The Astros may have cheated, but they still won unfair and unsquare

It seems like a miracle of some sort has occurred: I turned on ESPN in mid-January, and they were talking about baseball.

ESPN’s talking-head shows generally focus on football and basketball, the two sports ESPN is most heavily invested in.  ESPN does show the occasional baseball game on Sunday nights, but it isn’t nearly as important to them as the other American sports with inflated balls.  Usually, in late July and early August when football season and basketball season are still theoretical, ESPN will devote 95% of its time to anything other than baseball, the only sport actually being played.

But baseball managed to catch the attention of ESPN in January, and not because of the Hall of fame vote.  I am referring, of course, to the scandal involving the cheating allegations against the Houston Astros.  So far three managers and a GM have lost their jobs, and the LA city council has demanded that baseball award the 2017  and 2018 championships to the Los Angeles Dodgers (not that the Los Angeles city council is biased on the subject).  By the way, that ain't going to happen.

FiveThirtyEight.com looked into the allegations when they first came out, and their conclusion wasn’t very conclusive.  Yes, the Astros showed tremendous gains in power vs. strikeout rates in 2017 over 2016, but they showed improvement both at home and on the road, which wouldn’t have been possible if the only effect was cheating using cameras at their home field.  But still, the home effect is so pronounced it does indicate some gain from sign-stealing.  Of course there wasn’t much advantage of playing at home in the 2019 World Series as the Astros lost all their home games.

There have been a lot of complaints about the culture around the Astros’ front office.  There was an ugly incident where Astros assistant GM Brandon Taubman taunted a female reporter for being critical of acquiring reliever Roberto Osuna, who had previously been suspended under the MLB domestic abuse policy, and the Astros then denied the incident occurred (Taubman was suspended for 2020 by Commissioner Rob Manfred).  There has also been speculation about the resurgence of the career of Gerrit Cole, who lead the 2019 ‘Stros to the World Series by displaying stuff he had never shown before with his other teams; many pointed out that his improvement was mostly due to improving the spin rate of his pitches, and one way to do that is doctor the ball with a sticky substance (this is now the Yankees’ problem, as Cole signed a free agent deal with them during the off-season). 

Then there is the allegation and bizarre denial of former MVP Jose Aluve over whether he was wired with an electronic buzzer to signal pitches.  ESPN repeatedly showed slow-motion footage of Altuve desperately warning his teammates not to rip off his jersey as they celebrated a game winning home run, possibly to avoid showing the offending device.  Altuve’s explanation was that he was very shy about having his body exposed, and his wife didn’t like it.  I’m not saying he’s lying, but if that is the truth, he should come up with a lie that is more believable.  There are supposedly (I haven’t looked) dozens of photos of him posted on Instagram posing shirtless, and what woman marries a professional athlete but is so against his chest being exposed that she forbids it even when his teammates want to celebrate a home run?

So, there is firsthand testimony that the Astros cheated, supported by statistical evidence.  Should more be done, other than the suspension/firing/resignation of three managers and GM Jeff Luhnow?  Should MLB acquiesce to the LA city council and name the Dodgers the champions for those two years?

First of all, I’ve never been a fan of vacating championships.  Yes, it is a punishment, but you can’t take back the joy felt by team supporters retroactively, so it is rather ephemeral.  Also, there is the problem of determining whether the team would have lost but for the cheating.  You could argue that is irrelevant, that voiding championships is the only way to discourage teams from cheating (just as denying Barry Bonds admission to the Hall of Fame is the only way to discourage super-rich, super-successful athletes from juicing), but the fact is that after years of tanking the Astros had developed an exceptional roster of talent through good drafting and wise free agent acquisitions (a famous and prescient 2014 Sports illustrated cover had the line, “The 2017 World Champion Houston Astros”).  The same goes for the 2018 Red Sox, who won 108 games under rookie manager Alex Cora and went through three exceptional teams (Yankees, Astros, and Dodgers) in the post-season like a hot knife through butter.  It wasn’t all due to cheating.

Declaring the Dodgers to be champions in 2017 and 2018 is even more problematic.  Maybe the Dodgers would have lost to the Yankees in the 2018 World Series if the Red Sox and Astros were disqualified.  Anything can happen in a short series.

The Astros scandal is probably the most egregious team-focused scandal in baseball since the 1919 Black Sox.  Steroids were a bigger scandal, but that was about players inflating their own achievements, not changing the outcome of games.  Collusion is the early days of free agency was possibly the biggest sports scandal ever, but that was about teams trying NOT to win.  There is the allegation of the Giants cheating in 1951 by having a guy with a telescope steal signs, but that is so quaint compared to the incident of the Red Sox using Apple Watches to telegraph pitches that it pales in comparison.

There have not been any additional show drops since Carlos Beltran resigned a manager of the Mets, so maybe this scandal is over.  Or, it is at least until Spring Training when players on other teams invoke baseball’s “unwritten rules” and seek to extract a little justice with some high and tight fastballs.