I mean for me, if there HAS to be a fall guy, I'd hope it is hinch. I think Lunhow is far more important to the team than Hinch is, and while I'd love for no one to lose their jobs over this or get banned, I do wonder how severe the punishment is. I think draft picks are definitely going to get taken, even if that isn't the precedence for this particular offense, the outrage demands at least that. I think as long as the Astros show that they did this for a regular season home games then the punishment will just be a large fine and a draft pick or two... but if it is proven that it was done in the playoffs and on the road and into 2018-19, if there is evidence of that then I am sure Hinch, Lunhow, whoever else, could get banned for this. Either that or Crane will save face and fire them, which he may do regardless as he has to feel embarrassed by this whole thing especially when it comes to the other owners. Honestly, at this point I'd be surprised if we have the same manager and GM going into next year, the media and other fans are calling for blood.
Doesn't matter. The Astros are done. What made Luhnow great is he was always one step ahead of baseball in everything. To the way they figured out how to parlay #1 draft pick salary slot into two top 1st round players, shifting, using spin rate to modify pitchers pitch selection, and cheating. He was a game changing GM and the best in baseball. Both good and bad. Losing Luhnow will be the end of the Astros and we'll be just another team.
https://abc13.com/sports/astros-exec-suggested-using-cameras-to-spy-in-17-sources-say/5702708/ Good god...
You could very well be right. But how are Astros that blatant and open in their methods knowing the inherent roster and management turnover that comes with the sport? Alex Cora moves on to the Red Sox in 2018. He’s obviously well into what the Astros did. Do we not try to steal Red Sox signs when we play them? Does Cora not say anything to Red Sox pitchers? I don’t know what’s going on here but I can only suspect that teams are all trying to one up each other by any means possible. They all know it. This is backed up by the Red Sox being fined for electronically sign stealing in the same season and from the unnamed sources saying this happens everywhere.... maybe not to the Astros extent but I’m not sure where you want to draw the line as a fan.
How do you feel about concepts like integrity and accountability? Welcome to what it's like being a Patriots fan. There's a way forward, but you're doing everything the exact opposite: "Whataboutism" logical fallacy to excuse shady behavior, accusation to deflect blame without evidence, "they just don't like us for some reason" conspiracy. This kind of thinking is depressing to see when it's for a team I love. With politics, it's an American's moral duty to call this tribalistic KGB neanderthal junk out. Sports fandom is never expected to be rational or objective, but maybe nows the time to expect more if we're supposed to use sports to show our children life lessons. Our Astros are shady.
Keyword: suggested. Teams and players will have someone cheat baseball in the future, there will be another PED baseball guy. I can't believe news organization try to blowup things. When you say suggested it means they wanted to experiment, but didn't fully optimized. There are a lot of 2017 ex-Astros, only Fiers spoke, where are the others?!?!?!?! It is because they didn't know, or it is used by other teams also. Sorry to say, but the story won't die because someone (or ex-players) will use this to write a book and cash on the Stros.
Once Luhnow gets banned from baseball Crane should put his name in the rafters next to Biggio, Bagwell, Ryan, etc. Best damn GM we've ever had and went above and beyond to bring this city a championship. He was a game changer and disruptor.
Where the hell did this talk of banning Luhnow and/or Hinch come from? Don’t be silly. The most important quote from the story is being overlooked by the overall theme: “Obviously, following the rules is crucial to the competition on the field; any time there’s this sort of allegation, we take it very seriously,” commissioner Rob Manfred told Yahoo Finance at the Paley International Council Summit on Thursday. “We’re in the midst of gathering the facts. We want to make sure we understand everything that went on, who was involved, how far up in the organization it went. And at that point in time, we’ll make a decision as to what, if any, discipline is appropriate.” Luhnow is not getting banned. We will likely lose picks and receive a fine.
The Atlanta GM who built their team got banned for life. The more that is coming out the worse it is looking. MLB is going to come down hard.
Jeff Passan of ESPN said the exec who sent the email was Kevin Goldstein (special assistant to GM). Used to work for baseball prospectus. Awesome... The part quoted in the article, "One thing in specific we are looking for is picking up signs coming out of the dugout. What we are looking for is how much we can see, how we would log things, if we need cameras/binoculars, etc. So go to game, see what you can [or can't] do and report back your findings." Could possibly be in reference to watching the other team to see if they were cheating, a la Kyle McLaughlin, but this definitely is not a good look for the 'stros. I just wish everything is out soon, the dribs and drabs makes this feel like something new (and more troubling) is going to come out every day. Either really good reporting, a really big smear campaign, or some horrible combination of the two.
I'm to the point where I dont feel comfortable defending the Astros anymore regarding this scandal. Although, I do agree, there is a smear campaign intertwined in the "reporting" for sure. "Stealing signs" is how it is worded in the title. Which that title is just taking advantage of the whirlwind from this past week. They conveniently leave out that the signs being asked to be stolen were specifically from the dugout. Big difference. But people who only read headlines would never know this. The reporting itself is unethical
I think there will always be a wide range of views on what's acceptable, but imagine the same in football. If you can read lips, you can figure out play calls. But would you be OK with a team using a directional microphone (or intercepting the feed) to hear what playcalls are being made and then relaying that to the defensive player? I think everyone would agree that's completely unacceptable if the OC-QB can't communicate without the opponent hearing it. These are all vague lines, but I think the real answer is whether other teams do it or if this crosses a line where other teams simply don't go. Maybe other teams try to cheat, but don't cross certain lines like installing cameras or TV screens, or whatnot.
Absolutely. This is also why MLB has to be extremely careful. Professional sports is a carousel. You come down too hard and make a couple people too mad...the chances those guys also worked, not just elsewhere before, but multiple places before are extremely high. You make luhnow feel singled out enough, well he has worked for one of the beloved, storied franchises.. so who knows what he knows/learned from the cards (just as an example). How far does he need to be pushed to divulge that info...MLB for sure had to have that in mind
The Houston Astros memes and Christian Yelich's full-on blast of Yu Darvish have obscured the big picture in the sign-stealing cheating scandal. The key takeaway is that teams and players routinely ignore commissioner Rob Manfred's authority, treating him like he's a white-belted high school crossing guard incapable of controlling them or someone they believe will be unwilling to come down with a disciplinary hammer. Consider the timeline of what took place in the last three months of the 2017 season. In August of that year, the New York Yankees accused the Boston Red Sox of violating baseball's rule against using technology in their dugout in order to decode pitch-calling sequences for the hitters, with baserunners used as the conduit for the information. In mid-September, Manfred closed the case by fining both teams -- the Yankees were determined to have used a dugout phone improperly in a prior season -- and offered some stern words in a news release: "Moreover, all 30 Clubs have been notified that future violations of this type will be subject to more serious sanctions, including the possible loss of draft picks." Sounds pretty serious, right? Well, the Astros were so concerned about the specter of looming discipline that, according to Mike Fiers' reveal in The Athletic, they continued to use technology to steal signs and clue in the hitters to the identity of the forthcoming pitch. Within the context of what had already occurred, the Astros basically thumbed their noses at Manfred's dictum, with a conspiracy of breathtaking brazenness. This wasn't a case of a personal trainer slipping steroids to a player with a hotel-room injection. This was a matter of 15 to 50 members of the Houston traveling party expected to maintain a secrecy that could never possibly hold, as players and staffers moved on to other teams. Throughout 2018, there were stories of the strange noises emanating from the Houston side of the field, about chipped paint left on walls after the Astros played on the road -- from some blunt-force trauma, rival staffers speculated last year. In 2018, evaluators with other teams say they extracted private confirmations of the sign stealing from individuals who had been with the Astros, intel that informed the private complaints about Houston all the way into the 2018 playoffs. You remember what happened in the '18 postseason. The Astros stationed a club employee in the photographers' well next to the Cleveland dugout, in an apparent effort to monitor the Indians up close and personal -- and when that story broke, Houston general manager Jeff Luhnow was unapologetic, and suggested the Astros had done this out of concern that their opponents might be cheating. If you take Luhnow at his word, the Astros went vigilante in combating alleged cheating, rather than taking their concerns to Major League Baseball -- which, again, does not reflect well on the perception of Manfred's power. In that case, Manfred again issued a fine of $500,000, discipline that rival officials found to be extremely insufficient. No individual was suspended, despite the fact that somebody had to have ordered the employee to embed himself among the photographers. But it was not the first time team officials had bitterly complained about Manfred's penalties. A.J. Preller, the San Diego Padres' general manager, was found to have fostered a system in which two sets of club medical records were created for each player -- with important details laundered out of the accounting presented to interested teams. For that, Preller received a 30-game suspension in the fall of 2016, the longest given to a general manager at that point in time. However, rival officials were angry that Preller didn't receive a greater sanction, or in a different part of the calendar than in the month leading up to the offseason, when the impact of Preller's absence would be minimized. Less than six months later, Manfred ruled in the case of Cardinals scouting director Chris Correa, who was found guilty of federal charges for his hacking of the Astros' computer system. The Cardinals had used their 2017 first-round pick to sign Dexter Fowler -- and Manfred took away the team's next two picks, No. 56 and 75 overall in the draft -- and issued a $2 million fine to the organization. There were no suspensions for any employees. The rival executives' chorus was loud, on background: That's not enough if you want to alter the behavior. Some folks within the Astros' organization clearly weren't deterred; in fact, they might have been emboldened. Because in August 2017, we now know, the Astros' Kevin Goldstein -- a special assistant to Luhnow -- sent an email to the club's scouts exploring help for illicit sign stealing, Jeff Passan reported. "One thing in specific we are looking for is picking up signs coming out of the dugout," Goldstein wrote. "What we are looking for is how much we can see, how we would log things, if we need cameras/binoculars, etc. So go to game, see what you can [or can't] do and report back your findings." MLB will undoubtedly have questions about who the "we" refers to, but regardless, think about the unabashed act of sending an email like that to several employees. If there was any consideration of possible repercussions, it was ignored. Later in 2017, Manfred gave a lifetime ban to Atlanta Braves GM John Coppolella for violating rules in the international signings and domestic draft. But officials with other teams wondered why it was that the discipline did not go higher in the organization. "It's like punishing an assistant coach on a college football team for recruiting violations, when you know he can't do it by himself," said one staffer at the time, referring to the money trail with a general manager who lacked the power to write the checks. As Manfred is again weighing discipline against one of the teams that employs him, the broad perception of him among clubs is that he needs to be tougher if he truly wants to create change. You wouldn't blame Manfred if he felt like a parent forced to police ridiculous behavior. He had worked for years to negotiate a draft slotting system, and right away the Braves and some other teams seemed to immediately endeavor to find ways to cheat an arrangement that broadly benefited all clubs. You might assume that a general manager would have honor in presenting proper medical information to professional peers, but no, Preller had to be disciplined and a new records protocol had to be developed. You wouldn't think that a team would be so overt in its sign stealing that it could be tracked with video and audio. But that's how the Astros rolled. All of this leaves Manfred in a position similar to that of Kenesaw Mountain Landis after the Black Sox scandal and subsequent court cases a century ago. Landis decided to issue lifetime bans, not only to punish players for their choices and to deter other players from colluding with gamblers but also to reinforce that the games' results had integrity. Manfred's ruling in the Yankees-Red Sox case clearly had no effect, nor does it seem that the fine of the Astros for their actions in the Indians series had any effect whatsoever. If Manfred wants to change behavior -- and the industry's perception of how toothless his decisions have been -- he might not have a choice but to go big in his sanctions. • If you write a story or a tweet that references Barry Bonds or Roger Clemens or Manny Ramirez, inevitably there are "Yeah, but ..." responses related to PED use. And now, moving forward, this is the place to which the Astros are consigned in history. Over the past three regular seasons, they've won 311 games, taken one World Series and come within four innings of winning another, and played in the best American League Championship Series of all time. There are numbers that suggest their level of dominance stands among some of the greatest teams of all time. But now, it will be, "Yeah, but ..." Not only have the Astros embarrassed Major League Baseball with their actions in the Brandon Taubman case -- from the locker room incident to their initial news release to the handling of their apologies -- but they have created a layer of doubt about whether the competition was compromised by cheating. Like it or not, that is now part of the legacy of a group of really talented, skilled, competitive players. And what lingers is the same question that hovered over their acquisition of closer Roberto Osuna, after he served a nearly half-season-long suspension under baseball's domestic violence policy: Why didn't they have the confidence that they were good enough to win without the questionable decisions?
Absolutely. That’s the bigger overall story. How much more are we crossing the line? Does that even matter if it’s habitually being crossed by teams anyway? Do the Red Sox look at this and think “oh **** that was genius, should have thought of that” or is this filed under a step too far? No idea. As a fan, baseball has always toed the line of cheating vs gamesmanship. Steroids, corked bats, sand paper, pine tar, sign stealing. It’s historically everywhere. Am I trying to justify what the Astros do? Abso ****ing lutely. I’m a fan. But I think it’s just realistically part of the sport. I’m not taking away a Yankees championship because they had 9 steroid users and we only had 3. We all bent the rules.
This is so Houston. Even when Houston wins a sports title, it comes with an asterisks. "Astros only won because of signal stealing" is the new "Rockets only won because Jordan retired"
If it was only republican Astro employees, we can squeak out of this with a classic Astro PR statement.
