Manfred gives Red Sox a pass on accountability
In Major League Baseball’s recent report on the Astros’ 2017 sign-stealing shenanigans, commissioner Rob Manfred made harsh judgments about the team’s baseball operations department’s “insular culture — one that valued and rewarded results over other considerations.”
The atmosphere, Manfred concluded, is what led to the elaborate sign-stealing scheme.
Manfred was right.
The Astros were all about pushing the best and brightest to deliver championship results.
In a 15-page report on the Red Sox’s 2018 sign-stealing operation, which was released Wednesday, Manfred mentioned the word “culture” three times.
Twice, he described Boston’s front office as having “made commendable efforts toward instilling a culture of compliance.” The third mention was to point out that any wrongdoing was “in spite of the efforts and culture of the Red Sox’s front office.”
Manfred makes it sound as if the Red Sox have been a sweet, innocent little organization bent on doing what is right above all else.
Considering MLB has punished the Red Sox for cheating three times in the last four years, one has to question Manfred’s definition of a “culture of compliance.”
“Three strikes, you’re out,” used to be a basic tenet of baseball.
Not only are the Red Sox three-time felons, two of the punishments were directly related to sign stealing and one person, J.T. Watkins, aka Colt Seavers.
The way Manfred tells it, the fall guy ran a one-man operation that no one in the Red Sox “culture of compliance” organization should have been aware of.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice? Shame on you,
again, according to MLB.
As I tell my two 11-yearolds at least three times a week, someone else guilty of the same crime doesn’t make you any less guilty.
That said, the Astros, who stole signs during their 2017 World Series season, must be perplexed by the results of the Red Sox investigation. The Red Sox stole signs during (at least) the 2017 season, when they lost to the Astros in the playoffs, and the 2018 season, when they won the World Series.
The Astros and Red Sox broke the rules, using a replay camera to record and help decode signs from the catcher to the pitcher, then relaying the information to hitters during games.
The Astros were punished: forfeiture of firstand second-round picks in 2020 and 2021, a one-year suspension of manager A.J. Hinch and general manager Jeff Luhnow, and the maximum allowable fine of $5 million.
The Red Sox were given a slap on the wrist: Watkins, a low-level employee, was suspended for a year, and the team lost a second-round pick in this year’s draft.
What the Astros did wasn’t worse than what the Red Sox did, but it was more effective.
If you believe in punishment for such transgressions, Houston deserved a harsher punishment. Eavesdropping by putting a cup against the wall is not the same as bugging a room.
Then again, for over a century, nary a player was ejected from a game, let alone suspended, for doing whatever it took to steal opponents’ signs.
With Generation Z coming of age, sign stealing is suddenly so egregious that pearl clutchers want players who have engaged in it banned from the game for life.
It is an incredible turn. Before the Red Sox were fined an undisclosed amount in 2017 for using an Apple Watch as part of a coordinated effort to relay pitch calls to hitters, not a single team had ever been disciplined for its efforts to steal signs. Aside from beanings and brawls, that is.
Not the Orioles in the 1980s. “They had a video that went directly into the clubhouse where someone was deciphering the signs,” the late Don Baylor told the New York Times in 1997.
Not the Mets in the 1990s, who were using video cameras set up throughout the stadium and whose manager, Bobby Valentine, has since admitted to the New Yorker that he knew of other teams that had “surveillance cameras and rooms that are used for surveillance.”
The only difference now is MLB made it easier for teams by installing the replay cameras that the Astros and Red Sox used to cheat.
Based on the tone of the report, it is obvious Manfred sought to minimize the Red Sox’s cheating relative to that of the Astros’.
I mean, in the second paragraph he used the phrase “unlike the Astros’ 2017 conduct.”
In the next sentence, Manfred referred to the specific situations in which the Red Sox are alleged to have cheated, but instead of listing the actual percentage, he shared a league-wide number that is smaller. Why?
In the Red Sox report, Manfred points out that the ill-gotten information “was only useful if the opposing team did not again change its sequence.” The same holds for the Astros’ situation, but no such minimization of effect was mentioned.
As for that culture that seemingly so disgusted Manfred, he said of Luhnow: “It is the job of the General Manager to be aware of the activities of his staff and players.”
With Red Sox management, Manfred plays a different tune.
“I considered that the Red Sox front office staff was unaware of Watkins’s conduct,” he wrote.
Boston was fined for cheating in 2017, and the guy whom Manfred describes as “a key participant” in executing the cheating held the same job and was caught cheating again the next year. Yet the organization is applauded for its “culture of compliance”?
That’s hilarious. Almost as funny as Manfred’s saluting Boston’s efforts to educate players on cheating, then excusing the cheating by believing “most” Red Sox players who said they “were unaware that MLB’s rules in 2018 prohibited Watkins from using the replay room during the game to decode signs.”
Alex Cora, Boston’s manager in 2018, was absolved in the report of having any knowledge of what went on with the Red Sox. Yet he was punished with a one-season suspension for designing the Astros’ system when he was Houston’s bench coach the year before.
Aside from Inspector John Gadget working the case solo, who would believe Red Sox CEO Sam Kennedy’s statement that “Alex Cora, the coaching staff, and most of the players did not engage in, or were they aware of, any violations?”
Not even Manfred would. No matter what he said in the report.