Fuck Richard Justice.
Since when did that matter?
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The players compete, the owners collude.
Do you think there would have been any different punishment if the Sox hadn’t changed GM’s? Do you think Dombrowski would have been punished?
The cameraman did it! But Cora and the BoSox put the brakes on his roque behavior and the postseason was never tainted. LOL
The headless ghost of Ted Williams came down and taught Cora that his cheating was not the Red Sox Way and cured him of his sinful manners. Just like the ghost of George Steinbrenner explained to Beltran when he was on the Yankees before and after 2017.
Same here. When/if the season starts I’ll only follow the Astros on this site, and maybe chron.com. I’ll not watch any MLB on any network, won’t listen to games on the radio, follow games online, or go to any MLB site. I know it means nothing to them, but I’m out.
What’s so stupid is Houston is projected to overtake Chicago as the third largest city in the nation (in 8 to 10 years) and has just started to become a baseball town again and now even when it’s safe to go to games I’ll bet the stadium will not be nearly as full as it has been the past few years. But, that’s what we get for beating the almighty trinity in the postseason.
Manfred probably would have been willing to sweep the Astros’ infractions under the rug too, but there were too many circumstances preventing that: an active player going on-the-record with details, a cheating method that made it easy for internet super sleuths to self-deputize and turn up their own evidence, a reporter with an axe to grind who whipped up a narrative about a “bad culture” in the Astros org, a lot of negative fan/media attention due to the whole Taubman debacle (IMO, the only “bad culture” critique that has merit), and a bunch of owners who had beef with the Astros FO for doing things different than everybody else.
That said, MLB’s report and punishment of the Red Sox goes out of its way to treat Boston with kid gloves:
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No fine? At least levy an “undisclosed” fine like the last time the Red Sox got caught cheating. This is the part that baffles me most–why is a lesser monetary fine appropriate for a second offense?
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Suspending a low-level staffer for a season that looks increasingly like it will have few games, if any? Toothless.
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Refusing to implicate individual Red Sox players, or even say how many players were involved? With the Astros, Manfred just implicated the whole damn team and left it to citizen data analysis to show who on the team didn’t participate.
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Losing a second round draft pick in a year where major league ball clubs were already trying to find ways to spend less on the draft? Smells more like under-the-table salary relief than a punishment, honestly.
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The “finding” that none of the coaching or front office staff bore any responsibility for making sure that the video guy who was–and I quote Manfred’s report–“a key participant in the Apple Watch Incident” didn’t do it again? Completely inconsistent with Manfred’s finding that Luhnow needed to be punished because “[i]t is the job of the General Manager to be aware of the activities of his staff and players, and to ensure that those activities comport with both standards of conduct set by Club ownership and MLB rules.”
Come onnnnnnnn, Manfred. At least pretend to be applying the same standard across the board. I’m struggling to figure out how these punishments affect the Red Sox in any material way, despite Manfred’s assertion after the Apple Watch scandal that “future violations of this type will be subject to more serious sanctions.”
Anyway, the message has been sent: if you cheat, be discreet and don’t otherwise put a target on your back. If you’re a player, you’ll never get dinged; if you’re in the F.O., just send a couple memos a year and you’ll be fine too.
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The fact that it was the same guy would normally be justification for significantly harsher sanctions.
The fact that it was the same guy would normally be justification for significantly harsher sanctions.
One would certainly think that.
There’s even more stuff that really cheeses me about the Red Sox report, but it’s less obvious stuff like BS rhetorical framing (he was merely “updating a permissible pre-game report,” not using a live feed to steal signs in-game) and a complete omission of highly relevant information (example: how was the “updated” info relayed to players?). But I’ve already spent too much time writing about those chumps.
Rob Manfred and Major League Baseball is a joke. The Red Sox were caught illegally using Apple Watches to steal signs in 2017, and, after having their ass handed to them by the Astros in the ALDS, immediately hired one of the masterminds of the Astros’ electronic sign stealing schemes to be their manager. Coincidence? I think not.
It’s not surprising that Manfred went light on one of MLB’s Golden Geese, but a two-time offender that was brazen enough to continue their cheating tactics after being fined for similar actions the previous season should have been hammered much more severely than the Astros. The punishments for the Astros and Red Sox should be reversed.
Right. Probably only Houston fans believe this though. The '17 Astros have been branded baseball’s Bad Boys and will have to wear that for 95% of America. And the media will continue to aid and abet because journalists, who consider themselves outsiders and above the fray, are generally lackeys and shills for the mainstream.
Good of MLB to release the BoSox report in the wake of the NFL draft, perhaps the only real sports story between early March, and who knows? This is how bad news is buried, a pre-draft news dump. I am led to believe Alex Cora’s punishment is confined to activity from Houston, implying he reformed once hired by Boston
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As the details of the Houston case emerged I became more and more convinced that what they did wasn’t something new but rather a clumsy imitation of schemes used elsewhere (it was all started by recent arrivals from other teams). The Red Sox are getting off easy because their cheating scheme was much stealthier and more sophisticated. The Astros left an obvious trail that could be followed by video and that revealed almost all of the details, including which players actively participated or not. When confronted, the players and coaches had no choice but to come clean. Most of the details of the Red Sox scheme remain unknown, and the players and staff could afford to stonewall the investigators. The front office could maintain plausible deniability…
the Astros players talked the Red Sox players didn’t. Cowards.
And no boos will rain down from the upper deck, no banging on visiting ballpark mini-trashcans promotion nights, no tainting of HOF prospects for Boston players, and no exposes on ESPN, MLB network, or the Athletic
One Red Sox-ish reporter apparently recognizes this is a farce, even if he treads a little lightly.
The Astros were wrong but never forget, if Mike Fiers isn’t a stool pidgeon and does not betray his teammates, none of this ever happens. The Red Socks didn’t have a squealing snitch on their team. That is the main difference.
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Cora (on his first day with the Red Sox): Well, we had this cool setup with a camera and a trashcan and…
Assistant GM: Jesus Christ. The Astros really are a bunch of Stone Age savages. I have no idea how we fucking lost to you guys… But, anyway, let me show you how real professionals handle things…
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