DallasAg 94 said:

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tjholley16 said:

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I'm an Astros fan. We cheated in 2017. I own it. Our 2017 title will always be tainted now.

However in my opinion it does not diminish what we did in 2019, which most people outside of Houston say is tainted too. That's my biggest issue.

sure talk all you want about 2017, but we still won 103 games and made the ALCS in 2018, won 108 games and a pennant in 2019 (which was proven we didn't cheat)

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I don't think you can ever prove they didn't cheat. Maybe you feel the cost of cheating in the future is high enough to dissuade them from cheating... but that is like believing Nelson Cruz and Robinson Cano learned their lesson about PEDs.

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You can't prove any team didn't cheat. However the commissioners report said the Astros didn't in 2019. So I'm going to go with that. Even though yankees fans aren't believing it

I do think there's a difference between defending the act and defending specific criticisms. Above all, yes, the Astros broke the rules and were punished for it, but obviously that does not mean that all criticisms, quotes, analyses, etc done post-commissioners report have been fair. My argumentation on the subject has been more on that front (including my "lazy narrative" shtick ).

There's two things that I will never defend:

1) Hinch/Luhnow allowing the rule breaking to continue after the commissioner explicitly said not to. No excuse for this. I tend to think the punishment would have been much much much less harsh had Hinch/Luhnow put an end to the practice after 9/25/17.

2) Beltran/Cora. They were two of the most respected names in the game and two guys who our young players (most of whom had never played anywhere but Houston) looked up to. They were supposed to be leaders. McCann might fall into this bucket too but Beltran/Cora are the main culprits. They devised the scheme and convinced the rest of the guys (including Hinch to some extent) that "it's ok, everyone does it". Two snakes as far as I'm concerned. It's disappointing to me that there's a push in Boston to bring back Cora when/if his suspension is lifted. It's also disappointing to me that Beltran was literally employed by the 2019 Yankees (when guys like Urshela/Tauchman OPS'd close to .900 and Alex Cora says stuff like this) and no one seems to be asking about that. I digress.

Supposedly the team will address the issue when Spring Training begins. Will be interesting to see what they say.