Ausmus would be tremendously bad idea

Wonder if Sig Mejdal wants a promotion to GM? He's the NASA guy who left with Mike Elias to Baltimore.

Farmer1906 said:

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Espada would be my pick.

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If it's Espada or anyone else listed on those odds, give me Espada. I want no part if some of those names.

Stark: Take back the Astros' trophy? That was never going to happen

http://theathletic.com/1534933/2020/01/15/stark-take-back-the-astros-trophy-that-was-never-going-to-happen/?source=shared-article

Quote:

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It's a slippery slope
Why don't we start with this time-honored principle: Once something happens, it's even tough for David Copperfield let alone Rob Manfred to make it un-happen.

Ask yourself this: If you were going to make a ruling that what the Astros did in 2017 shouldn't count, then what exactly about it shouldn't count?

Would just the results of that World Series not count? Or other series, too? Would the Dodgers then be called the winners of that World Series? Or would that be a World Series that nobody won?

What about the regular season? Would those games count? Would those Astros wins count? Or would they forfeit every one of those 101 games they won? If they did, would those victories then be assigned to the teams they played? Then what would you do about the standings?

OK, how about the stats compiled in those games? Would you start stripping them, too? Would you take away Jos Altuve's batting title? How about those 204 hits he got? Would they disappear off his Baseball-Reference page, too? Would we then start changing the stats of the pitchers who gave up those hits?

And what would we do about the box scores? They tell the story of the history of this sport, one beautiful game at a time. Would we rule that everything in the Astros' box scores was a lie? Should we even zap those box scores from the record books and the internet?

See the problem here? These things happened. They. All. Happened. All of them! We have witnesses. We have records. We have box scores. We have videos. So once you start messing with what happened, where do you stop? How slippery is that slope? Way too slippery to mess with.

And there's something else here that's complicated: the memories.

Remember what that World Series meant, in that time and place, to all those people in Houston who had just survived a powerful hurricane and found much-needed joy when that World Series parade rolled through their town. What would you tell those people? Could you please stop by our office so we can delete those memories from the hard drive in your brain because we just decided that parade never happened?

Let's just not go there. History unfolded. To step in and try to change it is way too complicated. Attach that asterisk to all of it in your head if you'd like. But that's about it.

Where's the precedent?
If you study Rob Manfred's ruling in this case, everything about it was wrapped in some sort of precedent, based on a history of baseball crimes, punishments and scandals through the years. So where is the precedent for stripping a World Series trophy or pretty much anything else in all those years?

Let's think about the PED era. Barry Bonds got to keep all seven of his MVP trophies. Roger Clemens gave back zero of his Cy Youngs. Manny Ramrez won a batting title, a home run title, an RBI title and a World Series MVP award. Even two PED suspensions didn't cost him any of that.

The PED transgressions of the Bash Brothers didn't cause the 1989 A's to surrender their World Series trophy. Despite what we know about that era now, not one line in the record book has been changed. Not one homer has been un-hit. Not a single game won has been un-won.

But this goes well beyond PEDs. We have indisputable video evidence that Armando Galarraga should have thrown a perfect game back in 2010. We had it moments after one of baseball's best umpires, Jim Joyce, missed the call at first base. We had Joyce himself apologizing that night for getting that call wrong and costing Galarraga his place in history.

But this sport didn't rewrite the script of that game, right? It just meant Galarraga wound up with a slightly different place in history.

Heck, we even know now that the most famous home run in baseball history Bobby Thomson, 1951 was tainted by cheating. But that home run stands. Russ Hodges' epic call of that home run is still just a click and a goosebump away. The Giants won the pennant. The Giants won the pennant. And the Giants have never stopped winning that pennant because there was no precedent then to declare otherwise and there still isn't.

What about the other pro sports?
Remind me again how many wins, honors and trophies the Patriots have given back over in the NFL. Whatever happened in Deflategate, the Patriots still are the proud winners of Super Bowl XLIX. Tom Brady eventually paid a price and missed a few games, true. But nothing that happened in that season or postseason has been voided, obliterated or changed in any way.

And whatever happened in Spygate, the Patriots still made that trip to Super Bowl XLII. They didn't win that game. But I'm pretty sure their AFC Championship trophy was never mailed back to New York.

Or how about the NBA? A referee, Tim Donaghy, admitted to fixing games and went to jail for his crime. But how many of those games he fixed had their results changed? Right. That would be none.

And why is that? Because all of this raises an issue that only a time machine can resolve. How do you know what would have happened if there had been no cheating or no drug-taking or no deflating or no spying? We don't know these things. We can't know these things.

And also how do we know for sure that the other team wasn't doing something? It has been clear, in all of The Athletic's reporting on this issue, that no one believes the Astros were the only team stealing signs via technology. They're just the team that got caught. The Red Sox are now in this investigation pipeline. Who knows how many more teams could get swallowed up in this? How do we know the Astros weren't playing against those very teams when they were banging on those trash cans?

So as we were saying all these slopes are as precarious as slopes can possibly get.

What about amateur sports?
Obviously, the NCAA feels differently about this. Louisville lost its 2013 NCAA basketball title. Southern Cal lost its 2004 national football championship. Reggie Bush had to give back his Heisman Trophy.

And obviously, the International Olympic Committee has gone down a very different road. No need to recap all the failed drug tests and medals stripped. But there is no denying that the IOC has taken exactly the opposite stance on cheating of any kind or at least cheating it was able to detect.

But once upon a time, I recall making that point to a baseball official as we discussed a similar issue. I brought up the NCAA.

"I'm not sure that's a model you want to follow," he said.

There are people in his sport right now, this very week who would disagree with that, though. If the Astros were to be consigned to a place in history alongside Louisville and USC, those people would be extremely cool with that.

But in baseball, history has a different place in the sporting cosmos. The making of history is an integral part of the fabric of baseball. But nowhere in that fabric has anyone ever dared to un-make history. And as we learned again this week, Rob Manfred was not going to be the first.

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Dude...Cmon now

I also think it needs to a players coach much like Hinch. The most valuable thing Hinch brought to the table was his ability to build quality relationships with all the players. His people skills were absolutely elite.

Go with Espada for the year, and hire AJ back after he serves his penance and repairs his reputation over the year.

Initially I was against Espada, primarily because I didn't know much about the guy and judgment was a little foggy trying to sort through wtf just happened when Crane dropped Hinch and Luhnow

The more I think about it the more I like the idea of sticking with Espada at least for this year as manager:

- already has good relationships with current players/staff - can enhance the us vs. the world mentality
- has been highly sought after in interviews by other teams, most notably the Giants (called for 2nd interview)
- he is Puerto Rican, no explanation necessary
- it wouldn't be such a drastic change this close to spring training, he is a familiar face/voice the guys can rally behind