing in Astros strikeout totals in 2017 from 2015 and 2016 is a giveaway. No team struck out more than Houston, but suddenly no team was striking out less. “I know they added a couple players, but that’s not possible,” Choo said. Robinson Chirinos, who played for the Astros last season, said he saw nothing amiss last season. He also denied claims that he was wearing a device last year in the World Series, which the Astros lost in seven games. Chirinos watched the Thursday news conference in Florida. “Everyone knows what happened in ‘17 and how they cheated the game, and I feel shame for them,” he said. “I believe they can learn from their mistake. Not only Houston but everyone around the game, and we can take sign-stealing away from the game. “In my mind I feel good because I didn’t do anything wrong.” The Rangers, though, suspected the Astros were doing something illegal last season. The Rangers went 0-9 last season at Minute Maid Park, and Lance Lynn, who finished fifth in the American League Cy Young voting, allowed eight of his 21 home runs in three starts at Minute Maid. Lynn, though, took a more politically correct approach to the scandal. “You have bad sequences where they can pick it up easily. That’s on the pitcher,” he said. “But when you are able to do stuff in real time before the pitch is even thrown, where they can even get you with no one on, that’s a little too much. “It happened, you’ve got to move on, but it gives us pitcher an idea that we have to know to be careful no matter what. You can’t just sit there and say it’s just one team. It’s one team that got caught. They did it a little different, they made some noises and got caught.” Rangers legend Michael Young took exception to Astros owner Jim Crane’s suggestion that the cheating didn’t aid the Astros’ ability to win the World Series. “Right ... they did it because trash can acoustics are good for the soul,” tweeted Young, a special assistant to general manager Jon Daniels. “Yes, they had a good team. But of course it impacted the game. If it didn’t impact the game, why continue it? Don’t play the public for fools. Just apologize, be accountable, and move forward.”
Hey, remember when Houston was underwater and people were, literally, dying? And it was so bad that a series against an in-state division opponent had to be rescheduled? And, since they still had a series to play at that opponent's ballpark, the simple solution; the one that would have made the walking pile of human garbage that runs that dumpster fire of an organization actually look like a decent compassionate human being, was to simply switch series dates, remember? So, what did that POS suggest? Playing both series in their third rate cow pasture of a ballpark, thus gaining a competitive advantage. F*** the Rangers. F*** Jon POS Daniels. And f*** Shin Soo Choo.
At some point, when the media cares more about this story than the general public does (which is probably already here)... you will see some of the media types getting backlash. Then they'll fight back. Then they'll try to escalate and get back on the offensive. Then they'll play the victim card. All the while, the Astros should be in position to wipe the floor with the AL West, and the league in general... especially in home games where pitchers truly will believe there's magic spies around every corner. The Astros just got their own version of leprechauns in Boston Garden.... and in the end, it was mostly media created. Also, I fully expect the media to take "credit" for creating this entity of paranoia and distraction to the point that if/when it helps the Astros, they'll be sure to let others know about it.
Jim Crane has perfected the image of doing anything to appease MLB... but also still doing whatever the F he wants as long as he wins.
The media demands an apology... then the media says its a charade. Meanwhile, the general public really thought this story was over/done with... but the media says its done when they say they're done.
So they believe we were still cheating last year, but they sign Chirinos they don’t believe him when he says nothing was going on last year, so they don’t trust him, but they give him big money to join them Horeshit Rangers, you suck you have always sucked you always will suck
The media are like cockroaches. They heard we had a trash can and they came running, scrambling for something to feed off of. They will find any morsels they can and stretch them out over the whole offseason and into spring training and through the regular season, I’m sure. F them. I hate roaches. Clean winning is the best pesticide for us stros fans.
This is for damn sure. They've likely gotten more clicks/views this offseason than they ever have, because compared to the NFL or NBA, MLB is usually so quiet Nov-Feb. Milking it for sure...
Nationals catcher Kurt Suzuki was the latest to chime in on the scandal, telling The Washington Post's Tom Boswell that Houston used its illicit system in the 2019 World Series. “We could hear it from their dugout. We heard their whistling. What are you going to do?" Suzuki told Boswell. “I kept thinking, ‘We have to go to the field and work early on our signs in the World Series just to stop their cheating.’ It’s so stupid and so wrong."
Yet there's video during Kemp AB's featuring bangs, no? As far as last year goes, we know it wasn't any sort of version of a system that has already been described in the report. And even if a team is trying to do something, how hard is it to use that info against another team... as the Nationals apparently are proclaiming they did. The only thing you don't do in that situation is explain how you did it. "When you spot a man's tell... you don't let him know you have it."
MLB had multiple personnel in dugouts, replay rooms, etc. If the Astros somehow MacGyver'ed a new system that MLB personnel didn't see then...
