I agree, its shitty. But I'm looking at it as the over-the-top media reaction to the Astros story, and the detrimental harm/embarassment levied on MLB, led to a skewed/more calculuated/risk-averse MLB response for the Red Sox scandal. The Astros backlash hurt baseball/MLB significantly. Regardless of market differences (which in reality, Houston's media market size is right on par with the Boston area), MLB should not actively want any of their franchises significantly dragged through the mud like the Astros were. They had no control over their media what-so-ever.... no other league would have allowed story after story (some based on complete bullshit... like the Altuve shirt fiasco and Reddick confetti fiasco).
I hear you now. Too bad they won't come out and say, "Sorry everyone; we were completely full of ****."
How can the other 28 MLB teams besides the Astros be OK with Boston getting a walk? The shoe could easily be on the other foot.
OK then, but do they also know that what the Red Sox were doing was just as illegal? It wasn’t as shameless. It wasn’t as flagrant. It wasn’t as loud. But where are the voices shouting their outrage about the line the Red Sox crossed? This just in: We haven’t heard a peep from a single active player. Obviously, we aren’t hanging out in any locker rooms with them right now, so that’s part of this silence. But has there been a tweet? Has there been an Instagram post? Has there been an angry word anywhere? It’s hard to say exactly why that is. But here’s a theory: Most players still think like the Red Sox players described in MLB’s report. They don’t believe in-game sign-stealing is a crime, unless it involves pounding on trash-can lids with nobody on base. And who knows how many of their teams may have done something remarkably similar? One player I talked with this spring, for instance, was David Price. He’s a Dodger now, but he was a member of those 2018 Red Sox. He spoke passionately about the Astros, saying: “In my opinion, this has hurt baseball really badly. … This is a game I fell in love with when I was 2 years old, and I never really envisioned something like this happening.” What followed was this exchange, comparing the Astros with his Red Sox: Me: “We should note that your old team is in the hopper for this too. Does what you’ve said about this overall situation apply to the Red Sox too?” Price: “Nope.” Me: “It does not?” Price: “Nope.” Me: “Because?” Price: “We didn’t cheat. We did nothing along anything like that. I mean, that really took me back when I heard what (the Astros) were doing, and not because I was naïve to that. I just didn’t think you could do something like that and it stayed quiet. Like, players talk. I’ve got friends on the team. I didn’t think something like that could happen.” That distinction — that what the Red Sox did was “nothing along anything like that” — is a sentiment that is obviously shared by hundreds of players. Bang on a trash can? Outrageous. A runner on second relays signs to the hitter? Been going on for a hundred years. No argument there. But when that runner is relaying signs based on information deduced by the guy in the replay room during the game? That is not OK. And the suspension of J.T. Watkins — plus stripping the Red Sox of a second-round draft pick — is the commissioner’s clear statement that it can’t be OK. That’s true even if you believe Watkins shouldn’t have been the only person in Boston held responsible. It’s also true even when you concede that this discipline falls far short of what was imposed on the Astros, a difference that makes some sense when you consider the disparity in severity of their “crimes.” But has everyone gotten that message? Doesn’t seem like it.
Stark: It’s time for players to take ownership of the game Spoiler We all think we know cheating when we see it. Or at least that’s the impression I get from my Twitter feed. But do baseball players know it when they see it? You’d have sworn they did if you tuned into the mass outrage over the Astros this spring. But then, well, did you read Rob Manfred’s report on the Red Sox investigation? If you comb through that report, you’ll realize something incredible. Their players were cheating, but somehow, they swore they didn’t know it was cheating. The report mentioned this fascinating development multiple times. Just not quite in those words. Their video guy, J.T. Watkins, was decoding signs. He was doing it in real time. He was doing it in their replay room during games. And that’s not legal. Or at least that’s what the rules say. The report also made it clear that Red Sox players were happy to use his valuable decoding work — and not just his pregame work, but his updates during games. In fact, according to the report, 11 of them admitted “that Watkins communicated the sign information in a manner that indicated that he had obtained it in-game” from his duties in that replay room. But here’s the incredible part: In the commissioner’s own words, they “largely did not understand that it was a violation of the rules.” So how could they possibly not have gotten that memo? Manfred explains it two ways. He mentions an “evolving rules landscape,” meaning the rules had changed before the 2018 season to even more clearly prohibit any use of the replay room to decode signs during games. He also says those new rules “had not been adequately explained to players.” Let’s just leave aside the question of why the coaching staff in charge of explaining those rules was not disciplined by the commissioner, because Ken Rosenthal and Evan Drellich have already plunged into that one. Instead, let’s raise a bigger question — and one that affects all of baseball: Isn’t it time for players to take charge of their sport? And by that I mean: Isn’t it time for the players themselves to obliterate the shadow of techno-cheating that continues to hover over their game? To understand what it is? To understand what it means? And to get the word out, to the world and to each other, that this isn’t cool? I can name one prominent player who thinks so — a fellow named Max Scherzer. He made that apparent this spring when he uttered these seven eye-opening words: “I feel like players own the game.” I agree. Many players agree. And if that’s how they feel, that they own the game, then now is the time. Own it. And make sure everyone knows you own it. This is how it eventually worked in the late, not-so-great PED era. What turned that tide? It was the players themselves, rising up to say that wasn’t cool. Hasn’t the moment arrived for that to happen again, for players to speak up the way they did back then? “I think we always have,” Scherzer said. “Whether it was the steroid era or whatnot, we’ve always heard players’ voices help lead the direction of which way the game should go.” Scherzer was one of a number of players I spoke with about the issue this spring. At the time, the angry voices over the Astros still hadn’t died down. But the Red Sox ruling appeared to be just over the horizon, so my editors and I decided we would wait for that ruling to roll out this column. We had no idea, obviously, that it would be weeks before baseball announced that decision. We had less of an idea about what would transpire on our planet in those weeks. But even though the times are very different now, the long-term importance of cleaning up this sport hasn’t changed. So as MLB and the players’ union move toward finalizing updated rules on the use of technology, there is still value in hearing the words of some of the game’s most visible and thoughtful players, even if they spoke those words before the Red Sox verdict, and before the coronavirus pandemic altered their lives. Let’s begin with Scherzer, an active and vocal member of the union’s executive committee. He was one of many players who had powerful thoughts about the Astros’ scandal this spring. And it was the sound of all those forceful voices that struck him. This, he thought, was the sound of the players taking ownership of their sport, at a time when the actions of one of baseball’s winningest teams clearly offended them. “There are rules and there are unwritten rules in this game,” the Nationals’ ace said in March, a week before the baseball world stopped. “And there’s a moral line — kind of an ethos — of how you go about playing the game with integrity. And as players, we know where those lines are.” Most of the time, he said, the debate over those unwritten rules is “over little stuff.” But the unwritten rules on cheating, Max Scherzer said, are a chapter unto themselves — a chapter with no room for debate. “What the Astros did,” he said, emphatically, “crossed that moral line. There’s no gray about it. It’s completely black and white. It crossed the line. Everybody across the game knows it crossed a moral line. I mean, even to the point where I assume even their players knew — maybe even admitted — they knew they were crossing the moral lines. “So if everybody knows they’re crossing the line, that’s why you see all the players react the way they did, because we know how the game should be played. We don’t always need every single rule to tell us exactly how we should be playing the game with integrity. … We understand how the game should be played. And that’s why I think when you see something as egregious as that, the system that they deployed, we all know how we feel about that.” What you heard, in other words, was the roar of players across the game using their voices to draw that moral line. So how important was it, Scherzer was asked, for them to do that? “It was obvious,” Scherzer said. “That shows you how obvious, how big a line was crossed. You can tell us what the rules are in the books, but there’s no rule that lays out the punishment for stealing signs to that degree. Yet we as players know that’s cheating. You don’t have to tell us in the rules. … We all, as players, know how the game should be played, and we know that’s cheating.” OK then, but do they also know that what the Red Sox were doing was just as illegal? It wasn’t as shameless. It wasn’t as flagrant. It wasn’t as loud. But where are the voices shouting their outrage about the line the Red Sox crossed? This just in: We haven’t heard a peep from a single active player. Obviously, we aren’t hanging out in any locker rooms with them right now, so that’s part of this silence. But has there been a tweet? Has there been an Instagram post? Has there been an angry word anywhere? It’s hard to say exactly why that is. But here’s a theory: Most players still think like the Red Sox players described in MLB’s report. They don’t believe in-game sign-stealing is a crime, unless it involves pounding on trash-can lids with nobody on base. And who knows how many of their teams may have done something remarkably similar? One player I talked with this spring, for instance, was David Price. He’s a Dodger now, but he was a member of those 2018 Red Sox. He spoke passionately about the Astros, saying: “In my opinion, this has hurt baseball really badly. … This is a game I fell in love with when I was 2 years old, and I never really envisioned something like this happening.” What followed was this exchange, comparing the Astros with his Red Sox: Me: “We should note that your old team is in the hopper for this too. Does what you’ve said about this overall situation apply to the Red Sox too?” Price: “Nope.” Me: “It does not?” Price: “Nope.” Me: “Because?” Price: “We didn’t cheat. We did nothing along anything like that. I mean, that really took me back when I heard what (the Astros) were doing, and not because I was naïve to that. I just didn’t think you could do something like that and it stayed quiet. Like, players talk. I’ve got friends on the team. I didn’t think something like that could happen.” That distinction — that what the Red Sox did was “nothing along anything like that” — is a sentiment that is obviously shared by hundreds of players. Bang on a trash can? Outrageous. A runner on second relays signs to the hitter? Been going on for a hundred years. No argument there. But when that runner is relaying signs based on information deduced by the guy in the replay room during the game? That is not OK. And the suspension of J.T. Watkins — plus stripping the Red Sox of a second-round draft pick — is the commissioner’s clear statement that it can’t be OK. That’s true even if you believe Watkins shouldn’t have been the only person in Boston held responsible. It’s also true even when you concede that this discipline falls far short of what was imposed on the Astros, a difference that makes some sense when you consider the disparity in severity of their “crimes.” But has everyone gotten that message? Doesn’t seem like it.
Spoiler I asked Rob Manfred this spring how much damage he thought the Astros’ uproar had inflicted on his sport. “I think that trust is something that has to be earned, or earned back,” he said. “I think that we have tried to send our fans the message that no matter who’s involved, if there is an allegation that involves a violation of the rules, we’ll investigate it, (and) we’ll investigate it with tremendous vigor and effort.” Has he now convinced those fans of that? Good question. Even the commissioner admitted that day there is more work to do. “I think that we need to show our fans,” he said, “that not only have we taken steps to prevent this type of activity, (but) that we continue to take steps to assure fans that it’s not going to be going on …” And then came these words: “But I have to say that is a joint obligation,” the commissioner said. “It’s something we have to do, and it’s something that the players have to help us do.” He’s correct about that. This sport can’t get to that place of trust if the players themselves don’t keep reminding us, as they did this spring, that is what they stand for. What I found this spring was that many of them believe they’re already in that place. They believe the furor they expressed over what the Astros did was an obvious signal of exactly how they feel. “I think in this particular case, with all that’s gone on recently, people will take it more seriously,” said Rays starter Tyler Glasnow. “But I hope no one really tries to cheat anymore.” “I don’t think anybody’s going to cheat anymore,” said Dodgers ace Clayton Kershaw. “I think we’re going to understand the ramifications that technology has and figure out a way to curb it.” Curbing technology is a goal that MLB and the union have been exploring for weeks. Some sort of agreement on limiting in-game technology is still expected soon, before baseball returns from its coronavirus hibernation. It’s believed that agreement will even include another important step — an acknowledgment by players that they will need to accept discipline for future violations, unlike what happened to players on the Astros and Red Sox. That all probably seems simple, logical and basic, right? Well, not in an age in which both sides are more dependent on technology than ever. In the short term, dramatically curtailing the availability of that in-game technology may be the answer. But in the long term, it’s possible that more technology — using electronics instead of wiggling fingers to deliver signs to pitchers, for example — might be a more secure answer. So no wonders players are wrestling with where they stand on this. “Is more technology actually good? I don’t know,” said Nationals reliever Sean Doolittle. “It makes me nervous, because I think one thing we’ve learned from the Astros scandal and the Red Sox investigation is, were we just really naïve? Was it only a matter of time before a team or a club or personnel started using all these camera angles to cheat and try to get a leg up? Would it only be a matter of time before people figure out how to hack an Apple watch? “I don’t know. And I hate that this is where my brain works now. But I’m cautious about putting more technology into the field of play.” It’s hard to blame him. But before they fully grapple with those big-picture answers, here is the truism that all players and all front offices need to agree on once and for all: Using technology during a game to decode another team’s signs is cheating. Period. The confusion over that basic principle, which showed up all over the Red Sox report, is one that players need to clean up — now. It’s their game. Now is their time to own it. They tried their best to express that this spring — more loudly than we’ve ever heard them. Now they have to live it. And one of their most prominent voices believes that’s just what they will do. “We’re the ones most affected by this as players,” Max Scherzer said. “We can handle it.”
So now the media decides to be pragmatic and work towards solutions... instead of nothing but pitchforks.
MLB is a joke and Price is an idiot. If sign stealing weren't against the rules, there would be an acknowledged guy in center field with a set of binoculars in every park. The fact that you have to clandestinely relay communiques from your sign guy to the players is a pretty clear indication that it is against the rules, and Price knows that. The fact that he's trying to defend his team's actions as "Well, everybody does it" while decrying the Astros makes him look hypocritical and stupid. The fact the no other players have come out and publicly blasted the Sox the way they all jumped on the Astros should be a sign of just how pervasive this stupidity is. However, instead it's lauded by the media who have gone out of their way to show how awful these upstart Astros are, but the classy big name Red Sox were somehow all misled by one mid-level staffer working all in his own. If today's media had any shame, it would be considered shameful.
There’s some Astro hate on the front page of ESPN as I type. The World Series all time ranking caption for the dodgers and Astros is in black and white.
Well, maybe one positive aspect of this is that any time someone starts now about the Astros, we can all just say "Do you also condone nothing happening to the Red Sox who did it even worse?" And just the turn the conversation back to that every. single. time. "No? Well, then maybe start talking about them; there's nothing left unsaid about the Astros." or "Yes? (or any answer that's not no) Ok, then you're saying you're a Red-Sox-sucking hypocrite. Let's talk about that."
I know Crane just wants to move beyond all this, and I'm sure he didn't get to be a billionaire by thinking like a pissed fan on a message board. But, like, at some point how much are you willing to have your face shoved in the mud? He already accepted an amputation as punishment by firing his coach and GM and accepting those absurd penalties. Too willingly, I think, but then it's over, right? Pssh. Yeah, we knew that wasn't going to sate anyone. They then wanted a full-on, knees-on-ground, face-in-dirt penitent supplication for forgiveness. And they've gotten it with all the additional "damage control" that he's been doing. But now, as you're getting back to your feet, having done more than enough, they throw a bucket of **** on you for good measure with this duplicitous travesty of a punishment for the Red Sox. I mean, Jim, you're a billionaire. C'mon. Go discreetly hire some top-notch private investigators and dig up all the skeletons in Manfred's closet. He just ruined your team and then spit in your face. Go ruin him completely. His tenure is terrible for baseball, anyway; you'd be doing everyone a service. Go and do likewise to that sniveling Passan as well. They took a ton of flesh from you; it's fair to take a couple pounds back for yourself.
"Out of this whole process, if there is one thing that I completely reject and disagree with is people within the Astros' organization singling me out, particularly Jeff Luhnow, as if I were the sole mastermind,” Cora told ESPN on Thursday in his first interview since being fired by the Boston Red Sox. “The commissioner's report sort of explained, in its own way, what happened. But the (Astros players) have spoken up and refuted any allegations that I was solely responsible." “If there is one thing I am absolutely sure of, it is that it was not a two-man show,” Cora told ESPN. “We all did it. And let me be very clear that I am not denying my responsibility, because we were all responsible." "I deserve my suspension and I'm paying the price for my actions,” Cora said. “And I am not proud of what happened. We made a mistake as a group, the entire (Astros) team. What happened was something that, if you ask anyone involved, no one is proud of it. We're all at fault. Everybody. We're all responsible. Everyone who was part of the team from around mid-May until the end of the season, we are all responsible."
Wow, what a stand up guy Cora is LOL. Yea he had no clue about what was going on in Boston but EVERYONE was involved in Houston, Cora can go f*ck himself.
It’s not a good look for Cora to try to deflect blame from himself at this point. Just be quiet and serve your suspension. We all know that all the players were involved in using the system, or at least knew that a cheating system was in place. But, the cheating system was started and implemented by someone. Cora and Beltran I think were said to be ring leaders of the plan by the official report from baseball. I don’t think anyone has said they were solely responsible for everything that happened.
He merely needs to just look at the AJ Hinch publicity playbook... be quiet, apologize, come out looking good in the media, get another job. The issue with Cora is that apparently he was well known for "codebreaking" back as a player. And now he's been a part of two different schemes with two different teams. That sort of track record and tendencies doesn't just go away... especially if his current mindset is simply "it wasn't all me!" Beltran also will be in a similar situation, except even worse off because he's never actually had success as a manager. Chances are both will need to serve as bench coaches again to "rehab" their image and then campaign for openings once they come about.
