There are lots of simple explanations for the Astros. I think it's silly to think that it was all Luhnow's plan. First, that violates what the report says, and second, it violates what I think is evidence: that Beltran came up with the idea because he did it on another team. Even if the second is not the case, the first is enough to reject this hypothesis.
One simple explanation is this:
1. Beltran had the initial idea.
2. He told Cora when they were chatting one day about how a previous team of his stole signs.
3. Cora implemented the idea by getting staff to implement the tech, and most of the other players to join in.
4. Hinch found out about it and didn't like it, but *thought it was no big deal*. This is what a lot of people are forgetting about right now. When this thing broke, a lot of people thought it was no big deal. In fact, a whole lot of people, including commenters here, said the fault was the *other* teams for having signals that were too easy to decode. And I think it would've actually been not that big of a deal, except that Manfred made that earlier report specifically talking about sign-stealing using tech. Now we all know that what the commissioner says is very often all bark and no bite. So it's easy to believe that Hinch thought this was the case here.
5. Luhnow never knew anything about it.
I'm a big Astros fan and so probably have biases all over the place. Right now I have mostly a sick feeling that I suppose all Astros fans have. I thought barely losing a World Series was the worst... but it turns out there are much worse things. I hate that the Astros ever signed Beltran and hired Cora. I kind of think Luhnow doesn't deserve the year suspension, but I understand that the top guy (except the owner) has to pay in cases like these. I do wish the players were penalized. Apparently the players' union is too powerful for that. As things are right now, there's no reason for players not to do this again. I'd think hard about suspending all involved players a month. I guess there's no way to identify which players were involved, though, beyond saying "most" of them were.
It wouldn't be right to vacate the 2017 championship unless you were certain that the Astros wouldn't have won if they hadn't had cheated. And it's certainly not certain.
It's really been a crappy offseason for Astros fans.
Even if the plan was Beltran's, that doesn't mean that Luhnow wasn't "running" the plan (as Joe said, I would not use "running," but rather "sanctioned" or "encouraged." I agree with Joe that Hinch destroying the monitors is a weird little bit of impotent defiance that conflicts with his assumed authority as manager of the team - I don't know if I'm fully on board with using that as proof that Luhnow must have been aware and sanctioned it, but I also find it not credible for him to claim he had no idea it was happening at all. I tend to agree with you that the simplest explanation is that they all thought it wasn't that big of a deal, just an extension of the "gamesmanship" that the league tolerates and only now, when it is clear that this was blowing up, are they coming up with weird rationalizations for why they didn't stop it.
I’m guessing he’ll be gone as manager. When Cora gets officially banned and the Red Sox get whatever penalties they get, I think the Mets will have a hard time keeping him. Too much bad publicity. Really they should do it sooner rather than later. Already close to spring training. And I also think it will impact his HOF votes. He was under appreciated for years, seems to have been finally recognized, and I think this brings him backlash under the threshold. For how many years? Who knows? But a lot of anger has been stirred up and I don’t think he can avoid the fallout. And if he was as involved as the report says, then I think he has no one to blame but himself.
Is anyone else a little worried by the anti-analytics narrative that seems to be gaining steam? I hear it in the subtext of a lot of the talking heads on MLB Network and the like, but it’s also in the very text of the report. As though being an analytical team caused the Astros to lose their humanity and therefore their sense of ethics and morality...
I don’t know, maybe I’m reading too much into it, but I’d prefer if this didn’t turn into a big game of “blame the nerds, with their stats and their acronyms, losing sight of the people part of the game.” You can be a nerd and still do the right thing, and the Carlos Beltrans and Alex Coras aren’t exactly card-carrying members of SABR or anything.
I think you're right. Super right. In particular, there was a lot of envy in baseball for the Astros and especially Luhnow. It seems to me that Luhnow was greatly disliked by the other GMs, and that's why he got the shaft.
Thank you for the revised Frank Thomas article. I was so disappointed by the first article. Frank Thomas was amazing. As great as Griffey and Bonds were, I’d still take The Big Hurt over any other hitter from the 90’s.
You’ve probably heard this over and over again, but Knives Out received a nomination for Best Original Screenplay. Yeah, it’s not Best Picture, but it’s still not a complete shutout like The Farewell. Yeah, that still has me bummed.
The one thing that kind of has me bummed about this Astros scandal is how it would affect Carlos Beltran’s Hall of Fame chances. While it seems he would escape any formal suspension, I can’t imagine that Hall of Fame voters would forget about his role three years from now when they first consider his case. It finally seems like people were acknowledging his Hall of Fame worthiness after the World Series that year, I’d imagine they’d invoke the character clause as a result of his involvement with this scheme and withhold their vote. Which is a pretty big shame.
In light of Lunhow's suspension and possible role in all of this, should we view the Cardinals' database hacking of Lunhow's Astros's system in a different light? Funny how the two biggest baseball cheating scandals of the last few years were carried out by (former) underlings of his in organizations where he was an important exec. Seems to be a culture of cheating following him...
Conspiracy theory alert. I think the Braves' cheating scandal, which was several guys, was bigger than the stolen-password scandal, which was just one guy. It may be that Luhnow had a habit of rubbing people the wrong way, though.
The video equipment probably just came from somewhere else. And I'm sure there are plenty of "low-level" employees that knew how to install it and maintain it.
Think you’re right. And not even a Dodgers fan. And for those who say ‘can’t’ ... good lord we change TIME. Twice a year. For the WHOLE WORLD. So ‘can’ change / correct a cheated outcome of one year’s annually occurring measly baseball tournament. And ‘should’.
You can't "take away" championships. There is no "Great Big Book of Baseball Records" where MLB's Recording Secretary sits down and writes it all down and can now go back and erase the Astros from the page with all the World Series winners. The fact is the games were played and at the end of the season, the Astros won the World Series 4-3. Notably, two of the Astros' four wins came at Dodger Stadium.
Also of note, the 1919 White Sox threw the World Series. In the non-existent "Great Big Book of Baseball Recrods," on the page for World Series winners, after 1919 it says, "Reds." They didn't take that away from Cincinnati, even though they were the beneficiary of the cheating.
I agree. Unless you can conclusively prove that a particular stolen sign or signs led to the outcome of the game being changed, you've got no business "voiding" the outcome.
As I wrote at the time, the Dodgers bear enough of the blame for losing the 2017 WS without having to invoke sign stealing:
Sure, the Astros scored their five runs early. Yu Darvish is probably already getting blamed for it, but watch the replays. Springer’s leadoff double was fair by inches, and if Cody Bellinger has simply put the ball in his pocket instead of throwing it to El Monte…. Meanwhile, Astros’ starter Lance McCullers must have thought he was playing dodgeball instead of baseball against the Dodgers – he hit four of the thirteen batters he faced. But the Dodgers offense left the population of Burbank on the basepaths, dooming whatever chances they were handed.
That college crap doesn't fly in real sports. Hell, it doesn't even work in college. I remember Louisville's championships. I knew the NCAA had done this. I had to be reminded by you as to who they did it to.
The events have happened and nothing can take away the championship (or the Red Sox's in 2018) or the good things that came from it for the team and fans alike. Baseball does NOT rewrite history. Nor should they. They try to fix it in the future (and indeed had already taken steps this year to do so with an 8 second delay on the cameras in 2019) They take the draft picks (There could have been more) I will admit that the fine is ridiculously low. $5 million from and MLB team is pocket change.
I left out of my comment that this is not the NCAA or the Tour de France, which are two idiotic organizations. It's such an incredibly slippery slope if we are going to start vacating championships and pretend that the games weren't played. We all know there were many steroid users in baseball. Some of them probably helped teams win championships. Should we vacate those championships?
As for the Reds, if we are vacating championships, theirs is the first to go. It is accepted as fact that the 1919 White Sox would easily have won that World Series. The Reds directly benefited from the intentional poor play of the White Sox. By vacating championships, aren't we trying to punish those who benefited from the wrongdoing? No one benefited more than the Reds. Besides, in so doing we will encourage teams to police other teams and report violations so they themselves are not stained by lawlessness.
If the Jim Crane had paid off the umpire, I would expect severe punishment, but not someone going into the "Great Big Book of Baseball Records" to erase "Astros" after 2017 on the World Series Champions page. We can't change history and we shouldn't try. We shouldn't lie and say the Astros didn't win, because they did. People can call it illegitimate and tell the story, but that doesn't change which team came out on top.
I say this as an A's fan. The A's lost a lot of games to the Astros in 2018, especially early in the season when this scheme was undoubtedly playing out. That doesn't change the fact that the A's finished second that year and lost the play in game to the Yankees, nor should it.
As a fan of another team, I lost many games to the steroid fueled 1989 A's as well. But they are the champions forever. It happened and nothing can change that.
Chris doesn't understand that reality, nor does he understand that it is really no punishment at all. The rings have been given out. The Parades have happened. It would basically mean nothing to the team to have Rob Manfred say "You remember that Championship? Yeah, that didn't really happen." It would mean nothing to the fans. The players would still have their rings. There is no time machine. All it would do is to make Chris and others like him feel better.
...but the situation with the Reds is unique. The White Sox did not cheat to win and therefore were not the beneficiaries of the cheating at least on the field.
There are lots of simple explanations for the Astros. I think it's silly to think that it was all Luhnow's plan. First, that violates what the report says, and second, it violates what I think is evidence: that Beltran came up with the idea because he did it on another team. Even if the second is not the case, the first is enough to reject this hypothesis.
One simple explanation is this:
1. Beltran had the initial idea.
2. He told Cora when they were chatting one day about how a previous team of his stole signs.
3. Cora implemented the idea by getting staff to implement the tech, and most of the other players to join in.
4. Hinch found out about it and didn't like it, but *thought it was no big deal*. This is what a lot of people are forgetting about right now. When this thing broke, a lot of people thought it was no big deal. In fact, a whole lot of people, including commenters here, said the fault was the *other* teams for having signals that were too easy to decode. And I think it would've actually been not that big of a deal, except that Manfred made that earlier report specifically talking about sign-stealing using tech. Now we all know that what the commissioner says is very often all bark and no bite. So it's easy to believe that Hinch thought this was the case here.
5. Luhnow never knew anything about it.
I'm a big Astros fan and so probably have biases all over the place. Right now I have mostly a sick feeling that I suppose all Astros fans have. I thought barely losing a World Series was the worst... but it turns out there are much worse things. I hate that the Astros ever signed Beltran and hired Cora. I kind of think Luhnow doesn't deserve the year suspension, but I understand that the top guy (except the owner) has to pay in cases like these. I do wish the players were penalized. Apparently the players' union is too powerful for that. As things are right now, there's no reason for players not to do this again. I'd think hard about suspending all involved players a month. I guess there's no way to identify which players were involved, though, beyond saying "most" of them were.
It wouldn't be right to vacate the 2017 championship unless you were certain that the Astros wouldn't have won if they hadn't had cheated. And it's certainly not certain.
It's really been a crappy offseason for Astros fans.
Even if the plan was Beltran's, that doesn't mean that Luhnow wasn't "running" the plan (as Joe said, I would not use "running," but rather "sanctioned" or "encouraged." I agree with Joe that Hinch destroying the monitors is a weird little bit of impotent defiance that conflicts with his assumed authority as manager of the team - I don't know if I'm fully on board with using that as proof that Luhnow must have been aware and sanctioned it, but I also find it not credible for him to claim he had no idea it was happening at all. I tend to agree with you that the simplest explanation is that they all thought it wasn't that big of a deal, just an extension of the "gamesmanship" that the league tolerates and only now, when it is clear that this was blowing up, are they coming up with weird rationalizations for why they didn't stop it.
I like the last theory about the Astro's leadership sanctioning this. It really is the simplest explanation.
Another subplot: Will the Mets keep Beltran as manager? How will his HoF votes be affected, if any?
I’m guessing he’ll be gone as manager. When Cora gets officially banned and the Red Sox get whatever penalties they get, I think the Mets will have a hard time keeping him. Too much bad publicity. Really they should do it sooner rather than later. Already close to spring training. And I also think it will impact his HOF votes. He was under appreciated for years, seems to have been finally recognized, and I think this brings him backlash under the threshold. For how many years? Who knows? But a lot of anger has been stirred up and I don’t think he can avoid the fallout. And if he was as involved as the report says, then I think he has no one to blame but himself.
Is anyone else a little worried by the anti-analytics narrative that seems to be gaining steam? I hear it in the subtext of a lot of the talking heads on MLB Network and the like, but it’s also in the very text of the report. As though being an analytical team caused the Astros to lose their humanity and therefore their sense of ethics and morality...
I don’t know, maybe I’m reading too much into it, but I’d prefer if this didn’t turn into a big game of “blame the nerds, with their stats and their acronyms, losing sight of the people part of the game.” You can be a nerd and still do the right thing, and the Carlos Beltrans and Alex Coras aren’t exactly card-carrying members of SABR or anything.
I think you're right. Super right. In particular, there was a lot of envy in baseball for the Astros and especially Luhnow. It seems to me that Luhnow was greatly disliked by the other GMs, and that's why he got the shaft.
Thank you for the revised Frank Thomas article. I was so disappointed by the first article. Frank Thomas was amazing. As great as Griffey and Bonds were, I’d still take The Big Hurt over any other hitter from the 90’s.
You’ve probably heard this over and over again, but Knives Out received a nomination for Best Original Screenplay. Yeah, it’s not Best Picture, but it’s still not a complete shutout like The Farewell. Yeah, that still has me bummed.
The one thing that kind of has me bummed about this Astros scandal is how it would affect Carlos Beltran’s Hall of Fame chances. While it seems he would escape any formal suspension, I can’t imagine that Hall of Fame voters would forget about his role three years from now when they first consider his case. It finally seems like people were acknowledging his Hall of Fame worthiness after the World Series that year, I’d imagine they’d invoke the character clause as a result of his involvement with this scheme and withhold their vote. Which is a pretty big shame.
In light of Lunhow's suspension and possible role in all of this, should we view the Cardinals' database hacking of Lunhow's Astros's system in a different light? Funny how the two biggest baseball cheating scandals of the last few years were carried out by (former) underlings of his in organizations where he was an important exec. Seems to be a culture of cheating following him...
Conspiracy theory alert. I think the Braves' cheating scandal, which was several guys, was bigger than the stolen-password scandal, which was just one guy. It may be that Luhnow had a habit of rubbing people the wrong way, though.
Keep the links to the 100, Joe. :-)
Shows what I know- I thought Alfonso Soriano was still on an active roster. Along with Julio Cruz...
The video equipment probably just came from somewhere else. And I'm sure there are plenty of "low-level" employees that knew how to install it and maintain it.
Think you’re right. And not even a Dodgers fan. And for those who say ‘can’t’ ... good lord we change TIME. Twice a year. For the WHOLE WORLD. So ‘can’ change / correct a cheated outcome of one year’s annually occurring measly baseball tournament. And ‘should’.
You can't "take away" championships. There is no "Great Big Book of Baseball Records" where MLB's Recording Secretary sits down and writes it all down and can now go back and erase the Astros from the page with all the World Series winners. The fact is the games were played and at the end of the season, the Astros won the World Series 4-3. Notably, two of the Astros' four wins came at Dodger Stadium.
Also of note, the 1919 White Sox threw the World Series. In the non-existent "Great Big Book of Baseball Recrods," on the page for World Series winners, after 1919 it says, "Reds." They didn't take that away from Cincinnati, even though they were the beneficiary of the cheating.
I agree. Unless you can conclusively prove that a particular stolen sign or signs led to the outcome of the game being changed, you've got no business "voiding" the outcome.
As I wrote at the time, the Dodgers bear enough of the blame for losing the 2017 WS without having to invoke sign stealing:
Sure, the Astros scored their five runs early. Yu Darvish is probably already getting blamed for it, but watch the replays. Springer’s leadoff double was fair by inches, and if Cody Bellinger has simply put the ball in his pocket instead of throwing it to El Monte…. Meanwhile, Astros’ starter Lance McCullers must have thought he was playing dodgeball instead of baseball against the Dodgers – he hit four of the thirteen batters he faced. But the Dodgers offense left the population of Burbank on the basepaths, dooming whatever chances they were handed.
https://pureblather.com/2017/11/02/on-the-2017-world-series/
That college crap doesn't fly in real sports. Hell, it doesn't even work in college. I remember Louisville's championships. I knew the NCAA had done this. I had to be reminded by you as to who they did it to.
The events have happened and nothing can take away the championship (or the Red Sox's in 2018) or the good things that came from it for the team and fans alike. Baseball does NOT rewrite history. Nor should they. They try to fix it in the future (and indeed had already taken steps this year to do so with an 8 second delay on the cameras in 2019) They take the draft picks (There could have been more) I will admit that the fine is ridiculously low. $5 million from and MLB team is pocket change.
I think I read that $5 million is the maximum fine.
I left out of my comment that this is not the NCAA or the Tour de France, which are two idiotic organizations. It's such an incredibly slippery slope if we are going to start vacating championships and pretend that the games weren't played. We all know there were many steroid users in baseball. Some of them probably helped teams win championships. Should we vacate those championships?
As for the Reds, if we are vacating championships, theirs is the first to go. It is accepted as fact that the 1919 White Sox would easily have won that World Series. The Reds directly benefited from the intentional poor play of the White Sox. By vacating championships, aren't we trying to punish those who benefited from the wrongdoing? No one benefited more than the Reds. Besides, in so doing we will encourage teams to police other teams and report violations so they themselves are not stained by lawlessness.
If the Jim Crane had paid off the umpire, I would expect severe punishment, but not someone going into the "Great Big Book of Baseball Records" to erase "Astros" after 2017 on the World Series Champions page. We can't change history and we shouldn't try. We shouldn't lie and say the Astros didn't win, because they did. People can call it illegitimate and tell the story, but that doesn't change which team came out on top.
I say this as an A's fan. The A's lost a lot of games to the Astros in 2018, especially early in the season when this scheme was undoubtedly playing out. That doesn't change the fact that the A's finished second that year and lost the play in game to the Yankees, nor should it.
As a fan of another team, I lost many games to the steroid fueled 1989 A's as well. But they are the champions forever. It happened and nothing can change that.
Chris doesn't understand that reality, nor does he understand that it is really no punishment at all. The rings have been given out. The Parades have happened. It would basically mean nothing to the team to have Rob Manfred say "You remember that Championship? Yeah, that didn't really happen." It would mean nothing to the fans. The players would still have their rings. There is no time machine. All it would do is to make Chris and others like him feel better.
Thanks for your support. I think the punishment here is appropriate.
...but the situation with the Reds is unique. The White Sox did not cheat to win and therefore were not the beneficiaries of the cheating at least on the field.