Except Manfred never said that - he said they didn't have any evidence of other teams at the time but would let the investigation play out and see where it goes. Only whiny Astros fans that thought it was a conspiracy against them made the other claim. This helps demonstrate the ridiculousness of that.
his quote was, "i have no reason to believe it extends beyond the Astros at this time." At least that's what Jeff Passan said that he said. https://bleacherreport.com/articles...eally-really-thorough-investigation-of-astros
btw, not arguing with you, I just went back to read because I couldn't remember what he actually said.
There was more context to that. Here is the full quote from that snippet: "Right now, we are focused on the information that we have with respect to the Astros. I'm not going to speculate on whether other people are going to be involved. We'll deal with that if it happens, but I'm not going to speculate about that. I have no reason to believe it extends beyond the Astros at this point in time." Notice the "right now" and the "not going to speculate". This was early in the investigation when the only hard evidence was of the Astros (rumors of Milwaukee and others), so he wasn't dragging other teams into it without evidence. He also in separate statements said the investigation would be thorough and not limited to the Astros if the evidence warranted it.
Just like pretty much everything else baseball related, the Astros were probably ahead of the pack in using technology to steal signs. Nothing shocking.
He certainly said things very similar to it. Always along the line of “I feel that this sign stealing scandal will only involve the Astros.”
It is so difficult to gain a competitive advantage in baseball, players and teams will go to great lengths. MLB has a lot of blame in this. Especially after the steroids era, they know teams will go to great length to cheat / gain an advantage. But MLB turned a blind eye. From reading about the situation, it seems Carlos Beltran let the Astros know that the Yankees were stealing signs using sophisticated methods. And he taught the Astros the trick of the trade. It seems it was a closely guarded secret, that a certain level of sophistication was necessary to figure out. Something some organization had figured out while others couldn’t break the code for it to be effective. Well I am curious how this investigation ends up. We all know the Astros weren’t the only ones doing this. Fans want baseball to throw the book at the Astros. But Astros used a league approved video feed, and merely found creative ways to relay the information that did not involve electronic technologies, just gimmicky efforts, which were loud bangs and noises, obviously the Astros were not shy....
Jomboy is such a hypocritical piece of $hit. LMFAO at this dragnet scooping up the Sox and Yankees. Probably not what Manfred intended with this investigation. Idiot. What did he think he was going to find? No doubt MLB will find some way to weasel out of punishing the Sox or Yankees like they will the Astros. Even as the poster made the point upthread that the Sox need to be hammered as much or more than the Astros, considering the timing of the Sox's cheating and MLB's edict against it. Alex Cora though better hope his investments have done well, at least for next year.
For banging on a trashcan for parts of 3 months? Are they going to revisit the penalty they gave Boston for using Apple watches or are they prepared to dish out similar harsher punishment to Boston for continuing to cheat in 2018?
That points to a $10M fine, loss of 2 2021 draft picks, and an annual suspension for Luhnow and Hinch. Honestly the Hinch suspension would be the biggest blow, even though the league would tout the fine as the centerpiece since it would be the largest ever levied. But $10M isn’t all that meaningful to Crane, especially with $500M swinging in the wind in open lawsuits and having had his investment appreciate by at least $400M over the last 8 years. It’ll be interesting to see who they tab as interim GM. If they really do expect a lengthy GM suspension I’m surprised they haven’t been more active on the trade front this offseason.
Luhnow and Hinch will both get lengthy suspensions, Crane will take a big fine, the team will lose a number of draft picks, and life will go on. Let’s just get the damn thing over with...