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So the Astros 2017 title is tainted

Discussion in 'Houston Astros' started by rockets13champs, Nov 12, 2019.

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  1. SS0101

    SS0101 Member

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    Fiers is really getting off the easiest in all of this. Smh
     
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  2. J.R.

    J.R. Member

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    Media made him a "hero".
     
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  3. J.R.

    J.R. Member

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  4. J.R.

    J.R. Member

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    Manfred:

    Rules: the batter minimum, etc., your DL, your 20 seconds to challenge, why only those rules?

    I think that why only those rules, we're in the mid-term CBA. We have to bargain next year. When you understand that obligation, it's difficult to make significant changes in the game against that backdrop.

    Trevor Bauer described you on your playoff proposal: "Too absurd for too many reasons to type on twitter. You have no clue about baseball. You're a joke."

    I'm pretty good at accepting people's view & criticisms. I don't have to agree with them. About that particular comment, no matter how much, how completely I disagree with what a player thought about something, there's no way I'd speak about a major league player like that.

    Dusty Baker brought out the concept of MLB protecting against retaliation. What, if anything, can you do?

    We have been working on for some time a memorandum about being hit by pitches, intentionally throwing at batters. It's really dangerous, really a dangerous undertaking & completely independent of the Astros investigation. We will be issuing at the beginning of this week a memorandum about HBP, which will increase disciplinary ramifications of that type of behavior. That will be a tool helpful to us in terms of dealing whatever flows from the Houston situation. Over the next three days, I'm going to meet with all managers in baseball and the topic you raised will be one thing I intend to address with them. It is simply not appropriate to express whatever frustration you may have about the Astros situation by putting someone physically at risk by throwing at them. It's not acceptable.

    Other cheating rumors?

    We were aware of rumors. Not just about the Astros but there was sign stealing going on. Remember in '17, we had investigated & disciplined the Yankees and Red Sox. There was an incident in Arizona as well. As we got information every single time, there was an attempt to dig deeper & find out what was going on. Some of them resulted in discipline. Some resulted in us not being able to verify what people had suggested but they all took place against the backdrop of us trying to take measures to prevent it from happening.
     
    #2324 J.R., Feb 16, 2020
    Last edited: Feb 16, 2020
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  5. Nook

    Nook Member

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    Correa wasn’t supposed to speak up. The commissioners office isn’t happy about it.

    The Astros ownership needs to consider conducting their own investigation.

    Commissioner told everyone to be quiet and figured that was the end of it. He is in over his head.
     
  6. J.R.

    J.R. Member

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    Why? Gotta defend himself, his team, his teammates as it's open season. (Sure they did it to themselves but they should also be able to defend themselves.)

    Investigation into who or what? I don't know if I need or want Jim speaking on this. :p
     
  7. NIKEstrad

    NIKEstrad Contributing Member
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    When you say own investigation -- into the Astros, or the stuff around the rest of the league?

    Correa coming out with this passion surprised me. It also tells me just how great Altuve is as a player and teammate. If the commissioner is upset, Correa's not the one who started the nonsense, he just put a point on it.

    Time can solve this, but Correa's just thrown his likeability in LA and NY into the gutter, which is shocking for a guy everyone believes is angling for a payday. I don't see how the Dodgers or Yankees would even contemplate signing him right now.
     
  8. BigM

    BigM Contributing Member

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    Maybe Suzuki shouldn’t have opened his mouth then.
     
  9. tx2005

    tx2005 Member

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    I hope guys like Correa continue to speak up. It’s obvious the Astros are being thrown into the fire and being scapegoated by the league and media despite the fact that all this stuff was wide spread throughout the league. Nobody, not even the Astros own beat writers, are giving this team an inch. Manfred is proving this more by refusing the shut the door with the buzzer nonsense from the interview just posted.

    The players are going to have to rely on themselves to get the truth out there and defend themselves. Good for Carlos. I hope he keeps it up.
     
    #2329 tx2005, Feb 16, 2020
    Last edited: Feb 16, 2020
  10. marks0223

    marks0223 2017 and 2022 World Series Champions
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    Correa defended his team about lies and miss truths. Manfred pored gas on that fire by saying he's not 100% certain about buzzers. Either he 100% backs his investigation or Astros players will defend themselves.
     
  11. Chilly_Pete

    Chilly_Pete Contributing Member

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    Fiers is such a little weasel. He started all this **** and could clarify, but he doesn't have the guts to speak up in front of a microphone. What a b****.
     
  12. Nick

    Nick Contributing Member

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    He should target the networks that employ the media members that are furthering everything.


    that’s how Goddell is able to squash stuff. That’s how Silver is able to curtail league embarrassment.

    rosenthal is employed by the league’s own network. They have full ability to stay on top of this, but haven’t... maybe because they may feel that media coverage is still good for attention for the sport.
     
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  13. SS0101

    SS0101 Member

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    Trying the same mob tactics they tried with the biogenesis scandal.
     
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  14. PhiSlammaJamma

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    While Correa said what he felt he needed to say, he fell into a classic lawyer trap. He delineated Reddick and Altuve as non cheaters. Drawing a line of no return for them, but also dividing the rest of the team. Manfred was trying to prevent this exact scenario. Correa will need to be careful. He’s painted them into a couple of corners even if he temporarily switched the narrative. The best criminals don’t talk. They don’t even take the stand.
     
  15. Nook

    Nook Member

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    The league office wanted the Astros to bend over and take it.... say nothing, smile and be flogged. Astros owner was fine with that BUT no player or executive was supposed to say anything. The Astros took it for a long time. Finally someone spoke up. I am surprised it was Correa.... now the commissioner is throwing a fit.

    Why an investigator? To find proof someone else cheated. Then he can take it to the commissioner or go public.

    The writers don’t want to let it go and as @Nick rightfully said a lot of the media is MLB media and can be controlled.

    Not really. If Reddick, Altuve and Kemp really didn’t cheat, then Correa did nothing wrong. If this keeps up long enough there will be a leak of another team doing. The Dodgers have been accused twice in the last couple of years. John Smoltz made reference to dirty teams piling on the Astros and now you have Bobby Valentine discussing it being a common thing.
     
  16. whiskeyred

    whiskeyred Contributing Member

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    I’m ready for some baseball
     
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  17. J.R.

    J.R. Member

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  18. J.R.

    J.R. Member

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    I'll figure we'll break this down into two different things: the investigation & reaction to it.

    Overall, as the caretaker of the game, what has the last month been like?

    A pressured-filled month for us, the entire MLB organization. We take responsibility for protecting the integrity of the game seriously. We work hard to get the facts out in the investigation and once you've done that & made a decision on discipline, all you can do & sit back and watch the reaction.

    At what point were you aware of alleged cheating?

    There were questions raised in the late 2018 season. I remember going into the playoffs and we actually took steps, put monitors places, more attention to cameras in 2018 postseason in an effort to deal with it but you have to understand, usually when we get a report, there are no facts surrounding it. It is "We think they have our signs." That's a difficult thing to deal with. That difficulty is compounded by something we've seen in this investigation and that is the cone of silence that surrounds the dugout & clubhouse.

    So late '18 because people have said, reports out there, formal complaints that you were aware there was cheating going on. Some have said it's the worst kept secret in baseball. Before Fiers speak, why did it take so long for this to go where it went?

    It goes back to what I just said. Formal complaints? That'd be an overstatement of what was happening. We were aware of rumors, not just about the Astros but there was sign stealing going on. Remember in '17, we had investigated & disciplined the Yankees and Red Sox. There were incidents. There was an incident in Arizona as well. As we got information every single time, there was an attempt to dig deeper & figure out what was going on. Some of them resulted in discipline - Yankees/Red Sox. Some resulted in us not being able to verify what people had suggested but they all took place against the backdrop of us trying to take measures to prevent it from happening. Video monitors, things like that.

    What challenges did you face in the investigation?

    The single biggest challenge in the investigation and it applies to us and even law enforcement where they have much greater powers than we have. You need someone to corroborate with you. Someone to give you factual information. The challenge here is everyone who knew the real facts about what was going on was within that cone of silence in the dugout & clubhouse.

    What level of awareness did you believe you knew this was going on & the frustration & inability to get whoever it was to comment on it, to help you with your case?

    The day to day frustration piece of it I don't wear that much. I have a great investigations department. They made every effort to try & get the facts out. That was our fundamental goal. Once there had been the reporting with the amount of detail there was on this topic, that we owed it to the fans & other teams to gather the facts and lay them out in a transparent way. They went along in the investigation pursuing that goal and we did come to a point in time where we had to make a decision about how we were going to crack the code of silence.

    Tell me about that decision.

    You have to pick a group. You have to decide are you gonna try to get maybe the field managers & coaching staff, the players, who are you gonna get to tell you what was really going on? We landed on the players for two reasons. First of all, I believe what I wrote in the Red Sox/Yankees decision, that fundamentally the obligation to make sure players are playing within the rules falls on the GM & field manager. That is their responsibility. Players get paid to compete. We all know in competition, people get hot, sometimes make bad decisions. The management people are the ones responsible in the first instance to make sure what goes in the field goes on within the rules that have been established. Secondly, we had a problem with the players in this case. Among the things the Astros failed at was after the Yankees/Red Sox decision, I put the clubs on notice what exactly the rules were and how they were gonna be treated going forward. Among the other failures of that organization, that information never made it's way to the players.

    How is that possible?

    They just didn't do it. That's in my report. The memorandum went to the GM and nothing was done from the GM down. We knew if we had disciplined the players, we were gonna have grievances and grievances that we were going to lose on the basis we never properly informed them of the rules. Given those two things, number one, I'm certain where the responsibilities should lay in the first instance and given the fact we didn't think we could make discipline stick with the players, we made the decision we made. Having said that, I understand the reaction. Having said that, I understand the reaction. The players, some of them in a more articulate way than others, said they did the wrong and I understand people want to see them punished. In a perfect world, they would have been punished.

    When you found out this memorandum never got to the players, your reaction to that?

    It was part of the overall development of the conclusion that there was a lot of responsibility at the GM/manager level here. So many things that should have been done were not done.

    In a sense, it does absolve the players of any responsibility. Players should know the difference between right & wrong and don't need someone over their shoulder telling them that. How do you characterize the players role in all of this?

    This was a situation where the supervision, the management, by the GM/manager was inadequate and it allowed what was probably a small mistake at the beginning to grow into something much, much bigger. I don't absolve the players of responsibility. In their comments, at least some of them, they understand they have a fundamental obligation to play within the rules and I don't think any of them feel like they have been absolved, frankly.
     
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  19. Htown Stros

    Htown Stros Member

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    The media may have made him a hero but I can promise you there are a lot of active and former players who don't trust this guy and would not want him to be on their team.
     
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  20. J.R.

    J.R. Member

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    In January, you sent a letter to Jeff Luhnow saying "Most or all of the Astros players were active participants in the banging scheme." At that point, what types of penalties or punishments are you considering?

    It's important to understand what that January letter is. We always in an investigation conduct the factual investigation the best we can and then get to the key people that we're starting to think there may be discipline involved here so what we do is we write the most negative interpretation of the facts from that individual's perspective, give it to them in writing & a chance to come in and refute what we found. One problem with that letter is people have mischaracterized it as they had decided by this date that X was the fact. We were putting out an indictment & giving Luhnow/Hinch an opportunity to respond to what we think we had found. At that point in time, I had not formulated potential discipline for anyone. I thought it was important to go into the interviews with AJ/Jeff with an open mind. Those interviews took place after this letter. Only after those interviews did I think through who/what in terms discipline.

    You're pretty comfortable with your investigative unit that they're pretty accurate here.

    I thought they did a phenomenal job gathering the facts and I knew there was going to be discipline. What I had not decided was exactly who, how far & how hard.

    Your findings released on the 13th. You absolve Jim Crane, the owner & implicate Luhnow, Hinch, Cora & Beltran. Why only those four?

    Luhnow, Hinch & Cora were easy for me. When you look at the facts found by the investigative unit, Luhnow was the baseball official, the highest ranking one. He either knew or should have known & did inadequate things to prevent this type of behavior even after he was warned so that was easy for me. AJ has been very open about what was going on. He knew what was going on, didn't stop it, was there every day, end of story from my perspective. I don't want to say too much about Alex because we have an open investigation there. I will say the investigators confirmed what was in the original article that started all of this. Alex was at the core of what's going on. The tough one was Carlos Beltran because of his status. He was a player & took place while he was a player & was covered by the immunity. The reason we ended up mentioning him was credibility. He had been mentioned so prominently in the original article. To not explain what we found about Beltran, people would see it as some lack of transparency. We wanted to avoid that above everything else.

    To understand the scope of the investigation, what went into it? Who got interviewed? How often?

    There were 70 witnesses. Some were multiple times. We'd have an interview, find something from someone else & want to go back and interview that individual. There were literally tens of thousands of e-mails, texts, Slack messages that were secured from the Astros. Those had to be reviewed. Those generated follow-ups. All the way up & down the organization. One thing I'm absolutely certain about in all of this is we cannot be criticized for leaving stones unturned. Every investigation can be imperfect in the sense maybe you don't find every last fact, you miss something, whatever. There was nothing available to us in terms of investigative routes that were not followed.

    Interns, video room coordinators, up the chain of command, everyone knows who these people are. What responsibility does the owner have in all of this?

    The owner has the ultimate responsibility for what goes on in his franchise. The owner has that obligation. In this particular case, I was prepared based on what the facts showed to discipline an owner if I felt it was appropriate. When you discipline, you have to always rely on the evidence. When you get into disciplining people based on a concept, it's very difficult. The evidence showed with respect to Jim, when he got the Apple Yankees/Red Sox decision, that he did and kind of unusual move for him getting involved on the baseball side, he did direct Jeff Luhnow to make sure they were behaving in compliance with the rules. When that happened, his effort in that regard was the key to the finding we made with respect to the owner.

    Tell them now to behave properly and I'm now removing myself from the equation.

    The last part is unfair. He told them he wanted Jeff to make sure they were in compliance. He runs this business & another business. When you give a direct subordinate an order, I don't think it's unreasonable to rely on the fact that's gonna be carried out.

    You run baseball so you dictate the culture. Generally the owner dictates the culture. How do you square with the culture that doesn't encourage an individual to come forward, "Hold on, this isn't right. We need to stop it." Clearly that wasn't encouraged or people didn't feel comfortable enough to do that.

    It's important to think about the deterrence aspect of this discipline. You had four pretty accomplished baseball people that not only were suspended but lost their jobs. I hope that's enough to make people at those levels understand the responsibility they have & make sure they're playing by the rules. The idea Jim Crane wasn't disciplined here, I disagree with that. He suffered. He owns an organization that was fined $5M. Whether you think $5M is a lot or not, that is the max allowed by MLB constitution. Gave up four draft picks. People can minimize that but if you talk to any good GM, there's tens of millions of value in those first and second round picks. Then the last piece that is most important. The public airing of what went on here is a form of discipline and maybe most powerful deterrent of anything we did here.

    For most, not enough. What about the punishments? The current punishments serve as a deterrent to the players because they weren't punished.

    The player piece of it is important to focus on. You will see us, we're in the process of working with the MLBPA, what we're gonna do with players on this topic moving forward. I explained to you in this particular case & all the cases in the '17/'18 period, there may have been a lack of clarity. We've solved that problem but we do need a policy that is explicit in terms of making players feel responsibility for this type of behavior.

    In hindsight, was there any other way to go about this without blanket immunity that would allow you to punish certain players?

    You could have made the choice to go with the management people and given them immunity and found out how the players were involved. Whatever dissatisfaction is out there with the grant of immunity to players, it would have been ten times worse if you let the management people off and went after the players.
     
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