The Houston Astros have been finally been punished for their cheating allegations. On Monday (1/13), MLB handed down the harshest punishment a club has ever received at once. Manager AJ Hinch and GM Jeff Lunhow both received 1 year bans, for their actions in the Astros 2017 scandal, which was based around using electronic equipment to illegally steal opposing teams signs during games.
Hinch and Lunhow were both then relived of their duties, by team owner Jim Crane in a press conference following the release of the penalties (Read full report here cglrhmlrwwbkacty27l7.pdf).
Other penalties include, losses of 1st and 2nd round draft picks in 2020 &2021, while also receiving a fine of $5 million, which is the most baseball fine a club.
Players were understandably not penalized, as if you would penalize one of them, you would have to do it to all of them and it wouldn’t be fair to the players that didn’t take part in this cheating. This is a big relief for Mets fans, as though mentioned in the report, new manger Carlos Beltran (Who was a player on the 2017 Astros), did not receive repercussion, and even though he did start the scandal it seems it wasn’t him who took it too another level. It was Red Sox Manager, Alex Cora. The investigation concluded with Alex Cora being the mastermind behind this scandal, but the reason why he hasn’t been penalized yet, is because the former bench coach of the Astros, took this thing to Boston, and although it was too a lesser degree, and wasn’t used in the 2018 postseason, like it was for Houston, while also no camera was intentionally placed in CF to steal sighs like Houston did.
However, it was still used at Red Sox home games during the 108-54 regular season, which is why the fact that Boston went 89-73 this past season with a very similar team looks really shady. Right now, the MLB, is still investigating the 2018 Red Sox , and determining their fate. But one thing is for sure, the punishment Alex Cora receives, will be “Far longer” than what Hinch and Lunhow got.
So we have back to back championships tainted in the 2017 Astros, and the 2018 Red Sox. It was also in the report, that coaches at the minor league levels played a huge role in this, which is likely to lead to some more firings.
In the investigation, they went through “68 witnesses, including 23 former and current Astros players”, while also going through hundreds of thousand of emails” as well as cellphones.
Comentários