But in the end he didn't stop or say anything. With that being said, it leads me to believe Luhnow had a bigger part in it than most are considering. Hinch couldn't tell Luhnow but why not tell Crane?

Hinch and Lunhow will get jobs almost immediately after the WS next year. Owners want to win and they are both the best at their jobs. There was a reason our front office got raided the last 2 years. Lunhow kneW how to put it together and make the pieces work. And don't underestimate Hinch's job the last 3 years. Lots of teams have talent. Keeping it all going in the same direction year after year without any real clubhouse issues, spreading the playing time, those are talents that not every manager has. If it were easy, lots of teams would be run better.

This franchise took a major blow yesterday. Only time will tell if they can recover. I'm not so sure but that we didn't see the beginning of the decline yesterday when Crane cut his nose off to spite his face.

I hope we whip some major ass this year.

AJ's actions were akin to coming home to some guy plowing your wife and throwing away the condoms. It does nothing to stop the problem.

A few TLDR thoughts:

It seems like the conviction and punishment from the commissioner's report yesterday break down into two parts: 1) the egregiousness of how far the Astros took electronic sign stealing/relaying practice and 2) the continuation of the practice in some way/shape/form after the commissioner issued his warning.

To me, the report implied that the fine and loss of draft picks were generally linked to the first offense and the suspensions of Hinch/Luhnow were generally linked to the second offense. What that tells me going forward as it relates to punishment of other teams:

-If it's retroactively proven that a team engaged in illegal sign stealing before 9/15/17 (the commissioner warning date) but there's no sound evidence the practice continued beyond that date and the decoding was only relayed to runners on base (not directly to hitters), punishments will be light. The Astros allege 8 other teams engaged in similar practices and guys like Logan Morrison seem to back that up. But the key questions are, again, 1) how far did they take the practice and 2) can it be proven that they continued after the warning.

-The Red Sox punishment should be very easily predictable if the recently reported 2018 allegations are true. In a vacuum, the manager and GM should certainly be suspended for one year based on the Astros precedent. Obviously the Red Sox case is tricky though because it's dealing with a manager who has multiple offenses and a GM who is now gone. But given their crime was less egregious (at least based on what we know right now), I suspect they will get off much easier on the fine/draft pick front. Same with other TBD post 9/15/17 offenders.

-With all that said on the Red Sox, Cora is absolutely effed. He is individually guilty of both counts as a coach and he's guilty of the latter count with two separate franchises. Bye bye.

One concerning aspect to this is how passive/reactive MLB seems to be in investigating these incidents. The only incidents mentioned in the commissioner's report yesterday were basically copy/pasted out of the Drellich/Rosenthal report. Is MLB taking the tact of only looking into alleged crimes that present themselves in the media via disgruntled former players? Given that the only two investigations we know about correspond to media reports, that could be the case. If so, that's disgustingly incompetent. If you really want to clean up the game, investigate everything. Every team. Every rumor.

With that said, I've also been toying with the idea that the Astros investigation yielded other damning practices the team engaged in, but the commissioner agreed to leave them out in exchange for full cooperation from Crane/the Astros. For example, the report doesn't give any specifics about the 2017 playoffs. The report could have just as easily given credence to all the Yankee/Dodger fan crying by pointing out specific incidences of electronic sign relaying against those teams. But it didn't.

But one bit of good news in the report is full vindication/exoneration on the 2019 allegations. All the Yankees crying about whistling were BS. We didn't cheat. We were just better than them. And all their fans pointing to the AJ comments making fun of the whistling paranoia look like idiots now (though they don't realize it). Hinch was actually telling the truth. And the bandaid zap theory...lol. Again, full exoneration on that from MLB. We had the best team in 2019 and we didn't cheat.

As for 2020, I hope the answer isn't to promote Espada and Putila, though I'm slowly resigning myself to that. If we were going to do that, I wish we would have just kept Hinch/Luhnow and retained the option to reinstate them next year. To me, the idea of letting them loose and starting fresh can be justified IF we can get the right people in those jobs ASAP (preferably before the 2020 season begins). Will be very interesting to see where this goes over the next month.

Lastly, one thing MLB did get right is the timing of the punishments. All the sports channels at the gym this morning were wall-to-wall coverage of the CFB national championship. And by tomorrow, all talk will be about the upcoming AFC/NFC conference championship games.

People saying the Astros got off light don't seem to understand that Hinch and Luhnow orchestrated the success of this entire franchise. They are now both gone. You want the Astros to suffer...well there it is. Also, taking away 4 top round picks from a team that had success specifically from their top round draft picks...that is going to hurt.

I get the sense that AJ and Jeff knew about it but didn't really like it. Obviously AJ didn't like it. But I think they felt that if so many other teams in the league are doing it and the players all want to do it (meaning no players approached them to say "hey, this is wrong and I'm not comfortable with it") then they should just look the other way and let the players play the same game other clubs are doing.