Right now I am not sure if I am more like Joe Pesci in Home Alone or Darren McGavin in A Christmas Story. All I know is that I want to cuss up a storm like both of those gentlemen did in those two movies without actually saying the words I am thinking. As Ralphie (Darren’s son in the movie) would say this is an “Oh Fudge” moment, but I’m not thinking of Fudge.
So what to think of the Red Sox getting out from under their cheating almost unscathed with Commissioner Manfred giving a testimonial for Alex Cora and the front office.
My son, Thomas hit this on the head when he texted about the Red Sox – “Cover Up for sure. They (the Sox) saw how badly the Astros got slammed so they had time to get their ducks in a row. Find a less important fall guy and move on unscathed. ” And then he texted “Not unexpected though.”
No, there are a lot of things that are not unexpected here…
- The Commissioner making more poorly backed up and stated decisions – check
- The Red Sox, a premier team as sargeh called them, get off with a love pat – check
- MLB gets to bury this scandal as a mostly Astros scandal and can move on while announcing this in the middle of the coronavirus situation – check
- Astro fans get riled up again – check
Is Bud Selig giving Manfred advice on how to run things?
This is not to say that the Astros shouldn’t have been punished for what happened. They should have and they were. But cheating is cheating except when the commissioner of baseball wants to put a particular spin on it.
- “The information was only relevant when the Red Sox had a runner on second base (which was 19.7% of plate appearances league-wide in 2018), and Watkins communicated sign sequences in a manner that indicated that he had decoded them from the in-game feed in only a small percentage of those occurrences.”
- “I do not find that then-Manager Alex Cora, the Red Sox coaching staff, the Red Sox front office, or most of the players on the 2018 Red Sox knew or should have known that Watkins was utilizing in-game video to update the information that he had learned from his pregame analysis.”
- “I find that the Red Sox front office consistently communicated MLB’s sign-stealing rules to non-player staff and made commendable efforts toward instilling a culture of compliance in their organization.”
So we are supposed to believe that unlike the Astros, none of the Red Sox managers or front office knew or were supposed to know what happened here. This guy would sneak off to the video room and nobody knew it? And he would change sign sequences in the middle of the game and nobody knew why he was doing it? And everyone accepted the changes he infused into the strategy and nobody questioned it. And Alex Cora who was with the Astros when they had the best hitting team in baseball and were cheating went to lead the Red Sox, who became the best hitting team in baseball and were not cheating.
So what happened? Here is a totally hypothetical description of what could have happened.
- MLB got the big tip from Mike Fiers that overturned the Astros turnip cart.
- They investigated the Astros with the ability to tell players – “Because of Fiers we know what happened. So if you lie to us we will know and we will punish you. If you tell the truth we will punish others.”
- The truth from the players led them to Cora and Beltran leading it, Hinch knowing it and ignoring it and Luhnow likely knowing or should have known.
- The Luhnow / Hinch suspensions and firings and the Astros occurred.
- This forced them to investigate Cora further with the Red Sox.
- There was no “Mike Fiers” among the Red Sox or former Red Sox. Even ex-Sox who might have been disgruntled did not want to talk because they saw what happened with Fiers when he talked.
- The team dumped Cora and went into total defense mode.
- Someone decided that they could roll it onto this lowly person in the organization.
- It would not take too much money, when you consider the consequences, to get this guy to roll over and take it on the chin for everybody. (I think they should check his bank account and the accounts of all his loved ones like he was a 5 star football recruit).
- Red Sox turned around to the Commissioner and negotiated the terms of this to get the blame off of the organization as a whole and limit the damage to this “premier” organization.
- The Commissioner sat on this and then released it on a Wednesday afternoon way later than he needed to do it.
I am bitter about this. “$%^#&&&^& Manfred!! **&&^^%ing Commissioner!! $^%&^% Major League Baseball!!”
I’m still bitter about it. Oh well.
CHIPALATTA 
Is anyone really surprised?
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As much pain as I’m in right now….I wish I could take a baseball bat to
Manfred’S head. I’m my last email to him I told him “you killed the Astros, but I’ll bet my last dollar you won’t kill the Red Sox”! I was right😠
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Well, done, Dan.
I remember 6 months ago when I wrote they’d say BOS was “less agregious,” and they’d get a slap on the wrist.
I never imagined Manfred would actually screw that prediction up by lessening Red Sox penalties because they were “emphatic” about it never happening again. What a crock of absolute horse $ (not dookie).
I still think everyone of those Astros should have been fired for blatant lies, and for such a rudimentary [read: stupid] idea to use an obvious trash can. I still blame every so-called journalist for going along with this, like parrots waiting for their overlords to tell them what to write.
According to the WSJ article, Dan, Jeff Luhnow was WAY into it — nothing close to “maybe.” But the point can be made here, the reason he pushed harder forward from his initial 2016 algorythms was because Cora and Beltran both said the Astros were “behind in sign stealing.” Why aren’t those two seen as arch enemies, and “plants”? Hinch Luhnow beltran Cora and the players pushing hardest (at least Bregman) have brought so much shame on the city and fans, and what’s worse is none of them had the guts to tell what they knew about other teams. They ALL have been playing along for that Money Money Money, including Crane. They can all get jobs again, including Taubman if they keep their mouths shut.
Doesn’t take away from the good these men have done in life, but the most chilling thing to me (like Orwell’s, 1984) is the powerhouse influence newspapers and media have over this public. They destroyed the Astros without the thought of investigating other teams. Girardi admitted the Yanks got signs from their press box, which got swept under the carpet immediately.
I see the same things going on with this virus. $1,000 fine for not wearing a mask in Harris Co. starting Monday. Meanwhile, a mother in Idaho was arrested yesterday for taking her kids to the playground! While pedophiles and murderers are on the street, released from prison bc of C-19. So many diverging studies, and NONE peer-reviewed with any “gold standard.” Now we learn there’s already a vaccine — what a joke. Several govt’s have been involved since 2015!! on covid strains. Senators all got out of the stock market after the WHO meetings this Winter, but remained telling the public for weeks, everything was ok just before it tanked.
In the words of the Church Lady, “How Convenient.”
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The players known to have rejected getting signs
Tony Kemp
Josh Reddick
Derek Fisher
Jose Altuve
Nori Aoki
and Phil Garner.
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Yeah. I’d like to cuss. I’d really like to let it out to the commissioner. Wouldn’t we all like to sit down in a room with the little weasel and ask some face to face questions.
Just another slap to the Astros. They’ve done it before and probably will again.
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“Manfred said of Luhnow “It is the job of the General Manager to be aware of the activities of his staff and players.” On #RedSox management “I considered that the Red Sox front office staff was unaware of Watkins’s conduct.”
What’s that rule on plea agreements being nullified if you’re not truthful?
“most Red Sox players said that they were unaware that MLB’s rules in 2018 prohibited Watkins from using the replay room during the game to decode signs.”
And yet while our city was flooded, the Astros management (as well as every ML team’s management) were expected to have read the Sept 13 memo to their players.
*egregious.
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All of my responses are petty. Maybe someday we’ll get a movie version that exposes a bit more of what really happened. Is Jack Nicholson too old to play Manfred?
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I admit to pettiness, and letting off steam. It’s nice to have a place to do that among friends. Not like any of us can change it, but at least Becky is making her opinion known to Manfred.
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First, I am not angry, nor surprised. Manfred showed his hole cards with the Astros. The Red Sox may not be brilliant but they are not stupid. Why would anyone own up to anything. I know I would get a lawyer and plead NOT GUILTY.
This story can be made into a movie as “Pink Panther Ruins Baseball.” We know who will play Clouseau.
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A Cora statement – shining up his halo as a Red Sox manager
https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2020/04/alex-cora-discusses-suspension-red-sox-unlikely-to-rehire-him.html
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My son Thomas texted me about the Cora deal – he did a What he said / What he meant – where what he meant “I can’t believe I am getting off on only one year of cheating. I don’t know how gullible MLB is, but I appreciate Manfred’s efforts”
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If the rest of the world liked or respected us in Houston, even just a little bit, we would start to care what they think. Let ’em have their fun and prove their bias. We already knew the Commissioner’s office was a joke, so this neither surprises nor anger me. It just proves everything we ever thought about Manfred 100% correct. So, if/when or team ever plays baseball again, we just need to beat their pet teams like a drum, smile politely, summon our best Southern accent and say, “Ya’ll come back now, ya heah!’
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You betcha!
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I miss Paul Harvey because he was good with “the rest of the story.” So Cora did not cheat in Boston, no players nor management cheated. Yet a video replay guy told somebody???? mid-game of changes in the signs he stole from a prior game.
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“I am relieved that these MLB investigations are concluded and that Commissioner Rob Manfred has released his finding that I did not violate any MLB rules as a member of the Red Sox organization in 2018 or 2019,” said Cora. He added that he takes “full responsibility” for his part in the Astros’ 2017 violations and called them “unacceptable.”
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Signs he stole from the current game….
Yes, nobody knew what he was doing and he had the almighty power to just change the signs without justifying it to anyone.
Cora was in the corner of the dugout shining his halo.
This stinks like last week’s fish
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I really despise the major league baseball administration…
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One Interesting Court Case:
“Baltimore won at the trial court level, but lost on appeal. The suit eventually reached the U.S. Supreme Court in 1922, where, in a unanimous decision, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. ruled that professional baseball was not subject to the Sherman Antitrust Act. Because of that, the American and National Leagues could not be held legally liable for monopolizing the industry. In particular, Holmes held that MLB was not engaged in “interstate commerce,” and therefore did not fall within the scope of the Sherman Act.”
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One Interesting Law: (March 22, 1918)
“Later this week, Congress is expected to vote on a new $1.3 trillion spending package to keep the government up and running. Tucked away on page 1,967 of the 2,232-page document is the “Save America’s Pastime Act,” which would allow major-league clubs to continue paying their minor-league players below minimum wage.”
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We can deduce that MLB is a “monopoly” that exists as “America’s Pastime” and is owned by Billionaires and performed by Millionaires.
Honesty, Fairness, Logic, etc. etc. etc. can not coexist with this monopoly. PLAY BALL.
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All this just reinforces what we already knew. The media darlings and you know who they are, can do whatever they want to and have no fear of being punished while all the other teams have to adhere to a different set of rules. And then there are those teams that shouldn’t be allowed to ever achieve their full potential. The Astros fit into that category.
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Does anybody remember the Dave Garroway era on the Today show? The weatherman was Jack Lescoulie and every Friday, he would greet viewers by saying, “It’s Friiiiiday.” He just dragged it out and milked it. I always looked forward to that and was thrilled as he was it was Friday. I still think Friday is a great day and ain’t gonna let Sox or Yanks or Manfred or Fiers or Cora or Corona take it away. Not this Friday anyway.
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Great attitude Diane. Don’t let anybody steal your joy. Except Rob Manfred
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