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2017
In 2017, the Astros signed Carlos Beltran to serve as their DH, but also to serve as trusted veteran with a hall of fame resume, who could help the young core of predominantly Latin players navigate the upcoming season filled with great expectations. In many ways, Beltran was brought in to fill the role of a player/coach.

When you read the MLB investigation findings and pair them up side-by-side with the reporting from The Athletic, it doesn't require a ton of mental gymnastics to put 2 and 2 together. Early in the 2017 season, Carlos Beltran approached Astros bench coach Alex Cora and the two sought out to devise a system to steal signs that had helped Beltran while he was a player on a previous team. Other players on the team were made to believe that similar systems were being used to help other teams gain an advantage against them, which allowed a crucial mentality to envelop the team as they justified the system.

If everybody is doing the same thing, is it cheating or leveling the playing field?

When you speak to most fans of the game of baseball, this is the argument that they make when explaining why the use of pine-tar by pitchers isn't really breaking the rules. It is, of course, against the rules. It is widely known that pitchers use pine tar or other substances to improve grip, and consequently, spin rate, and this all goes overlooked as gamesmanship. The last notable pine tar punishment was in 2014 when Yankees pitcher Michael Pineda didn't even attempt to hide his use of the substance in a game against the Red Sox.

2019
Before sign stealing made headlines, there was Brandon Taubman taunting female reporters who had spoken out against the acquisition of reliever Roberto Osuna, who had served a prior suspension for domestic abuse. Initially, the Astros jumped to defend him, defying the accounts of journalists who were present. Days later, they issued an apology and Taubman was dismissed. Little did any of us know that the PR nightmare for the Astros was just beginning.

After the piece in The Athletic came out and Twitter collectively crowdsourced video evidence of the Astros sign stealing, the media covered everything as if it were the gospel. This included widely discredited theories of buzzers, whistles, and other nefarious ways of stealing signs. A burner account claiming to be the niece of Carlos Beltran implicated the Astros and Yankees for wearing buzzers under their uniforms. The Astros were already in the headlines, so the producers at major sports networks made the decision, then and there, to try to get the uncorroborated scoop from the later debunked Twitter account. It was irresponsible. It was damaging. Most importantly, it was disproven.
Things snowballed for the Astros from there, partly by their own doing, and partly by Major League Baseball commissioner, Rob Manfred.

With sign stealing, Manfred had his tenure defining moment, just as his predecessor had steroids. Complaints about sign stealing had been filed with the league office dating back to at least 2015. Each time, the investigation ended quietly, with a "nothing to see here" note being sent out. Manfred was either complicit or ignorant with regards to sign stealing. In retrospect, the investigations into prior complaints are the equivalent of a police officer pulling you over and simply asking, "Were you speeding?" and then letting you off with a warning. This happened up to the 2017 Yankees/Red Sox complaints. Even after finding that the Red Sox were relaying signals in real time using video and an apple watch, the commissioner slapped them on the wrist and issued a statement to the league that was the equivalent of, "Don't do that again. I'm serious this time. Really. Don't do it."

When the Astros case fell on his desk accompanied with so much evidence in 2019, he had no choice but to address the issue. In this moment, he opted to give the players immunity. He argued that he could not punish players who had moved on to new organizations, as that would cause an undue burden to teams that had not engaged in cheating. It was clear, he would punish the organization by stripping draft picks and cash. For an aging veteran team, taking draft picks was the start of a solid punishment. He could have issued the Astros a ban from the 2020 Postseason, but just like punishing the players, he deemed that unfair to the likes of Greinke and other newly acquired Astros who would endure the punishment of the crimes committed by predecessors. Manfred had the opportunity to vacate the 2017 World Series title from the Astros, but chose not to. The biggest reason? Publicly, he acknowledged precedent. These punishments, or lack thereof, have fallen flat in the baseball world.
If you listen to him speak, however, you hear him acknowledge that there were complaints with regards to numerous other teams as well. He couldn't strip the Astros of a title for breaking a rule that was being broken by numerous other teams as well. Industry sources report that if he had suspended the Astros, he would have opened the door to being forced to suspend as much as half of the league.

There is this notion that Rob Manfred is covering for the Astros. When you step back and listen, however, you realize that by not punishing the players, Manfred was actually covering for the rest of the league. Manfred was gift wrapped a chance to make sign stealing look like a one team issue, and by choosing to isolate only the Astros, he has made all the other complaints about sign stealing disappear, if only for now. If there's anything we have learned over the years, it is that no secret stays buried forever. Just as steroid users were outed one by one, the story of sign stealing is still being written. There will be more teams, more names, and more stories. If you had a favorite player in the late 90s or early 2000s, your greatest hope was that they didn't end up on a steroids report. If you're a fan of modern day baseball, your hope should be that your team isn't implicated in doing the exact same thing that was being done in Houston.

One major league manager told The Athletic, "It's an issue that permeates through the whole league." In 2018, esteemed baseball writer Tom Verducci reported for Sports Illustrated that "Many clubs now have as many as six high magnification cameras installed in their home ballpark specifically designed to steal signs from opponents." The article goes on to detail how the Dodgers organization had an entire team deployed just to decode signs. It should be noted that there was no implication that the Dodgers were relaying these signs in real time. "The big market teams have an advantage there," said another manager. "Now everybody is suspicious-and teams are suspicious because they're pulling the same tricks they're worried about the other guy pulling."

So why haven't we heard about what happened on other teams? This answer runs deep, but there are a few simple truths that the logical baseball fan should acknowledge. First, the Astros had a whistleblower RAT who had an axe to grind. By his own admissions, Mike Fiers has a strained relationship with the Astros. In his communication with The Athletic, he insisted that he just wanted to keep a level playing field by outing his former employer. It should be remembered, of course, that Fiers was famously left off the playoff roster and subsequently released in the off season. He went from making $3.45MM with Houston in 2017, to $1.8MM with Oakland in 2018. Had he stayed in the arbitration process, he would have received an anticipated $5MM or more, so while he may have been looking out for the little man, he most certainly had personal motivation as well.

After witnessing the vitriol the Astros have endured along with the distrust players around the league have expressed for Fiers, there is enormous pressure to keep a lid on anything that may have happened. A recent podcast featuring Joe Kelly alluded to the fact that he felt the Astros should have lied to protect their manager instead of ratting him out. Kelly has been outspoken in his disgust with the Astros, but this does make you wonder if his problem is with them cheating or with them admitting to cheating. Kelly, after all, was a member of the 17-18 Red Sox teams who were also investigated for similar misdeeds. It's not a leap to suggest that members of a franchise that dabbled in sign stealing would have agreed to a diluted account of what may have transpired.

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astros4545 said:

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Deluxe said:

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Good stuff. Crazy how bad we sucked at getting production out of our pitching prospects before Click got here.

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