MLB punishes Cora, Red Sox for cheating in 2018 season.
Red Sox take lighter hit than Astros due to lack of in-game actions
In long-awaited findings released Wednesday, Major League Baseball determined the Boston Red Sox illegally obtained signs during their 2018 World Serieswinning season but that the wrongdoing was “far more limited in scope and impact” than actions by the 2017 Astros.
Former Houston bench coach Alex Cora was suspended through the 2020 postseason solely for his role in the Astros’ electronic sign stealing scandal. MLB had withheld its discipline for Cora until after the completion of its Red Sox investigation, which lasted four months.
Cora’s punishment is identical to those of former Houston manager A.J. Hinch and general manager Jeff Luhnow, both of whom were subsequently fired by Astros owner Jim Crane.
Cora and the Red Sox “mutually agreed to part ways” in January, one day after MLB released its findings on the Astros. Cora was painted as a central figure in developing and maintaining the Astros’ trash can banging scheme.
“I take full responsibility for the
“I find that unlike the Houston Astros’ 2017 conduct, in which players communicated to the batter from the dugout area in real time the precise type of pitch about to be thrown, (J.T.) Watkins’s conduct, by its very nature, was far more limited in scope and impact. The information was only relevant when the Red Sox had a runner on second base (which was 19.7% of plate appearances leaguewide 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.”
MLB commissioner Rob Manfred
role I played, along with others, in the Astros’ violations of MLB rules in 2017,” Cora said in a statement Wednesday night. “The collective conduct of the Astros organization in 2017 was unacceptable, and I respect and accept the commissioner’s discipline for my past actions.”
On Wednesday, commissioner Rob Manfred ruled Cora did not know about the Red Sox’s wrongdoing. Cora and Hinch will be eligible to manage again in 2021.
Wednesday’s report exposed one absolute: The Astros engaged in far more egregious conduct than the Red Sox. A complete imbalance in punishments reflects it.
Boston was stripped of a second-round pick in 2020 and spared a fine. The Astros paid a $5 million fine and lost four draft selections — first- and second-round picks in 2020 and 2021 — along with having Hinch and Luhnow suspended.
The nature of Boston’s sign-stealing made it useful only when a Red Sox runner reached second base. Most of the information was communicated either before or after games, as opposed to the Astros’ incessant, prepitch banging of a trash can to signal what pitch was coming.
Houston’s trash can banging during the 2017 season extended into the postseason. The investigation into Boston found evidence that was “insufficient to conclude” the Red Sox used any electronic sign-stealing in the 2018 postseason.
Houston incurred further league ire because of ignorance toward multiple memos circulated by MLB in 2017 and 2018 — all of which were responses to rampant electronic sign-stealing.
Boston, by contrast, displayed “good faith and emphatic efforts to ensure compliance with MLB rules.” That, according to Manfred, “is a strong mitigating factor in determining the level of discipline.”
In a 15-page ruling delayed briefly by the coronavirus pandemic, Manfred cited interviews with 65 witnesses, including 34 current or former Red Sox players. This report dwarfed the Astros findings — 15 pages for Boston and nine for Houston’s scandal. Wednesday’s report contained far more detail and explanation.
As was the agreement with Astros players, Red Sox players were afforded immunity for their testimony, but Manfred noted “this is not a case in which I would have otherwise considered imposing discipline on players.”
The findings placed most blame on one Red Sox staffer, an advance scout and replay room employee named J.T. Watkins.
Part of Watkins’ duties as a Red Sox employee included decoding opposing pitcher’s signs before and after games, a legal practice under major league rules. Often, according to the investigation, Watkins would communicate his findings during pregame hitters’ meetings. That is not illegal.
A memorandum in March 2018 from chief baseball officer Joe Torre reminded clubs that “the use of any equipment in the clubhouse or in a club’s replay or video rooms to decode an opposing club’s signs during the game” was in violation of a rule. This is where Watkins enters illegality.
“The issue in this case stems from the fact that Watkins — the employee responsible for decoding an opponent’s signs prior to and following the game — also was the person stationed in the replay room during the game to advise the manager on whether to challenge a play on the field,” Manfred wrote. “Therefore, Watkins, who was an expert at decoding sign sequences from video, had access to a live feed during the game that he could have — if he so chose — used to supplement or update the work he had performed prior to the game to decode an opponent’s signs.”
Watkins “vehemently denies” doing so, according to the report. More than 30 players told Manfred’s investigators they had no knowledge Watkins altered his reports based on live game feeds. A smaller number of players said “they suspected or had indications that Watkins may have revised the sign sequence information.”
Manfred ruled that “on at least some occasions during the 2018 season” Watkins did edit his work from live game feeds. The commissioner concluded it was “episodic” but, nonetheless, levied harsh discipline upon Watkins. He was suspended for the 2020 season and may not serve as a replay room monitor in 2021.
The scheme’s perceived impact still differs greatly from that gained by the Astros — a real-time, instant signal to a hitter of what pitches were coming. In his Wednesday report, Manfred wrote that 19.7 percent of the league’s plate appearances in 2018 occurred with a runner on second base.
Astros fan Tony Adam charted a pre-pitch bang before 1,143 of 8,274 pitches in the 2017 season. Adam did not chart the entire regular season, nor did he analyze much of the postseason. Astros players have confessed to utilizing the scheme in the playoffs.
“Even when Watkins utilized in-game video to revise his advance work, the information was only useful if the opposing team did not again change its sequence after Watkins passed along the information to players, and, only then, if the Red Sox baserunner was able to recognize the sequence provided by Watkins and also inform the batter through a gesture that was understood correctly by the batter,” Manfred wrote.
Wednesday was not Watkins’ first trip into Manfred’s cross hairs. In 2017, when the Red Sox were punished for improper use of an Apple Watch, the discipline was “largely based on Watkins’s conduct,” according to the league report. Watkins admitted to investigators he sent text messages to trainers containing opposing teams’ signs, which were communicated to players.
That September, after he doled out the Apple Watch punishment, Manfred sent a memo to all 30 clubs promising “more serious sanctions” for any future violations of sign-stealing rules.
The Astros, by then deeply immersed in their trash can banging scheme, did not stop. Luhnow did not forward Manfred’s 2017 memo or Torre’s 2018 letter to any of his non-player staff, according to the league’s report into the Astros. In an interview in February, Hinch confirmed he never saw the memo.
Conversely, Manfred described “a pattern of diligence” by Boston general manager Brian O’Halloran and former president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski in circulating the league’s memos. O’Halloran told investigators he gave hard copies of Manfred’s September 2017 memo to players, coaches and replay room staff.
“He wanted to ensure that ‘there were no excuses, that everybody knows the rules, (and) that there are severe consequences especially in light of’ the Apple Watch incident,” the report read.
Yet the Red Sox and Watkins still engaged in wrongdoing.