Not sure if you quoted the right person or not. I’m totally on your side lol. I know baseball, “cheating” is ingrained (even though it’s still not technically cheating)
Cheating is cheating, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. Couple things, if it was such an open secret then it’s on the teams to change signs and use it against the Astros. Using tech to steal signs was rampant so therefore all is fair imo. And just because Stros were better at cheating doesn’t mean they also weren’t a better team.
So you’re just going to ignore the accusations about those teams, including the Dodgers of them using tech to steal signs? Whether they used it in real time, only men in scoring positions or just to scout. It’s still using “tech”, which after Manfreds memo was “illegal”
Basically a lower level staffer supplied opioids to Skaggs regularly. They are being investigated by the DEA
One thing I heard discussed on sports radio was what happens to Astros players down the road. Particularly Springer. If there is such hate and lack of respect to Stros what teams will want them in their clubhouse? Also what free agents might want to come to Houston if they fear their legacy might be tainted? From a Minnesota standpoint it might be telling to see how Marwin Gonzales is treated on opening day at Target Field.
You can choose to believe that they were the best team in 2017 but they didn’t prove it. Their title is tainted. I don’t know how much more the Astros cheated than the rest of the league / the dodgers. I don’t know how much cheating helped them win in the playoffs. All I know is that they cheated for an advantage. I’m not gonna consider the Astros the best team in the majors in 2017
I do my best to avoid Twitter. By coming here though and inexplicably by reading online news articles I'm going to have to admit that overall I fail in that regard. From ESPN:
Spoiler Even if Rob Manfred had never offered Astros players immunity, Major League Baseball had little chance of successfully disciplining them. Despite widespread calls for league action, the commissioner cannot wake up one day and decide which behavior to punish and how. Not without a major fight that he would likely lose anyway. The players’ union guards against such action. Any potential punishments to Astros players would have prompted grievances and wound up before an arbitrator. And in the words of an official with knowledge of these matters, MLB would have been “smoked.” Another person experienced in this area said that MLB’s case would have been “brutal” and the league would “look a fool.” The reason? In labor relations, the concept of giving notice is hugely important. Management must clearly lay out how the workplace is to be run. That means providing both notice of the rules and notice of what type of punishment will follow if those rules are broken. MLB had not worked out the right to punish anyone with the Major League Baseball Players Association, though that may change for the 2020 season. A relevant detail in the Astros’ investigation also would have made a grievance difficult: Since-fired general manager Jeff Luhnow did not pass on the league’s sign-stealing rules to the dugout, failing in the act of giving notice. “The memorandum went to the general manager and then nothing was done from the GM down,” Manfred told ESPN in an interview that aired Sunday. “So we knew if we had disciplined the players, in all likelihood we were going to have grievances, and grievances that we were going to lose on the basis that we never properly informed them of the rules. “Given the fact that we didn’t think we could make discipline stick with the players, we made the decision we made. Having said that, I understand the reaction.” Ultimately, if MLB wanted to be able to punish players in the Astros investigation, it would have needed to lay the groundwork first. The league would have had to reach an agreement with the Players Association on both the rules and the punishments, and that’s assuming the association would have had interest in such a deal. “This isn’t even a matter of the CBA as much as it is kind of a bread-and-butter labor law: if you’re going to be punished for something, you gotta have notice of it,” a source with knowledge of the matter said. MLB took a different route. In September 2017 — and then again in 2018 and 2019 — MLB told its teams it would hold club management accountable for electronic sign stealing. MLB’s working logic was a belief that team officials, not the players, control video access for players. The 2019 rules, in fact, explicitly stated that players would not be punished. According to the memo, “Clubs and Club Personnel (other than players) will be subject to progressive discipline by the Commissioner’s Office for violation of these Regulations.” Those words would have been used against the league in any hearing. In Manfred’s investigation, he noted that Luhnow “did not forward the memoranda and did not confirm that the players and field staff were in compliance with MLB rules and the memoranda.” Put it all together, and here is what likely would have happened had MLB pursued a punishment, according to people with experience in these matters: MLB would have suspended an Astros player. The player and the MLBPA would have promptly filed a grievance. The player could have contended that players have always stolen signs and that MLB’s rules included gray areas. (The 2017 rules had no specific wording about the video replay rooms, for example.) MLB then would have argued that Manfred put all parties on notice in September 2017, when he punished the Red Sox and Yankees, signifying that electronic sign stealing was being treated differently. The player could have said: “Well, my team never told me they were going to be tough on this. And, ‘Oh, by the way, we were banging a garbage can — and my field manager never did anything about that.’” Not only did Luhnow fail to pass on the rules, but manager A.J. Hinch did not stop the system — and bench coach Alex Cora helped set it up. What a labor arbitrator could have seen would have been an action condoned: The player did not have notice of misconduct, and on top of it, his manager gave tacit approval to the behavior. The player would then win the grievance. Considering the above scenario, even attempting a punishment could have produced an embarrassing outcome for the league. Knowing this, MLB had more reason to offer players immunity, even if the driving force in that decision, according to Manfred, was a desire to get the facts. Still, many players around the league remain critical of the fact that Astros players have not been punished, especially when they believe that opposing players’ careers were harmed. But there’s at least a small irony. The MLBPA exists in part to protect players from situations in which MLB simply decides it wants to punish certain behavior in certain ways. The MLBPA is also obligated under federal labor law to fairly represent all its members — even those who may have done something wrong. Consider the many different choices that come with punishments for sign-stealing conduct specifically. Is the player suspended immediately, or is the suspension held in abeyance pending appeal? Who actually adjudicates the matter? Is the punishment worse for establishing a sign-stealing system than it is for using the system? Are players punished differently based on frequency of use? The league cannot, at its whim, make those choices. “People forget about it, but you know, there is a federal law that requires us to deal with the MLBPA on things like wages, hours, terms and conditions of employment, including discipline,” Manfred told ESPN. “They have an obligation to represent their members.” This was the core of an argument in the sport during the 1980s, when commissioner Bowie Kuhn suspended several players for a year for drug use, including Steve Howe. “In filing the grievances, the players’ union contended that there was not just cause for the penalties imposed and that the commissioner was without authority to impose conditions of probation or penalize anyone for failing to comply with such conditions,” The New York Times reported in 1984. The MLBPA won the grievance. At the heart of the electronic sign-stealing scandal are many questions of foresight. Should MLB have moved, say, in 2018, to make sure it could punish players? “It should be a management issue because management has control over the video and they should be held responsible for stopping it,” a person with knowledge of the league’s thinking at the time said. “Management can stop players from doing stuff if they try.” Arguably, if MLB knew how problematic electronic sign stealing would be, not only would it have made sure it had the ability to punish players — but it would have done more to stop the problem in the first place. MLB and the MLBPA are working toward new rules now, rules that may include the right to punish players going forward. It’s safe to expect those new rules will be prominently and more directly distributed to players, as well. “To their credit, we’re talking to the MLBPA not only about the kind of changes to the rules surrounding video, but what should we do about these sorts of issues on a go-forward basis and exactly how we should deal with players in this type of situation,” Manfred said Sunday in a press conference. “So yes, I could envision it being different in the future.” Sportsbooks expect Astros hitters to be targeted often this season Oddsmakers think Houston Astros batters could be sore this season. On Monday, sportsbook William Hill set the over/under on number of Astros batters to get plunked this season at 83.5. In the past five seasons, only nine teams have been hit by pitches more than 83.5 times, but, with the anger over the sign-stealing scandal involving Houston, there is plenty of reason to believe the Astros will be targeted frequently. Last season, teams were hit by an average of 66.1 pitches, according to ESPN Stats & Information. The Astros were hit 66 times last season. Nick Bogdanovich, director of trading for William Hill U.S. sportsbooks, said he and his staff looked at how many times Astros batters were hit by a pitch over the past three seasons and the league high from last year. "The trading team and I debated how this could play out and chose a number in the middle," Bogdanovich told ESPN. In 2008, Cleveland Indians batters were hit 103 times, the most in the modern era. William Hill has the odds of the Astros getting hit 101-110 times at 9-2. The Astros getting hit more than 150 times this season is 200-1.
Spoiler https://theathletic.com/1614411/202...rrea-and-makes-a-subtle-point-to-rob-manfred/ PHOENIX — Cody Bellinger emerged and located vacant corner space in the Dodgers’ spring clubhouse, welcoming reporters to join him there. He had just finished working out. He was ready to follow up on his comments from 72 hours earlier. He had not spoken on Sunday. For four minutes on Monday morning, he swayed, almost sashayed and responded to Carlos Correa’s response to him. He said he regretted nothing he said Friday. He said that, on Saturday, Correa had said what he said. He chose not to try to particularly poke at any of Correa’s individual points. Two minutes in, Bellinger was asked what he thought about commissioner Rob Manfred describing the World Series trophy as a “piece of metal.” “That’s fair,” Bellinger said. A reporter asked: “It is?” “That’s his opinion,” Bellinger said. He was asked if he shared that view. “I think we all have our opinion,” Bellinger said. A reporter then asked: “It’s literally the commissioner’s trophy. Does that surprise you that he would say something like that?” Bellinger said he should listen to the interview first. Next question: “What does the idea of the World Series trophy mean to you?” Bellinger stopped to think for a couple of seconds. “It means you’ve completed something that you set out to do your whole life,” he said. The conversation had been rolling at a breakneck pace. At that point, no one uttered a syllable for five seconds. Around him, Bellinger’s teammates were listening and egging him on. They used a number of expletives in an attempt to add humor to the situation and add pressure to Bellinger. “Cody Bellinger’s the real ****ing MVP, b****es,” Joc Pederson said. Bellinger may not have noticed what Pederson said. It was hard to stay focused, but he did. A reporter began by asking him: “Are you taking your shirt off or something, show a tattoo?” Bellinger laughed and said no. He said he heard Correa’s explanation for José Altuve not wanting his jersey removed by teammates after his stunning playoff home run off Aroldis Chapman due to a “bad tattoo,” but it did not change his mind. Correa had impolitely asked Bellinger to get the facts before speaking up. Asked if he wanted the facts, Bellinger considered. “First time we heard some facts,” Bellinger said. “And some aspects of what happened. So, that’d be nice to get some facts getting out there.” Told then that he seemed fired up, Bellinger said, no, he had just finished a hard workout. Everybody laughed. Then Bellinger was asked when the time would come for the 2020 Dodgers to turn their attention and focus from 2017 to 2020. “Oh,” Bellinger said. “Right now. Yeah. To be honest, the only thing on my mind is spring training. And that’s it. This is 2020 right now. So, I’m ready to go. “I’m really excited about this year. I’m really excited about this team. We made some great improvements this year. I think everybody’s excited to get it going.” Nearly two hours later, Dave Roberts emerged again to talk to reporters, as he does nearly every day for nearly nine months. He was asked about what Bellinger said Monday, what Justin Turner said Monday and what Rob Manfred said Sunday. It sounded like he was striving to square everything and remember what his job demanded of him. He praised everyone sharing their “thought-out” opinions. He declined to say whether he thought Manfred’s opinions on the World Series trophy qualified as “thought-out.” And he stuck with his overall stance: There is a time for an airing of the grievances, and there is a time for pushing them aside and focusing on doing your job. He decided not to debate whether this was that time. On Tuesday, he was pretty sure, he was going to get a chance to meet face to face with Manfred and other managers. The man would be in town. Maybe Roberts would give Manfred his own “thought-out” opinion there. Maybe he wouldn’t. He didn’t say, and it was hard to say. Roberts concluded that there was value in speaking up. “I think,” he said, “there’s a premeditated opportunity to have your voice and share your thoughts.” And then he added: “But once we get that out, we gotta play baseball.” After Bellinger’s four minutes were up, he walked away. He had done his job. He had listened to the reporters and answered their questions. He was thanked for his effort. “Yeah,” Bellinger said. “That was good.”
"Just a hunk of metal"??? Manfred: you're worse than Selig. I can't believe I've arrived at this opinion. Unbelievable. Dude opened the can of worms on only two franchises, and he'd rather diminish the value of his league's only championship than face the music of what's going on league-wide. This is now just as bad as Selig's early 2000s "handling" of the steroid scandal. What a dumpster fire.
Spoiler But as The Athletic previously reported, the Astros, Red Sox and Yankees all used their replay rooms to help decode sign sequences in some way by 2017, when baseball’s rules on illegal sign-stealing were still broadly defined and barely enforced. The Red Sox continued the practice after baseball enacted stricter rules in ’18, three people with that team told The Athletic, and remain under investigation by MLB. ... The union first contacted MLB with its concerns about the increased use of technology by clubs in the middle of the ’15 season, a source said. Left-hander Matt Moore, then with the Rays, alerted the union to cameras he had not previously seen on the field while preparing to throw a bullpen session during his rehabilitation from an elbow injury. ... One pitcher, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said he and other pitchers raised such fears at union meetings after the ’16 season. When the same broad rules remained in effect for ’17, the pitcher said the lack of action by MLB and the MLBPA was, “frankly astonishing to me.” Rosenthal: Rob Manfred regrets not acting sooner on sign stealing – ‘I hate where we are’ If commissioner Rob Manfred has one regret about baseball’s sign-stealing scandal, it’s that the sport did not recognize quickly enough how teams would take advantage of expanding video technology to decode signs during games. “I think we were slow to appreciate the risk on this topic,” Manfred acknowledged on Sunday. Hindsight is 20-20. Unintended consequences, almost by definition, are difficult to forecast. But if baseball had better anticipated the problem, it could have introduced stricter rules earlier to discourage teams from illegally stealing signs. And Manfred would not be saying, with regard to this particular subject, “I hate where we are.” A swifter reaction from MLB might have deterred the Astros from cheating in 2017 and ’18, and spared Manfred from his controversial decision last month not to include players in the discipline he administered to the Houston club — a decision, it turns out, that was largely preordained even before he promised the players immunity in exchange for honest testimony. In fairness, Manfred was not alone in failing to see the future clearly. As far back as 2015, the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA) expressed concerns to MLB about the rise of technology in the sport. The union, however, did not directly focus on the threat to the game’s integrity. Looking back, it’s easy to say, “baseball should have seen this coming.” Teams and players are forever in search of an edge. Sign stealing — the legal kind, done without electronics — is a rich part of the game’s history. Advances in video technology, notably through the introduction of replay rooms after the sport adopted a replay challenge system in 2014, created a temptation too great for some clubs to ignore. But Manfred, while acknowledging baseball’s initial failure to fend off its latest crisis, said the sport took a series of decisive steps, starting with his initial crackdown in September 2017, when he punished the Red Sox and Yankees for conduct related to electronic sign stealing. “If you think about it when we really became aware that something was going on, it was in 2017,” Manfred said. “By 2018, we were on the corrective action. When I say we were slow, we were slow by a few months. Look, I don’t think that that’s the worst reaction time of all time. Do I wish we would have got there a little sooner? Yeah, I do.” The replay rooms were the natural byproduct of the challenge system, which grants managers the power to initiate replay reviews. Baseball required the same feeds would be transmitted to the replay rooms for both home and road clubs to eliminate a possible advantage for the home team. Slowly, teams began moving their replay rooms closer to the dugouts, making them easily accessible for players. Soon, the trouble began. The Astros’ trash-can banging system was based upon a feed from a camera in center field that was fixed on the opposing catcher’s signs and hooked up to a television monitor on a wall steps from the team’s home dugout. But as The Athletic previously reported, the Astros, Red Sox and Yankees all used their replay rooms to help decode sign sequences in some way by 2017, when baseball’s rules on illegal sign-stealing were still broadly defined and barely enforced. The Red Sox continued the practice after baseball enacted stricter rules in ’18, three people with that team told The Athletic, and remain under investigation by MLB. In the meantime, the sport continues to play catch-up. Baseball expanded upon its rules changes in ’18 by introducing in-person monitors in the replay room that postseason, then continued using monitors and implemented even tighter restrictions for ’19. Additional adjustments are coming: MLB and the MLBPA currently are negotiating an agreement that would implement what Manfred called “really serious restrictions” on player access to video during games. “Look, it’s like looking backwards on the steroid thing,” Manfred said. “You’ve heard me say this before. The problem with chasing — when somebody else is doing something wrong, at the beginning you’re going to be a step behind. That’s the way of the world. There’s no avoiding that. “Do I wish we would have thought through, ‘Gee, yeah, something bad could happen here?’ Of course I do. I hate where we are right now. I think that when we had a reasonable basis to come to the realization we had a problem, I think we were pretty damn quick to get on it.” In baseball, though, things are rarely simple, and conflicting agendas sometimes distract from the most urgent matters. Thus, even as the MLBPA came to understand that electronic sign stealing was becoming more prevalent, it did not fully grasp the breadth of the problem. According to several on the players’ side — including Cardinals reliever Andrew Miller, one of the top two player officers in the union — the MLBPA’s primary concern initially was not the effect of illegal sign-stealing on competition, but the impact on a contentious issue in labor negotiations: pace of play. As baseball pushed for games to be quicker and shorter, the players cited how often play slowed down because of mound visits and other stoppages — delays resulting from the need for pitchers and catchers to protect and frequently change their signs. Baseball adopted a rule capping mound visits in 2018, but the paranoia continued. A number of clubs now distribute cards for pitchers to wear inside their caps and catchers on their wristbands, helping those players keep their signs straight and change them quickly, if necessary. The union first contacted MLB with its concerns about the increased use of technology by clubs in the middle of the ’15 season, a source said. Left-hander Matt Moore, then with the Rays, alerted the union to cameras he had not previously seen on the field while preparing to throw a bullpen session during his rehabilitation from an elbow injury. The MLBPA, in turn, reached out to MLB, which responded to such questions then and in 2016 by saying it first needed to conduct due diligence, the source said. Union chief Tony Clark has sounded occasional public warnings about the impact of data and technology on the game. But not until Athletics right-hander Mike Fiers spoke out to The Athletic did anyone on the players’ side publicly suggest that illegal sign stealing was creating an uneven playing field. One pitcher, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said he and other pitchers raised such fears at union meetings after the ’16 season. When the same broad rules remained in effect for ’17, the pitcher said the lack of action by MLB and the MLBPA was, “frankly astonishing to me.” So, why didn’t MLB jump sooner? Why didn’t the MLBPA? As Miller noted, “the attempt to crack the code of the other pitcher is nothing new in baseball.” Miller even cited Bobby Thomson’s “Shot Heard Round the World” in 1951, which — according to a report from Joshua Prager in the Wall Street Journal in 2001 — might have resulted from an elaborate sign-stealing system that included, ahem, an electronic buzzer. Back then, though, such activity was uncommon. The convergence of technology, video and analytics created an environment far more conducive to electronic sign stealing. Yet the current problem — while a seismic jolt to the industry — dates only to the introduction of replay rooms in ’14. “It’s relatively new in the history of baseball,” Miller said. “I think it’s naive of everybody to think, ‘Oh, we missed this huge, gaping thing.’ It’s just a process. This is what it took for us to adapt to it.” Said Clark: “The players and the PA are focused on how we collectively move forward, across all areas of our industry, to ensure a level playing field at all times. We’re working with players and the league to establish those standards.” Maybe it should have happened sooner. But baseball is moving toward a better place.
So the Red Sox cheated in 2018 and the MLBPA voiced concerns to the commish this could happen as early as 2016. This is definitely more boarder than just the Astros...
Will be very interesting when the Red Sox cheating discipline comes out Unless they are completely absolved of it, which would be crap....I sure do hope these worthless reporters go ask bellinger about his new teammates
Spoiler "They got off pretty easy. They're gonna be able to go out there & compete with no ramifications at all, which is wrong. The commissioner completely handled it the wrong way but that's the way he did it and the way we gotta live with it but I know a lot of people disagree with him. The way he handled this situation, he should be embarrassed with himself.
There’s going to be a lot of hypocrisy and double standarding... or most likely, that will be when all teams and players (and media) say that “it’s time to move on from this... we’ve discussed it enough... need to focus on the actual season and upcoming games.” In many ways, I think the media is already preparing for that, thus they’re trying to get their last licks and page views in now when they can.
