I had not heard about the Luhnow part where he didn’t inform the players. That’s really bad stuff.
That’s a horseshit claim.
I knew about Manfred’s decree. Just because Lunhow didn’t nail a copy on the cathedral door doesn’t mean the players were oblivious.
(Lunhow did fuck up imo but just in other important ways)
That’s a good point.
Yeah, I hadn’t heard the part about Luhnow sitting on the memo. If that’s really the case, that’s a major fuck-up.
From today’s Athletic, a piece on Boros exonerating his players, as would be expected.
“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,” Manfred wrote. “Had Luhnow taken those steps in September 2017, it is clear to me that the Astros would have ceased” their illegal sign stealing.
“I knew what we were doing was against the rules, but you did not ‘strenuously object’. So…we’re innocent.”
That’s bullshit. The players knew from the start that what they were doing was against the rules. Every. Single One. They knew after the Red Sox/Yankees Apple watch incident that the league was cracking down. Every. Single. One.
I understand that his goes on everywhere. The Astros did nothing that teams haven’t been doing for 100 years. It’s a witch hunt driven by butt hurt Yankee fans, and the whole baseball world has lost its collective fucking mind over this. But the more and more I hear from the players, the more I realize they are just liars and cowards.
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Are they going to say Hinch didn’t know about the memo? That doesn’t square with report.
The memo ‘issue’ was simply MLBs attempt to add more sins to Lunhow’s ledger.
Boras trying to use it to establish plausible deniability for the players is laughable.
Hinch displayed his disapproval of the scheme by breaking the offending replay monitor on two separate occasions. If that kind of dramatic action from your otherwise level-headed skipper doesn’t cause the players to change their ways, a memo forwarded from corporate wasn’t gonna do it either.
Hinch seems to be a loyal corporate employee to the extent I understand anything here. Luhnow is the accepted villain in this saga. Was Hinch expected to take total charge of this? Fire Cora for insubordination?
Hinch is a player’s manager. He trusted them to get the hint and police themselves. They didn’t. They showed how little respect they had for him. Same with Cora. I’m with HH. I’m very disappointed in the players to the extent I’ve begun to wonder how quickly the Astros will be able to move them out.
If Crane puts his hurt feelings above the welfare of the team, then he orders the dissolution of the core of the organization. Opposing ballparks will sound like Mississippi St cowbells on a Saturday, with the tacit approval of opposing team managements.
I tend to think that Hinch didn’t really care about the morality of the scheme because as we all know pushing boundaries to steal signs is baked into the fundamental fabric of baseball. Hinch might have thought the whole thing was more distracting than beneficial, which is why he disabled it twice.
It’s going to be hard for me to watch a game and look at Altuve, Springer, and Correa and not think coward and liar. They were the big three stars at that time and could have told Cora and Beltran it has to stop.
His ideology or rationale doesn’t really matter. Hinch knew about the memo. Everyone did. It was national news.
This is how I feel as well, and it is unfortunate. Perhaps I’m naive, but I could see Altuve as innocent in this. Bregman, nah, I’ll bet he was all up in it. But even if all of the guilty parties were to fess up, you would still have doubts. That is why they never should have went down this road. So embarrassing.
Bet Ben Reiter would like a redo of “Astroball”.
At the time Bregman had only been on the 25 man roster for less than a full season. Altuve, Springer, and Correa had been there for years. Not one of them is innocent. Even if all three were not beneficiaries of the trash can they all were there, and they all knew about it (both the cheating and the memo). It was a well acknowledged reality that the team was as much theirs as anyone’s.
That’s true of all players for all teams. It wouldn’t happen were there no competitive advantage to the practice. As with PEDs, the problem permeates the sport and the team which garnered success that year is targeted. I’d feel more self-righteous when penalties are disseminated. Start with the lauded ‘51 Giants and work forward.