February 8, 20206 yr 1 hour ago, SoxAce said: Heard that on the radio last night. Manfred is looking worse and worse with each passing day. Just despicable. I would disagree. He gave them the largest possible fine, the worst punishment ever for the draft and the GM and the manager was fired. This is the worst punishment ever for cheating. He couldn't really go to much further than that without problems with the owners who are his "bosses."
February 8, 20206 yr The whole thing was a joke. MLB investigated the bare minimum and then tried to sweep it under the rug. What they reported was the tip of the iceburg and they wanted no part of doing anymore than that. Every god damn person in that entire organization knew exactly what was going on. Lots of really smart people suddenly playing dumb. They should all be banned from baseball and Crane should have been forced to sell the team.
February 9, 20206 yr 9 hours ago, Harold's Leg Lift said: The whole thing was a joke. MLB investigated the bare minimum and then tried to sweep it under the rug. What they reported was the tip of the iceburg and they wanted no part of doing anymore than that. Every god damn person in that entire organization knew exactly what was going on. Lots of really smart people suddenly playing dumb. They should all be banned from baseball and Crane should have been forced to sell the team. This would never happen because every owner knows their team has done similar things, though not to this extent. The owners arent going to "fire" another owner because they might be next.
February 13, 20206 yr Author "Our opinion is that this didn't impact the game." - Jim Crane "I didn't say it didn't impact the game." - Jim Crane 55 seconds later
February 13, 20206 yr Author Jim Crane: "I don't think I should be held accountable." LOL; yeah, I run this organization but why the heck should I be accountable for what my team did!
February 13, 20206 yr Bregman is like THE ORDER OF BLAME ACCORDING TO ME IS... THE ORGANIZATION THE TEAM . . . . . . . . me. But only slightly
February 13, 20206 yr On February 7, 2020 at 10:05 AM, Pants Rowland said: Wait, who are you?! I am a man. A simple man. A man with a van. If you too have a van, we could be men with ven.
February 13, 20206 yr It’s going to be real interesting to see what the stats look like for Bregman, Correa, Springer, and Altuve. Still good players, but if they have real differences in hard contact rates, walks, strikeouts, xbh, compared to 2018 and 2019, it’s pretty much going to confirm they took cheating to the next level after the trash can stuff in 2017. This season is going to be a helluva thing.
February 13, 20206 yr 16 minutes ago, flavum said: It’s going to be real interesting to see what the stats look like for Bregman, Correa, Springer, and Altuve. Still good players, but if they have real differences in hard contact rates, walks, strikeouts, xbh, compared to 2018 and 2019, it’s pretty much going to confirm they took cheating to the next level after the trash can stuff in 2017. This season is going to be a helluva thing. It won't 'confirm' anything. People will treat it as hard evidence. But it's not.
February 13, 20206 yr 7 minutes ago, mqr said: It won't 'confirm' anything. People will treat it as hard evidence. But it's not. This isn’t a court of law. If the stats significantly go down for these guys, what else are people going to think? That they just quit cold turkey after 2017? Nobody really thinks that already. Edited February 13, 20206 yr by flavum
February 13, 20206 yr 30 minutes ago, flavum said: This isn’t a court of law. If the stats significantly go down for these guys, what else are people going to think? That they just quit cold turkey after 2017? Nobody really thinks that already. People can think whatever they want, the Astros haven't earned the benefit of the doubt. It's just wrong to assume a dip in numbers is some gotcha moment. It's possible they cheated they're balls off and their numbers go up anyway when the cheating is taken away. A dip in numbers doesn't damn them, just as much as numbers staying flat don't absolve them. Edited February 13, 20206 yr by mqr
February 13, 20206 yr MLB better hope their numbres dont drastically change, its just going to add to the feeling that they swept the buzzers under the rug.
February 13, 20206 yr 6 minutes ago, reiks12 said: MLB better hope their numbres dont drastically change, its just going to add to the feeling that they swept the buzzers under the rug. Exactly, and I think that’s what happened. Either Manfred knows for sure that it’s rampant in MLB, or he’s afraid to find out. He wants to keep this nice and tidy with the 2017 Astros, and to a lesser extent, the 2018 Red Sox. Edited February 13, 20206 yr by flavum
February 13, 20206 yr There is a certain ambivalence because all teams have cheated. Drawing a moral line is difficult. You have to enforce violations in every case, real-time or not.
February 13, 20206 yr I hope pitchers take this into their own hands and start drilling these pricks all next season. Fucking cheaters. First pitch to start the season against the Astros should be a HBP, with many more to come.
February 13, 20206 yr Author 1 hour ago, flavum said: Exactly, and I think that’s what happened. Either Manfred knows for sure that it’s rampant in MLB, or he’s afraid to find out. He wants to keep this nice and tidy with the 2017 Astros, and to a lesser extent, the 2018 Red Sox. I can't emphasize this enough, but Manfred works for the owners. Manfred had no power to punish the players, and he wasn't going to turn around and invoke all those penalties on the people he represents. His job was to protect them, and he did everything in his power to blame those whom he did not represent (Beltran, Cora and other players and coaches). Manfred's job was not to expose the truth, it was to manage the PR disaster to the best of his abilities while handing down some perceived punishment that he could push out as being "the harshest of it's kind" via his MLB PR reporter mouthpieces. Manfred does not care about cleaning up the game and maintaining a sense of integrity; he cares about the public perception his owners receive from the backlash. This is why no one will even deny the buzzer thing; everyone using the catch phrase "not that I know of" which gives them plausible deniability (claiming they didn't personally due it) while not accusing any of their teammates of wrong doing. The fact that no one will release a hard denial might as well be as good of an indicator that it happened as anything else.
February 13, 20206 yr It infuriates me that Manfred let Crane get off so easy without pushing him to admit this helped his team.
February 13, 20206 yr Author 2 hours ago, mqr said: People can think whatever they want, the Astros haven't earned the benefit of the doubt. It's just wrong to assume a dip in numbers is some gotcha moment. It's possible they cheated they're balls off and their numbers go up anyway when the cheating is taken away. A dip in numbers doesn't damn them, just as much as numbers staying flat don't absolve them. While I agree with your premise, it is really really difficult to ignore the strike out rate declines in their best hitters. The team had significant turnover, so using the raw K numbers between 2016 and 2017 does no good, but looking at the individuals who still remained we saw a lot of unprecedented K-rate declines that haven't been matched by 99% of other players as they improved in that area.
February 13, 20206 yr Author Just now, bmags said: It infuriates me that Manfred let Crane get off so easy without pushing him to admit this helped his team. It didn't help though... even though I never said it didn't help. Let's move on. I shouldn't be held accountable because I didn't actually play the game. Imagine the CEO of Wells Fargo saying he didn't personally register countless unapproved credit cards and accounts while he was in charge, it was the people who worked for him, so why should he be held accountable?
February 14, 20206 yr I've mentioned it before, but I wonder how bad it will get this year with HBPs and subsequent brawls when teams play the Astros. Obviously it would feel a little sweet seeing Bregman and company get beamed, but you don't want anybody getting seriously hurt. These guys are going to take a beating this season.
February 14, 20206 yr Brooks Boyer needs to call Keuchel and tell him to stfu. The more he talks, the stupider he sounds.
February 14, 20206 yr 7 minutes ago, Jack Parkman said: Brooks Boyer needs to call Keuchel and tell him to stfu. The more he talks, the stupider he sounds. Agreed, although that may just be a job for Hahn. The couple times Keuchel has spoken on the Astros, he’s partially said some ok things, and then he says the wrong thing. He needs to stop saying “that’s what baseball was at the time” even if it’s true. He knew his team was cheating at the time, and he needs to own it, or just move on with his new team and win the right way.
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