Video of Altuve

[Moose Milligan]

43 minutes ago, Enjoy Terror said:

You haven’t looked. Manfred told all teams not to comment.

Did not see that.  

29 minutes ago, Uli2001 said:

The point was not that the cheating helped Altuve on that HR, but that Chapman and the Yankees knew or suspected that they were cheating.

Understood.  But I think most teams are probably suspicious of other teams cheating.  Players talk, of course.  I'm players were suspicious of the Yankees too.  After all, they're the Evil Empire  

26 minutes ago, Ripken said:

Yeah, not simple, but doing nothing is terrible.  I'm not in a position to see/know the evidence.  And, yes, players have moved elsewhere.  I don't care.  It's January, teams have time to make other arrangements.  It's not like some major hitter has left the Astros in the last two years and signed a big deal elsewhere (even then I wouldn't care).  Altuve, Bregman, Springer and anyone else who we know benefited from this need a year off. 

There are some people seriously underplaying this.  We will never know for sure, so we don't need the debate, but I absolutely believe Houston does not win the 17 championship without this scandal.  I had no opinion of that franchise at all prior to this.  There is no bias in me.  Hell, you could make a case it helped the Orioles get Adley instead of picking second that year and kept the damn Yankees from winning.  That certainly doesn't make it acceptable.  I don't know for sure, but when you consider the league wide ramifications of this -- hirings, firings, trades, FA deals, releases, W/L records, stats, draft order, playoff participation, gate revenue, etc -- it is massive.  And it happened TWO years in a row.  We haven't even see the results of that clusterF yet.  Cora should get a lifetime ban.

I agree, doing nothing is terrible.  If you're going to punish the ringleaders and the franchises, not punishing the players isn't a good look, either.  Hard to prove who did what but there certainly seems to be players that without a doubt benefitted.  

Also hard to prove that Houston doesn't win the title in '17 without benefitting from this but I am inclined to agree with you.  

I'd like to see Cora get a lifetime ban because...well, I already hated him to begin with.

 

[Tony-OH]

10 hours ago, sgillespie31 said:

I don't think he's looking to be outraged, just pointing out that throwing at players has at least some chance of injuring another human being and therefore probably should be avoided. 

He isn't saying that the risk is not minimal or that systemic injury is common, but rather that injuries have occured and intentionally throwing a hard projectile at another human is pretty ridiculous.

Just the vibes I got.

This is what he said.

15 hours ago, Can_of_corn said:

Folks have been talking about bean balls and when I push back I'm assured folks are "only joking".

Brain trauma is one of the few things I won't joke about.

 

13 hours ago, Can_of_corn said:

Your kidding right?

What do you think a concussion is?

Ryan Freel did have CTE when he killed himself.

 

13 hours ago, Can_of_corn said:

Honestly not sure how any rational person can not come down on the side of intentionally hitting someone = bad.

i don't care if the individual risk is small, it's a needless risk.

He had a handful of incidents over a 100 years of baseball that he tried to use to prove his weak point that getting hit by a pitch causes "brain trauma" or could cause a person to kill themselves after having CTE. Both of which are extreme examples and as I proved with Freel, it wasn't getting hit in the head by pitches that caused his CTE. 

I understand that the game polices itself, so I don't have issues with guys getting hit on occasion after they went afoul of the "inside baseball rules" as long as it's no where near the head. Just like fighting is part of hockey, I have no issues with a guy getting hit if he deserves it. If that makes me irrational on your eyes or others, that's fine. 

The Astros players clearly cheated and they potentially cost other players/coaches money or maybe even careers. I could understand if that home run they hit off a guy sent him to the minors, that guy could have potentially lost 100s of thousands of dollars. I certainly could understand that pitcher, if given the opportunity in a non game altering way, drilling that player. I wouldn't blame him a bit.



 

[Tony-OH]

2 hours ago, hoosiers said:

I really haven't changed my opinion that the punishment is a bit harsh because I don't believe MLB has done a sufficient job of investigating other organizations.  There are rumors out about camera based cheating on the Dodgers and NYY besides the BoSox and the Astros.  I have seen the Jays mentioned as cheaters in addition to the Os suspicions of the Jays.  

I feel bad for the Rays and the Indians.  IMO, the vocal players on these teams hint shows the disgust on how things went down (the other team cheated and by implication their team didn't).  

If the Astros were the only team doing this, then I would change my mind that the penalty wasn't harsh enough and that some players should be fined, suspended or thrown out of the game.  Would love to see the players' union defend the cheaters while also representing a majority of players super-pissed at the cheaters.

I posted earlier.  The owner, GM and manager of every MLB team should have to sign a statement saying there was no camera/technology based cheating in their organization for the past five seasons.  Penalties ought to be severe for anyone signing that paper who turns out to be a liar.  

That's a good idea honestly. Make them root themselves out.

[Tony-OH]

58 minutes ago, atomic said:

Sammy Sosa got suspended 8 games for accidentally using a bat, he meant for batting practice , to be used in a game that had some cork in it. 

Chris Sabo got 7 game suspension for using someone else's bat (He doesn't remember whom) that had cork in it.  

Craig Nettles got 10 games for using a bat he received from a fan that had 8 super balls in it. 

There is plenty of precedent for suspending players for cheating. Even minor cheating. 

This is a great point. Precedents have been set for players caught cheating. Cheating by using electronics to steal catcher signs is certainly cheating and all of the players that can be proven that cheated should be suspended some amount of games.

[Tony-OH]

38 minutes ago, Frobby said:

I haven’t seen it, partly because my wife doesn’t like war movies.     I’ve missed out on many highly regarded war movies like Apocolypse Now, Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July, and lots of others for that reason.   I only saw Saving Private Ryan on TV when my wife wasn’t around.    

Fairly certain it is possible in this day and age to watch a movie without your wife around. But I could be mistaken!

[Philip]

I have a comment to make about the cheating issue, but before that I want to address this beaning subject:

I oppose throwing at anybody. Under any circumstances. If I were going to throw at someone it would be with a 60 mile an hour straight ball aimed at the gluteus.

 When a pitcher hauls off and throws a 100 mile an hour fastball at the head, that’s another thing entirely. We have frequently seen such a pitch and the guy who throws it should be severely punished. Meanwhile, I understand where corn is coming from, but he is using an extreme example to define the general rule.

and its tangential to the subject at hand which is “cheating; who did what and who knew about it”?

Hinch knew about it and took no steps to combat it. He says he disabled some cameras. I am highly skeptical of that because it smacks of tokenism. He didn’t say anything about calling the team together and giving a speech or a lecture about honor integrity and about how cheating isn’t necessary with this team.  Wouldn’t a manager of a team do such a thing under such circumstances? And yet he didn’t. He didn’t even claim to have done so. 

 Why not? The reasons why not are all bad, and all of them stems from the idea that cheating wasn’t bad enough to take serious action. If we grant that, then it is easy to accept that such an attitude is common throughout baseball. And if we accept that, Then in order for the sport to have any integrity at all, we must seriously investigate and severely punish anyone involved, including Jose Altuve and my own favorite Collin McHugh, who will break my heart as much as Raffy did.

It is a strawman to bring up any other situation and say, “well they didn’t do anything when X happened.” That’s a foolish argument to make. Are you suggesting that because they ignored a problem then it’s OK to ignore it now? The flaws in that suggestion should be obvious to anybody with opposable thumbs,  and therefore it is a waste of time to mention it at all. 

The investigation should be very thorough and very complete, and everybody who is remotely involved should be punished. It should start with Joey Coral who did not even feel the need to acknowledge what he did. The first step to redemption is acknowledging what you have done, and Cora hasn’t even done that, nor have the Red Sox.

so it started with Houston but here’s a fervent hope it will continue with Boston and not stop till the problem is dealt with.

[Going Underground]

Want to see a really interesting documentary about scandal and cheating watch Icarus. The Russians are still trying to take out or get the Russian whistleblower back. The Russians just got banned again from the Olympics. It is on Netflix.

[atomic]

9 minutes ago, Tony-OH said:

Fairly certainly it is possible in this day and age to watch a movie without your wife around. But I could be mistaken!

I was single for a while in 2010.  4 different women made me watch "He's just not that into you" with them and 1 made me watch "Eat Pray Love".    And I even watched "Sex and the City 2" a couple of times.   Let me tell you Sex and City 2 is not a good movie by anyone's viewpoint.   If I could get through them a wife should be able to make it through a war movie here or there. 

[Philip]

22 minutes ago, atomic said:

I was single for a while in 2010.  4 different women made me watch "He's just not that into you" with them and 1 made me watch "Eat Pray Love".    And I even watched "Sex and the City 2" a couple of times.   Let me tell you Sex and City 2 is not a good movie by anyone's viewpoint.   If I could get through them a wife should be able to make it through a war movie here or there. 

Amen brother!

[Moose Milligan]

47 minutes ago, Tony-OH said:

This is a great point. Precedents have been set for players caught cheating. Cheating by using electronics to steal catcher signs is certainly cheating and all of the players that can be proven that cheated should be suspended some amount of games.

MLB continues to get caught with their pants down.  First on steroids, then on electronic cheating.  I guess it's hard to tell what the next thing will be but it seems that MLB is always operating from a reactive place where they have to put out fires and then figure out how to explain them.  Selig didn't get it, Manfred doesn't seem to get it, either.

[LookinUp]

7 hours ago, sportsfan8703 said:

If the Altuve story catches on people are going to want him to face a significant punishment. The avg fan already thinks he’s roiding. 

His meteoric rise has caught my attention over the years. Same with others, from many teams. I did see this, for 2017:

Altuve OPS: Home = .834, Away = 1.081

Bregman OPS: Home = .787, Away = .863

Not exactly what you would expect to see if they were using this method a lot. Maybe it was focused on high-leverage games?

2 hours ago, atomic said:

Sammy Sosa got suspended 8 games for accidentally using a bat, he meant for batting practice , to be used in a game that had some cork in it. 

Chris Sabo got 7 game suspension for using someone else's bat (He doesn't remember whom) that had cork in it.  

Craig Nettles got 10 games for using a bat he received from a fan that had 8 super balls in it. 

There is plenty of precedent for suspending players for cheating. Even minor cheating. 

Lol re: those terrible excuses.

[Frobby]

1 hour ago, Tony-OH said:

Fairly certain it is possible in this day and age to watch a movie without your wife around. But I could be mistaken!

I like spending time with my wife.  

Truth is, 6 months a year I’m watching baseball if I’m watching anything with my wife not around (or with her around for that matter).    The rest of the time I’m watching news shows or one of the streaming shows that we both like.   My guilty pleasure when she’s not around is Curb Your Enthusiasm, which I love but makes her tense.    I’ve only seen about 2.5 seasons of that, so I’ve got hours of watching to do in my rare “alone time.”

[bobmc]

1 hour ago, Tony-OH said:

Fairly certain it is possible in this day and age to watch a movie without your wife around. But I could be mistaken!

LOL what was your old mantra - "Walk the walk if you talk the talk"?  I need evidence!  

[Tony-OH]

20 minutes ago, bobmc said:

LOL what was your old mantra - "Walk the walk if you talk the talk"?  I need evidence!  

Haha, I believe you are referring to "Actions speak louder than words!"

My wife and I have our shows we watch together and out shows we watch apart because the other won't like it. 

Buuuuuttttt, we are getting way off topic here.

Back the cheating Astros!

[Just Regular]

Kiley McDaniel with a long piece at FG:

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/whats-next-for-the-astros/

His characterization of Elias's AGM portfolio as "everything but the MLB team" and a pioneering structure was a new perspective to me.  And if we worry about brain drain of our guys, it is a good point Stearns in Milwaukee may be ahead of our ex-Astros if they try to woo someone back.  He's accomplished more and come closer to finishing a job with his starter team.