In case you missed the story, the 2017 Houston Astros seem to have been aided in their quest for the World Series title by stealing the signs the catchers and pitchers were interchanging in regards to pitches about to be thrown. This sign stealing scheme with the Astros was so complicated, every level of the team, from front office, to coaches, to the players, was involved. We know there was a spread sheet database the Astros used to keep track of the opposing pitchers, and there are allegations of a buzzer system worn by some players, giving them a heads up to what pitch was about to be thrown. Other players were keyed off by whistles and bagging garbage cans.
(Jose Altuve, an Astro accused of wearing a buzzer system to tell him what pitch was coming, desperately tying to prevent his teammates from touching his jersey as he runs home)
All you have to do is look at the batting average of the Astros at home and away during their playoff runs to see something was going on.
The Astros weren't even close to the same team on the road as they were at home. While it's not illegal for a batter to try to look for certain 'tells' a pitcher has to try to give them an idea of what kind of pitch is coming (similar to a poker player looking for bluffs), it's illegal for a baseball team as an organization to install an entire system to give the home team the undeniable advantage of knowing what pitch was about to be thrown. Many major league players have said there were a lot of pitches being hit by Houston in that series which not even the greatest hitters of all time could've hit.
They cheated, plain and simple. They cheated as an organization, not as one or two individuals. Many members of the 2017 Astros have now admitted they were stealing signs. They should not be able to keep the World Series title they cheated to win.
Major League Baseball is going to allow them to keep the title.
The defense the Astros are putting forward is that knowing what pitch is coming doesn't necessarily mean they had an advantage. That's such crap, you could fertilize Texas with it. If a player knows what pitch is about to be thrown against them, they have a massive advantage. Not only will a hitter have the ability to score runs, knowing what pitch is coming allows them to 'catch up' to the pitch, and foul it off, turning what should have been a strike three (and the end of the at bat) into a foul (and another chance). Strike outs become hits or walks. Pitchers are no longer facing 3 batters, but 5 or 6. The pitch count grows from 12 to 15 up to 25 to 30. Knowing what pitch was coming allowed the Astros to grind down the opposing pitching staffs, turning loses into wins.
This team wide corruption elevates the crime to a level of 'nuclear option,' the stripping of the championship trophy. When an individual player abuses drugs, drinks and drive, or is in trouble for abuse, they're not wholesale affecting the game, hence the punishment is for the player as the individual. When Pete Rose was caught betting on baseball, including betting on games he was managing, you still didn't punish the team as a whole because this was a case where a single individual was responsible for the questionable decisions of the organization. They threw the book at Rose, banning him for life, but that's because his individual offenses actually did shatter the integrity of the game. The punishment fit the crime.
What about steroids and performance enhancing drugs (PED's)? Once again, it is cheating, giving a player an unfair advantage. In my opinion, Major League Baseball made a mistake when they did not zero out the stats of every player caught using drugs to enhance their ability. If you can't tell when a player was cheating, then give them no official statistics for their career. If MLB would've done that, it would've cleared up performance enhancing drugs in baseball almost immediately. Nothing matters more to players than their stats, and the money those stats get them.
To my knowledge, even though there were some questions in regards to the the Oakland A's of the late 80's, no baseball team had a wholesale steroids usage scheme in place. For a scandal that large, you need to look at the Russian Olympic teams, where the athletes were pretty much forced to take performance enhancing drugs. Their PED usage was so bad, they've been forbidden from competing in the Olympics under theRussian flag. Even today, the New York Times had a story of yet another Russian winter Olympian from the 2014 Olympics in Sochi being caught having taken illegal performance enhancers. That biathlete potentially losing their gold medal will actually cost the Russians their overall total medal win from that Olympics, something they still insist was legit.
Major League baseball had only one other scandal of this magnitude, the 1919 Chicago White Sox, or as they are still referred to today, the Black Sox. In that scandal, 8 Chicago White Sox players conspired to throw the World Series to the Cincinnati Reds, in exchange for money from a gambling syndicate. The Black Sox threw the series so there was no way to strip the title from the Reds after is was discovered they'd won it under a cloud. The eight players were banned from baseball for life, and the team was brandished with a black eye which still tarnishes the White Sox today. Because of that scandal, baseball went to the extreme of installing a commissioner whose job it was to oversee baseball. That once powerful position has now been watered down dramatically 100 years later by MLB itself.
But as opposed to the 1919 White Sox, the Astros used their cheating to WIN! And this brings us to the horrible decision by Major League Baseball. We know the Astros cheated by stealing the pitching signs. We have evidence of the entire organization being involved. We have Astros players admitting there was a scheme in place. We have the statistics which show the Astros indeed benefitted from the sign stealing. When MLB made the decision to allow the Astros to keep the 2017 pennant, they proudly proclaimed "you can cheat to win."
Already Astro players, front office staff, and fans are trying to legitimize the fraudulent championship. "If it really was as bad as they are saying, wouldn't MLB have stripped them of the title?" They can go on a 'victim' campaign, painting their cheating as hard work. In 25 years, the Astros will have celebrations to salute their cheating, applauded by their adoring fans. In 100 years, no matter how much people say "wow that was horrible," the Astros will still be able to point to the banner and say "it was legit."
Major League baseball, shame on you! How dare you allow this title to stand. I understand the Los Angeles Dodgers, the team the Astros cheated out of the title, don't want the sullied championship, but then leave 2017 open! To avoid admitting a team broke the rules, you're trying to sweep your sport's eroded integrity under the rug. MLB, YOU decided to forever stain baseball. You're the farmer with the three legged cow, missing one ear, with its tongue hanging out, that no longer produces milk insisting you have the State Fair winner!
You're frauds; of your own making. You will never be able to claim your product is legitimate ever again.
The 2018 World Series Champion Boston Red Sox might be just as guilty of cheating the same exact way. If so, I'm sure baseball will sweep that under the rug too. Then they can insist having two of the last three World Series titles awarded to cheaters somehow emphasizes baseball's purity.
Baseball will not die due to the sport itself, but rather it will be killed by the people whose job it is to preserve its virtue.
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