Pretty nasty NFL fight tonight. This should distract Twitterverse and the national media for a day or two away from this story.
That's the issue here. Playground tactics. We all cheated in the same way but we're gonna take down the biggest kid for doing it. Kind of sad the MLB is pretending like this is a 1 team investigation to figure out how high up it went when everyone has known everything about it except teams like the Orioles who don't want to win. Every GM encourages it
I wish I could get all the opinions of Astros fans about the steroid era. I remember lots of people saying that there was no way Bags and Biggio took roids even though they played with plenty of famous Mitchell report players...
That was way too obvious. People who knew cycling with Armstrong and the Tour de France thought doping was part of the game. People who knew baseball thought it was just what everyone did. You'll always have homers but what I don't like is picking a fall guy and pretending like everyone else is an upstanding citizen. Put the time into "investigating" everyone or no one.
Regardless of what comes out punishment wise I can't complain. I just wanna say Fiers is b**** ass snitch for hanging his teammates out to dry like that.
As if losing the WS the way we did and the Taubman incident... Fiers poured a metric ton of gasoline into this **** show that's surrounded the Astros this past month. ****ing snitch, lots of teams find ways to steal signs illegally. Just what we needed, the media has gone from dragging the team thru the mud to dragging it thru dog ****. At this point, even if they're found innocent, I don't think the stigma will die and we'll be the laughingstock of baseball unless we end up taking 2020.
This has been the worst month of Astros baseball in some time for me. Going from beating that high to beating the Yanks to losing every game at home during the world series. To lose leads in back to back championship clinchers to the whole league taking a **** on us. Nobody will remember the pennant we won or the 107 games. Im sorry this may hurt some of you all but we deserve this ****. Anyone who thinks Fiers is lying is a moron. MLB will come back with conclusive evidence of some kind. There is simply WAY TOO much pressure and light on this. Im expecting a fine in the ballpark of their first 2 2020 picks and 1st of 2021 with a 3 million fine. Im definitely expecting Correa to be traded for a TOR nd to fill some organizational depth.
Never thought of myself as a moron. Thank you for your insightful opinion but where is the proof? Was something going on? Maybe. But it’s more than what you or the rest of the league “think” occurred. What’s been proven to have happened, what can be proven? Frustrating... this guilty until proven innocent mentality. Tired of all the Bible thumping that goes on in this forum. From Osuna to the alleged sign stealing. How many Patriots fans are saying their titles are tainted, they sold their soul because Aaron Hernandez was part of the team, or that because of deflate gate they should forfeit that title?? Not one!
Listening to Lance and John on 97.5 that they were hearing that depending on if mlb can get proof that they were cheating electronically in 2018/19 that Hinch could be suspended for a year. I'm not really worried about manager suspensions or fines. I'm more worried about picks and anything with Luhnow.
If you're a fan of the current window, you should be highly concerned about a managerial suspension vs. anything dealing with draft picks or the GM.
I think baseball managers only have a marginal effect on the overall outcome of clubs. They would just need to find a replacement that call the game the way the analytics team wants them too. His leadership will be hard to replace but I think can be overcome.
Honestly, I’m surprised so many Astros fans are mad at Jomboy. None of this is his fault. What do you expect? This is exactly the type of content he covers and breaks down. And there’s nothing else going on! It’s objectively a huge scandal whether we like it or not. The video above is bad. I guess it helps that all of the evidence is isolated to 2017, and we can reasonably hope that baseball knows this is a problem deeper than just HOU. A stern punishment is coming. My guess is the heftiest fine to date and loss of several picks. The evidence is not good for us.
This is all 2017 though. If the Astros stopped after the commissioner told all of baseball to cut out the stealing of signs with electrical equipment then it shouldn't be that bad I would hope.
I think baseball managers are underrated, especially on contending teams. Its not just the game decisions that are impactful... its how they manage the clubhouse and how they master-plan for an entire 162 game grind. I don't think just anybody could have navigated these teams to 3 consecutive 100 win seasons. Granted, losing their last 3 #1 picks also likely means a lesser chance of landing Greinke.
I think there is a reasonable chance Bagwell and Biggio were users (at times), but given how much Biggio declined at the end of his career I think he was less likely to have been using (at that point). I'm upset about the steriod era in that sense that it was illegal and is dangerous / has negative impacts on health. I also place most of the blame on MLB for actively ignoring it and significantly contributing to the problem. I have a lot of respect for players that did not use (with no way to know who they actually are), but I also have a hard time blaming the players who did use given the environment MLB created. While I don't think Bonds or Clemens are the greatest people, I would vote for them as hall of fame candidates. While there is a similar "everybody does it" argument about sign stealing, I don't consider it a similar issue to steroid use. I don't get the idea that it's totally fine to steal signs if you do it the "right way" but a horrible, terrible, unjust thing if you do it the "wrong way." If it's using "technology" that makes sign stealing bad, then what exactly constitutes "technology" and why are players using modern gloves, helmets, shoes, bats, etc. If you assume everyone is stealing signs and do the same things you would do when a runner is on second base at all times you've basically neutralized it the same way. You can't neutralize steroids without taking them. I get why the rules are what they are (since you can't prevent the guy on second base from looking at the catcher), but making it OK conditionally isn't a good solution.
This is the thing in my opinion. What angers me is that people have the complete inability to think for themselves. People like jomboy feed into that. For example, if people werent so simple, there are so many reasonings to consider that arent, "clear cut they cheated AND they did it with electronics!" One line of thinking I have been thinking of...The Astros had over 3,200 plate appearances at home during the 2017 season. Jomboy, himself, has posted maybe 7 or 8 videos while a couple of others have posted one here or there also. I think I have counted maybe 12 total videos/plate appearances. 12/3,200? That is less than 1% of the possible plate appearances where they have found "evidence." It is entirely possible that the "banging" is coincidental. Or at least, considering the frequency of the banging and how low it is, it is highly doubtful that it is with electronics, as I would imagine electronics would yield a higher number than 12/3,200. What do yall think of that train of thought?
None of these videos would matter to people without the Mike Fiers testimony. With his statements everything looks like cheating. Without it people would just think this is all a conspiracy. In the end whether you think these videos are damning or not depends entirely on whether you believe Mike Fiers is a liar or not.
