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Hi, you are on a baseball message board.

I would not say that if I didn't know them. These are former students. Not just people i met. I. do know people from the Russian and Chinese Olympic teams. I believe what they've told me and not surprised of the bans they've received. You can make all the guesses and suppositions you want. You are going to be wrong in most cases.

It's insane to me how strongly people believe in speculation that results from personal bias/prejudice. The lack of need for anything resembling objective evidence in our culture is just depressing.

I won't share the full list, but Robert (1), Kopech (11), Madrigal (14), Vaughn (35) made the list.

Let's all reminisce about this story: https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/astros/2018/04/21/justin-verlander-tim-anderson-unwritten-rules/539194002/ Where Justin Verlander - knowingly cheating and breaking actual rules - decided to play the "unwritten rules" fun police against Tim Anderson. It's amazing; McCann and Verlander care so much about the unwritten rules, but don't give a fuck about the actual rules.

He's generally a moron

Its human growth hormone not testosterone. Two very different hormones.

This was over 30 years ago. Statute of limitations is up. C'mon Black Jack. Seems a guy is trying to make himself relevant again, and I am no fan of LaRussa. But this is ridiculous.

Spare me the excuses. These guys are complete trash; years of calling out other teams with shit like this: All while cheating their way to a title. Their lies, their hypocrisy, and their soap boxes... all complete trash. I have said that everyone tries to gain edges, and some go too far, but the sanctimonious way in which the Astros presented themselves and attacked others is so comical now that this has all come out. What a disgrace. Not a peep out of anyone either; except for fake denials or nonsensical "it really didn't help" BS. At least Beltran owned his mistake and made zero excuses; he also never accused others of doing what he was doing. Verlander is a clown.

FIFY: Robert CF, Moncada 3B, Betts RF, Eloy LF, Grandal C, Abreu DH, Vaughn 1B, Anderson SS, Madrigal 2B

McDowell joined the team in 1987, the year after LaRussa was fired. Sooo. no.

Well he never actually played for LaRussa so

Soxtalk can really suck. You get a little excited about something you read...you post it and then the howling negatives come out of the woodwork to tell you how wrong and stupid you are. Ok Vaughn isnt Bellinger...hes Frank Thomas 2.0. Better? .300 hitter with 30+ homers and 100 walks hitting in a lineup with 4 other superstars. Im gonna go dream somewhere else.

Especially as to how it translates across nearly all factors in life - many much more important than baseball. It really is depressing.

Yeah, agreed. If he has an exemption, it's for health reasons and he has abnormally low levels. This just allows him to use it to get his levels up to the same point that other healthy players have.

I will say, I have no idea what camera's were good enough in the 1980's to zoom in from the outfield stands into the fingers of a catcher... But I don't know why Jack would make this up; well, he does hate LaRussa but still. Odds are this is true, and makes me even happier that we fired this ass hat.

Covey and Lopez do

there should be a rule that if you land at #7 four years in a row your front office has to be fired.

I don't think Trout needs,any help.

People will believe anything

This may be the best single argument as to why we don't vacate championships. The fact is, one team got caught cheating, but it's fairly clear a number of teams are cheating in kind.

No I don't. For example, there's only 2 members of the Sox I would bet the beach house on, but common sense tells us more of them are taking PED's. PED use is rampant throughout sports, but I certainly don't think everyone is using.

You might also meet some medical staff from the Russian Olympic team that will tell you they're legit. That doesn't mean they're being honest. This reminds me of when MMA fans thought Vitor Belfort and Jon Jones were legit. If there's one thing the last 30ish years of sports has taught us is that extreme statistical outliers are almost always doping. If it seems to good to be true...

Thanks doc. So Rocco baldelli had genetics to be an elite athlete but had no strength by 28. Guess his elite athlete Gene's should have overcome any issues.

I don't quite get why mlb is so high on vaughn. Vaughn is a good prospect but his mlb.com ranking must be mostly on his prospect pedigree. His first pro year was good but with an 832 ops not outstanding. That is ok for his first year but when I rank a right handed college 1b top20 ish overall I want to either see him absolutely destroy lower minors (1000+ ops) or ideally perform at upper majors. If he rakes in AA next year I can justify a top20 ranking but for a lower minor only college guy imo the rank is a bit aggresive. This is nothing against him as a prospect, he has the potential to be a plus first baseman in the majors, just saying I have not seen enough to rank him top30 yet.

Both of these are true. Had there been a rule on the books, agreed to by the players union, that allowed management to suspend the players for this type of cheating, MLB would likely not have offered immunity, at least not to more than a handful of them. Had that rule existed, that whole roster (Keuchel included) would probably be facing some sort of suspension for violating it. But since no rule existed, it was not worth creating a new fight with the players union that would have lasted years and prolonged the investigation indefinitely, so the sensible move was to offer clear immunity to the players to get a full statement from them on this part of the incident.

This still does not explain why they were granted immunity. This is just why they would have a tough time punishing them. I'm sticking with the published reports that they were granted immunity to tell what happened and who knew what as opposed to your version.

I was ready to run through a wall last night after watching this.

How can you ask how he is salty? He was not part of the organization during the time in which he is speaking so he has second hand knowledge and is speaking as if he was part of the process. It would be somewhat credible if he was int eh organization when this happened or explained how it was handed down from LaRussa to the organization and carried forward to his time. He is failing to tell this part of the story which is pretty important.

Jim has probably seen like 10 ab's combined from everyone on his list. lol And when I saw that he had quotes about each player from GM's and player personnel I thought he was going to have quotes from like scouts and stuff that weren't with the organization that the guy plays for; even if anonymous. Rick Hahn thinks highly of Luis Robert? NO WAY, JIM!

Holy shit.. I expect all 4.. But not Kopech and Madrigal that high... How is Bowden viewed?

The argument is about using technology to cheat. Apples and Oranges.

I don't think stealing signs is all that bad. I played in college and if the signs were so obvious that I can use them, fine. I think stealing signs is almost expected, which is why pitchers and catchers have different series of signs when a baserunner is at 2nd.

I've some bad news about the 1919 White Sox as well

Can't do opening day but picked up tickets for Wed April 8th vs Mariners and Wed May 20th vs the Rox.

Does what they did, getting signs, make them truly better? If the tigers got every pitch tipped next season they would still be one of the worst teams in the league. Maybe it helped maybe it didn't. Farquhar realized it and changed it up. We need to stop acting like thhis is some huge deal because it's baseball or football or whatever. This gets more people talking about action than something that could actually effect your life. It's a game.

Maybe you are right, but I looked at the hire as extremely important. The Guillen era was done. Whatever was left from the 2005 team was aging, and the franchise couldn't rest on past laurels anymore. The Ventura hire was interesting - for one day. Otherwise it made little sense. Everyone took it on the chin in 2013. After the Sox got slaughtered by the Cubs, things only worsened. Board members were quoted in the Tribune as saying they just left everything to Jerry. And since Jerry wasn't talking publicly, the appearance was that no one cared the team was on its way to its worst season in 43 years, coming one loss short of 100. So far it is the beginning of a losing streak that has lasted seven seasons. I remember one pop up in between the mound and the plate and three Sox infielders converged only to let it fall in the grass about 10 feet in front of home. Ah, the memories. I'm like most White Sox fans. I prefer to remember Ventura the third baseman, not Ventura the manager.

According to Scott Brosius's kid on instagram. Can we relax with running away with this stuff?

Aren't we all murderers, when you think about it?

Agreed, it's awesome and there's such an insanely high skill ceiling on it that the stuff people can do is mind blowing. But, if you haven't picked it up yourself and have no interest in picking it up yourself, I totally get the what's the big deal reaction.

I occasionally will watch some, and it's for the exact same reason I watch baseball. I enjoy watching people compete in something I myself enjoy at a level that I will never hope to reach. The house I lived in in college got really into Rocket League, and eventually heard about huge tournaments that were being streamed/televised and said screw it and sat and watched it and drank like any other sports game and it was entertaining as all shit.

I once asked him how he can sit there and watch someone else play a video game and he responded how I could sit there and watch someone else golf or play baseball. Little brat had me there. lol

This is a fact. You don’t hear about it because it doesn’t need to be broadcast via the traditional mass media channels you see your sports on. It’s all happening online, but it’s there. Some of these leagues are selling out arenas. Blizzard is starting to build its own arenas instead of renting existing ones. The corporate ad revenue is growing very fast.

^ live streaming videogames is bigger than you think, and it is still a relatively young "industry". It has only been around for 10-15 years. People are becoming millionaires from streaming videogames. Big names like Michael Jordan, Drake, Jerry Jones and many others are investing in esports teams. This is an industry that will blow up in the future.

I don't really have anything against Robin Ventura then or now. But I will never understand why took a job he didn't want, or why it was offered to him in the first place. I only hope future managerial hires don't go this way.

It's mind boggling how much a guy who is going back to get his degree, and volunteers as an unpaid assistant at the school where he became famous, bothers some people. Your lives can't be that pathetic.

For context, I’m an English White Sox fan based just north of London. I hadn’t even been to America when I feel in love with the sport. NFL doesn’t have England to itself. Simply MLB got here late. Europe is for the taking. Every veiwer lost to Esports or the internet or whatever is easily replaceable over here. English fans in particular are used to slower sports (test cricket lasts five days). Baseball is far more interesting than cricket and that’s coming from someone who grew up playing it daily.

Not really. I'm in my mid 20's and I don't know anyone who watches that stuff. It's more of a niche thing. It doesn't compete with professional sports, in the least.

Esports are on the rise and they aren't slowing down. Watching live streaming of videogames is big with the younger generation. It's free to watch and you can interact with the gamers through the chat. I think it will cut into the viewership of all major sports