Wednesday, January 15, 2020

Major League Baseball rocked with scandal

The Houston Astros fired their General Manager Jeff Luhnow and also their Manager AJ Hinch over a sign-stealing scheme.  This is a big deal - the Astros went to the World Series last fall, and you would expect the team to try to protect their management.  But they're not just gone, they're banned from Baseball for a year.

And Red Sox Manager Alex Cora is also out, agreeing to resign his position.  The Red Sox won the World Series two years ago, but Cora is said to be the one who came up with the scheme when he was coaching for the Astros.  

The post-season chances for both the Houston Astros and the Boston Red Sox have just taken a hit.  The teams only have a month to come up with replacement managers, which isn't time enough for a very thorough search.

Smart baseball fans are waiting to see who else is implicated in the scandal - who else did this but hasn't been caught yet?  So what (I hear you ask) is sign stealing and why is it a big deal?  This video is pretty good about sign stealing as it has been done for years and years.  There's nothing illegal about any of this, but it will set the stage:


That's not what the Astros did.  They didn't use a base runner to steal signs, they used a camera.  That's a huge No No:


Costas spends some time on the fact that only managers have been punished.  Lots of players knew all about (and even participated in) the scheme, but nothing is happening to them.  Pete Rose - who was banned for life from Baseball for betting on his team when he was a manager - had some interesting thoughts on this:
“So they fire the GM, they fire the manager, and (MLB) probably is going to get (Red Sox manager) Alex Cora, who was the (Astros) bench coach at the time,” Rose said. “But what about the players who were behind this and taking the knowledge? Should they get off scot-free?
"Don’t you have to do something to the players who were accepting the stolen signs? Nothing’s been done. Is that fair?”
When Pete Rose says that more people should have been banned from baseball, that's something.

UPDATE 15 January 2020 13:49: I should have noted that (as you'd expect) Sports Firings is all over this.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

From the reporting I've read (on ESPN and elsewhere) the reason no players have been punished yet is that Manfred promised them immunity in return for their testimony.

The other argument is that it is a lot easier for the commissioner's office to discipline managers and other team employees: disciplining players requires that you get the Player's Association involved, and that could turn into a big mess.

==Dwight

Beans said...

Makes me wonder who exactly cares about this. I mean, intel work and espionage has always been part of sports.

The only way I would think this would be actually actionable is if a representative of the team or contractor physically broke into another club's system, either physically or electronically.

Oh, well, yet another thing that doesn't bother me one way or another.

Aesop said...

No, Beans.

When you're using game coverage cameras to steal signs, that's like Auric Goldfinger having an accomplice with a telescope calling gin rummy cards to his earpiece radio.

This is not okay for the same reason you don't get to steal bases at gunpoint.

The Astros players who participated should be fined their entire post-season salary bonuses, and benched for the first 30 days in the upcoming season.

If the players association says Word One about that lenient treatment, MLB should tell Houston they've forfeited the 2020 season.
Call it Twenty-Five Men Out.

Fair is fair, and misbehavior has consequences.

Unknown said...

I think Aesop has it right. It isn't stealing signs, it's using technological means to cheat that seems to set off Commissioner Manfred.

There was that whole incident with the Apple Watch in 2017: after that, according to the reports I've seen, the commissioner's office basically said "no high-tech cheating, and if you do, we'll come down on you like a ton of bricks".

Whether "a ton of bricks" applies here or not is another question: as someone who's not a baseball fan, but who has hometown loyalty to the Astros, I would not have been unhappy if Manfred had stripped the Astros of their World Series title. However, that raises practical questions that the margin of this post is too small to contain...

==Dwight

Unknown said...

Carlos Beltran out as Mets manager.

==Dwight