I’ve been thinking about this, remember(because apparently I can’t) when Cole and I think JV were in the dugout and one of our guys hit a hr and Cole acted disappointed? I’m wondering if he knew he got the sign.
NY is full of a bunch of cry baby dbags. I have never seen a fan base so delusional. Their own team has cheated on many occasions and yet they act like they are saints.. I can't wait to beat their ass again this year.
Are we supposed to be surprised by that?? This entire thing has been a shitshow from the beginning, and it's been fueled by sanctimonious media keyboard warriors with Twitter fingers. Even if the Astros had done everything the media wanted, you'd still have people calling for more. This is why Crane's presser today was so irritating and deflating. We should be putting out a message of unity and resolve, and instead you have the owner basically removing himself from any wrongdoing and saying, "Wasn't me" *shrug*. How ****ing difficult would it have been to come out and say something along the lines of, "We're sorry for what happened, and we understand the perception of this organization right now. The punishments that were levied were fair and just, and we will do everything in our power to get back into the good graces of the fans and the league itself. Our focus is on 2020, and winning the World Series the right way....like we know we're capable of doing." ??? Crane's tone-deafness is infuriating to listen to.
If they gave the title back you know how many articles would pop up saying it’s not enough? Where’s the blood!?!? Yankees haven’t been to the World Series in 10 years but Jose Altuve is allowed to just walk around being alive. That’s a stain on baseball and an injustice to New York City.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/n...duce-houston-astros-podcast-tv-series-1279283 The Houston Astros cheating scandal is getting the podcast and television treatment. Podcast company Cadence13 is kicking off a new sports documentary podcast franchise with a season that will explore the Astros' World Series-winning 2017 season. Major League Baseball fined the Astros in January after a report uncovered that players used technology to communicate signs stolen from opposing teams. To tell the Astros' story, Cadence13 has teamed with Sports Illustrated writer Ben Reiter, who will write and host the show, and Slow Burn co-creators Leon Neyfakh and Andrew Parsons, who will produce via Neyfakh's Prologue Projects shingle. Cadence13 content chief Chris Corcoran and Underground Entertainment partner Steven Fisher will executive produce. A TV series based on the podcast also is in development with Left/Right Productions, the producer of Epix's Slow Burn adaptation as well as Showtime's The Circus and FX's The Weekly. Reiter, Prologue Projects and Underground also are attached to the TV adaptation. "The Astros of the 2010s were the most innovative organization in the history of sports," Reiter said in a statement. "As it turned out, the ‘new way to win it all’ involved factors that no one could have imagined — myself included. Cadence13, Prologue Projects, and Left/Right are the ideal partners with whom to reveal the full story of the Astros’ exhilarating rise and shocking fall." Added Neyfakh, "We have long wanted to apply our narrative approach to a story that's outside the world of politics. The Astros saga is the perfect place for us to start — in addition to being populated by amazing characters, it forces you to ask yourself hard questions about the meaning of fairness, cheating and secrecy." The podcast, which is set to debut in summer 2020, will seek to reshape the public's understanding of the story. Reiter, who wrote abut the Astros for a SI cover story and in his book Astroball: The New Way to Win It All, will look at the strategies and culture — sign stealing and all — that lifted the Astros from baseball's worst team to World Series champions in just a few years. The currently untitled project will join a roster of Cadence13 shows that include docuseries Root of Evil, Gangster Capitalism and Long May They Run. "This is a story that everyone is talking about and partnering with Ben and Leon to deep dive on this scandal should give listeners the best insight and context possible," Corcoran said in a statement. "We are thrilled to expand Cadence13's powerful lineup of original documentary storytelling with this new franchise."
Reopen the case? For what? Everybody has all ready admitted to the cheating. Don't really follow much MLB writing but are baseball writers more sanctimonious than other sports writers? What did this guy want 25 lashes in the public square? I mean really WTF?
Since when did Vince McMahon write the MLB script? Drama truly does sell. When I was a kid I thought only women liked drama and soap opera type stuff. Probably because my mom and sisters liked it and my dad always made fun of it. Boy was I totally wrong. Doubly so in the internet and twitter era.
This is simply revisionist bullshit. Chapman threw 4 straight fastballs that were not within a foot of the strikezone (the last 2 to walk Springer, and the first 2 balls to Altuve), Altuve took an inside slider for strike 1, and everyone knew he was going to throw him a slider on 2-1. And he just so happened to hang the **** out of it.
Yes. They think they're God's gift to the game & it's their job to police the sport! (Yeah, I'm looking at you Buster Olney, Ken Rosenthal, Jeff Passan, Jayson Stark, Tim Kurkjian, Peter Gammons,...) Of course these are the same writers that vote on awards & vote players into the Hall of Fame so maybe they really do think they're that important. If they didn't want Luhnow gone, they're certainly happy he is. They want Jim's head next. But they really want that title vacated. And Astros players suspended/banned. No apology was going to suffice.
Spoiler The Astros screwed up their news conference on live television Thursday as only they can. First, third baseman Alex Bregman and second baseman José Altuve delivered brief statements that sounded entirely scripted and less than sincere. Next, owner Jim Crane took no responsibility, deflecting it to general manager Jeff Luhnow and manager A.J. Hinch — and worse, he minimized the impact of the team’s cheating. “Our opinion is this didn’t impact the game,” Crane said when asked about the effect of the team’s illegal sign stealing in 2017. “We had a good team. We won the World Series, and we’ll leave it at that.” Moments later, in response to another question, Crane walked back that remark. “I didn’t say it didn’t impact the game,” he said. Some people are never going to be satisfied with the Astros’ apologies, short of seeing the players crawl on their hands and knees to New York to concede the 2017 American League title to the Yankees, then rolling on their bellies to Los Angeles to award the World Series trophy to the Dodgers. Still, on a day the Astros intended to express remorse and then move forward with the 2020 season, they again struggled to get out of their own way. By now, we’re accustomed to this franchise’s ham-handed attempts at public relations. The real question now is what comes next, and where the Astros go from here. If you’re waiting for Crane and his players to disavow their ’17 title, forget it. Just as Major League Baseball does not rewrite history to erase the accomplishments of players who used performance-enhancing drugs, it will not strip the Astros of their championship. In both cases, revising the past would create a slippery slope. Meanwhile, the Astros continue to suspect other teams also were up to no good — though they were not about to go down that path Thursday, even as the Red Sox remain under investigation. The Astros players, shortstop Carlos Correa in particular, said many of the right things once the clubhouse opened Thursday, showing contrition and owning their mistakes if not completely understanding the damage they had done to the game’s integrity. Correa, unlike Crane, did not equivocate when asked if the Astros benefited from stealing signs illegally. “It’s definitely an advantage,” he said. “I’m not going to lie. Knowing what’s coming, you get a slight edge.” Still, forgiveness is not coming anytime soon. One opponent after another continues to blast the Astros with some of the angriest, most direct quotes from baseball players I’ve heard in more than three decades covering the game. The Astros brought this upon themselves, taking a full month to collectively respond to the penalties commissioner Rob Manfred announced on Jan. 13. Only after a meeting of the 2017 team members Wednesday night — and presumably, a good amount of coaching and rehearsing — did they finally go public. Correa made a valid point, saying the Astros needed to act as a team, as opposed to a player who gets suspended for PEDs, an individual offense. The Astros, however, invited additional wrath by taking so much time to get their stories straight. When players want, they communicate to fans through social media, even write for The Players Tribune. How difficult would it have been for any of them to say that they had tarnished their legacy, damaged the sport and plain screwed up? It didn’t happen until Thursday, and even then some of the players failed to grasp the impact of what they had done. So now, with Apology Day behind them, get ready for the next phase of Crisis Management 101: We’ve said what we had to say. Time to move on. Sorry, not happening, at least not yet. Not when the Astros have failed to sufficiently address a hitting coach and two front-office employees who contributed to their rule-breaking, according to the Wall Street Journal. Not when only some of their players seem to understand how their actions affected the careers of others and the sport as a whole. Not when Crane has yet to show accountability for a culture he enabled Luhnow to create, a culture Manfred blasted in his report on the Astros’ conduct. Crane on Thursday continued to publicly disagree with that portion of Manfred’s report. The players, as The Athletic’s Jayson Stark so aptly put it, will remain enshrined in the Cheaters Hall of Fame. Keep in mind, though, that we are at the center of the storm, with accusations both proven and unproven still being leveled. Baseball, for the third straight offseason, is expected to take additional measures to clamp down on illegal sign stealing. The games will begin, and if the Astros play to their talent level under new manager Dusty Baker, the noise eventually will subside. “I don’t want my kids, my brother, my family members, people who follow me to think that was right. To cheat to be successful is not right,” Correa said. “What we can do now as players is focus on what we can control from now on, and make sure we show everybody we’re good players, the kind of players who work hard every single day. That what we did in ’17 was terrible. We all know it. We feel really bad about it. But moving forward, we want to show everyone that we’re talented and that we can the game.” Bregman made a similar point in his statement, saying that he hopes to regain the trust of baseball fans. The Astros will succeed with some, fail with others. We live in a forgiving society with limited attention spans. Alex Rodriguez lied about his use of PEDs; sued MLB, the players’ union and a Yankees team physician; and served a 162-game suspension. Six years later, he is part of national broadcast teams at Fox Sports and ESPN, an omnipresent figure in the sports and entertainment worlds. A-Rod was and is a different entity, a bigger star than any of the Astros, a celebrity who is engaged to Jennifer Lopez. But it seems like only yesterday he was regarded as the biggest villain in sports, someone absolutely unworthy of sympathy. Much like the Astros today. Losing is not an option for the Astros; any step backward will only renew questions about the legitimacy of their past accomplishments. A fourth straight 100-win season is recommended. Another World Series title would be even better for them. They’re going to hear it on the road, hear it from opponents and — as Altuve lamented when asked again about the use of buzzers in 2019 — hear unproven accusations from fake Twitter accounts. They chose their course. They do not get to choose when everyone moves on.
Seriously... you don't think the sh*tstorm that Houston Astro players are going to go through this season is going to have any effect on wins and losses? Every newspaper article. Every television broadcast. Nightly comments on ESPN, and occasionally the major network news? I think it sounds cool to say "the players will band together"... but you have to wonder what MLB player will want to come here under all that. And the players on the team currently will be under all sorts of pressure. And their families. This team needs good PR. Hiring Baker and to a lesser degree Click might have been a good start. But its going to be an ugly year for this team.
