Players get a free pass, but only this time
In a matter of months, the Houston Astros organization has gone from Major League Baseball’s top prototype, its biggest success story, to a complete embarrassment that tarnished the game and left another black eye on the sport.
Houston’s dynasty now comes with an asterisk after MLB allegedly discovered undisputable facts that the Astros used a camera in centre field to steal signs and relay pitches to their hitters. It happened not only during the 2017 regular season, as previously reported by the Athletic, but throughout the post-season and again the following year.
The evidence, which stemmed from interviews with 68 witnesses, left commissioner Rob Manfred with no choice but to rule with an iron fist. He handed out one-year suspensions to manager A.J. Hinch and general manager Jeff Luhnow, both of whom were later fired, along with a $5million (U.S.) fine to the team and draft penalties. It sent a message to not only the guilty parties, but the rest of the league that this type of behaviour would not be tolerated.
MLB turned a blind eye for far too along when it came to the use of performance-enhancing drugs in the 1980s and ’90s. Manfred made sure the same thing wasn’t going to happen again with this cheating scheme. The penalties, while not quite as severe as Pete Rose’s lifetime ban or the 1919 Black Sox scandal, are historic nonetheless. Hinch and Luhnow were the first to take the fall, even though it seems clear they were not the primary culprits. According to MLB’s investigation, Hinch didn’t condone the use a video feed to steal signs, and he reportedly damaged the monitor on two occasions to show his disapproval, but he also didn’t take the necessary steps to stop it from happening. To his credit, Hinch admitted as much, saying in a statement that he “failed to stop” the sign stealing practices and that he was “truly sorry.”
Luhnow, who was far less apologetic, accepted some responsibility but mostly pointed the finger at his underlings. He wants people to believe that the Astros could have installed a monitor steps away from the dugout without his knowledge of its intended purposes. That notion seems laughable at best but, regardless of whether this is a case of incompetence, being gullible or something more sinister, Luhnow is responsible for baseball operations and had to take the fall.
The person who should still be worried is Alex Cora, whose managing job in Boston is hanging by a thread. Cora was the Astros’ bench coach in 2017 and while Hinch and Luhnow were identified as accessories to the crime, Cora was pinned as a primary culprit. The former big-league infielder was mentioned, either by name or job title, 11 times in MLB’s report. He has been accused of working in conjunction with the players to create an elaborate scheme to relay pitch types in real time.
The only reason Cora has yet to be punished is because of an ongoing investigation of the Red Sox. If Hinch and Luhnow were suspended and lost their jobs for looking the other way, one can only imagine the penalty that awaits Cora for reportedly instigating the cheating with two teams and getting a pair of World Series titles out of it.
Manfred made these punishments as severe as one might realistically expect. Stripping the Astros of their 2017 World Series wouldn’t have accomplished anything. The Dodgers may have been robbed of a championship, but history cannot be rewritten, and Los Angeles isn’t about to celebrate a title three years late. Some things cannot be undone. What’s important here is not which team is on the trophy but how it will be remembered.
“All clubs have been asked by Major League Baseball not to comment on (Monday’s) punishment of the Houston Astros as it’s inappropriate to comment on discipline imposed on another club,” the Dodgers said in a statement. “The Dodgers have also been asked not to comment on any wrongdoing during the 2017 World Series and will have no further comment at this time.”
The players, just as they did in the steroid era, avoided blame even as they appear to be the driving force in all of this. Manfred was never going to suspend an entire roster and he had little choice but to grant immunity in exchange for honest and transparent answers. If the league went with more severe punishments, it would have created a legal mess with the MLB Players’ Association with cases that would have been hard to prove.
Giving the players a free pass is the cost of doing business and it should allow the league to move on quicker than it otherwise would. Still, this cannot and should not be used as precedent to allow players to escape from future punishment. Whether they organized it, or were simply complicit, is irrelevant. The players are just all guilty, if not more, than Cora, Luhnow and Hinch and they should feel fortunate to have gotten away with it.
The league should be credited for cleaning up this mess, but it also deserves blame for creating it in the first place. Video replay centres never should have been installed inside clubhouses. Managers should make decisions on challenges based on instincts, or the word of his players, not by talking to someone watching on a monitor. It also might be time to start thinking about limiting players’ access to video during games, as hard as that might be to enforce.
There are lots of things Manfred can do to tackle this problem but harsh penalties like the ones dished out this week were a necessary first step. Hinch and Luhnow felt the commissioner’s wrath on Monday, Cora and possibly former Red Sox president Dave Dombrowski will be next. The dust hasn’t settled on this quite yet.