Watching it here. Brilliant game. Savage atmosphere.
Good game, Houston stranded a lot of runners. Youd have to feel for greinke.
Despite the 7 games and road drama it had drawn the lowest tv audience ever for a world series. NFL is killing other sports.
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This Juan Soto is two ends of a cunt/a great character
Looked like a panicked mistake taking Greinke out of the game.
Two unfashionable enough sides as well surely a factor.
Analytics maybe. Fell apart spectacularly after. Great to see a 36 year old howie kendrick driving runs in the last few games. Nats were as good as dead in the wild card game before Soto drove in 3 against the brew crew bottom of the 8th. Harper must be sickened.
Big cities but small markets, astros have a tiny base in texas and louisiana, nationals have a corner of virginia basically. The dodgers yankees series mlb dreamed about never materialised.
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Need the big city teams like Yankees, Mets, Red Sox, Cubs, Dodgers and the like to generate real interest. Or a more traditional side like St Louis Cardinals. I can remember been over there when the likes of Florida Marlins and Anaheim were in it and there was very little general interest in it.
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In case anyone missed it, understandable with recent on goings, the biggest scandal in 100 years. And eerie silence from the forums sox fans
In the most dramatic ruling of his five-year tenure, baseball commissioner Rob Manfred came down hard on the Astros Monday for illegally stealing signs during their World Series championship season in 2017.
The unprecedented penalties are Manfred’s response to the damage the Astros inflicted on the sport’s integrity, and should serve as a powerful deterrent to any team that engages in such conduct in the future.
The penalties, according to sources with knowledge of Manfred’s decision, include:
• A one-year suspension for general manager Jeff Luhnow.
• A one-year suspension for manager A.J. Hinch.
• The forfeitures of first- and second-round draft picks in both 2020 and ’21.
• A fine of $5 million, the maximum allowed under MLB’s constitution.
• The placement of former Astros assistant GM Brandon Taubman on baseball’s ineligible list.
On Nov. 12, The Athletic reported that the Astros stole signs during regular-season home games in 2017 with the aid of a center-field camera. The next day, The Athletic reported that Alex Cora, the team’s bench coach at the time, was a mastermind of the team’s sign-stealing scheme.
Discipline for Cora will be determined after baseball completes its investigation of the Red Sox for separate sign-stealing allegations that occurred while Cora was the team’s manager in 2018, as reported by The Athletic last week.
No players were disciplined. MLB instead chose to issue penalties to those who were in positions of authority. Taubman was disciplined for “his inappropriate conduct toward one or more female reporters at the American League Championship Series post-game celebration,” rather than involvement in the sign stealing, according to MLB’s report.
The suspension of Hinch is the longest for a manager since Pete Rose voluntarily accepted a lifetime ban on Aug. 24, 1989, and matches the second-longest in the game’s history. The suspension of Luhnow matches the sixth-longest for an executive. Former Braves general manager John Coppolella and former Cardinals scouting director Chris Correa received lifetime bans in 2017. Former Yankees owner George Steinbrenner received a lifetime ban in July 1990, but was reinstated in March 1993.
The Astros’ violations stemmed in part from the rise of technology within the sport, technology that gave teams new tools to extract perceived advantages over opponents.
To steal signs, the Astros routed the feed from the center-field camera to a screen situated in the tunnel leading to the clubhouse, steps from the team’s dugout at Minute Maid Park. There, people with the team decoded the signs and communicated pitches to hitters in realtime by banging on a garbage can.
The accounts of the system were provided to The Athletic by four people who were with the 2017 Astros, including pitcher Mike Fiers.
“That’s not playing the game the right way,” said Fiers, who was with the team from 2015-17. “They were advanced and willing to go above and beyond to win.”
MLB launched its investigation upon publication of The Athletic ’s report. Videos shared online, including those produced by Jomboy Media, appeared to offer corroborating evidence of the system the Astros put into place.
During the winter meetings in December, Manfred said he thought “this is probably the most thorough investigation that the commissioner’s office has ever undertaken.” He said the league had 76,000 emails to review, plus other messages, including from the communications platform Slack.
Manfred, who took over for Bud Selig as commissioner on Jan. 25, 2015, previously had penalized teams for significant rules violations.
In Jan. 2017, Manfred forced the Cardinals to surrender their top two draft picks to the Astros and pay them $2 million after Correa, the Cardinals’ former amateur scouting director, received a 46-month sentence for hacking the Astros’ database.
In Nov. 2017, after determining the Braves had violated rules for international signings and the amateur draft, Manfred required the team to forfeit 13 international prospects as well as their third-round pick in 2018, and to endure strict restrictions in the international market over the next three years. Coppolella received a lifetime ban from Major League Baseball, in part because he was not truthful with the league’s investigators.
Sign-stealing is as old as the sport itself, and is legal when done by players using their own wits on the field. The involvement of electronics, however, is prohibited.
In recent years, electronic sign-stealing created paranoia and finger-pointing inside the sport. Teams became highly suspicious of one another — and as shown by the conduct of the 2017 Astros, at least some of that suspicion was rooted in reality.
On Sept. 15, 2017, Manfred punished two teams, the Red Sox and the Yankees, for conduct related to electronic sign stealing. The league’s statement accompanying the punishments — fines for each team — included a stern warning for the entire league: “all 30 Clubs have been notified that future violations of this type will be subject to more serious sanctions, including the possible loss of draft picks.”
One of the incidents described in The Athletic ’s report on the Astros — an account in which Danny Farquhar, then pitching for the White Sox, described changing his signs in response to hearing suspicious banging from the Astros’ dugout — occurred after the league had issued its warning.
The story of electronic sign-stealing in baseball in recent years traces back to video replay rooms. The introduction of instant replay challenges in 2014 led to the creation of such rooms, which are intended to help team personnel review disputed plays through numerous camera angles.
What some teams figured out quickly is that those rooms provided the tools to help decode sign sequences — highly valuable information for base runners interested in relaying signs to hitters.
The Astros’ system in 2017 bypassed the involvement of anyone on the field, and stands as the most flagrant confirmed example of electronic sign-stealing. MLB updated its rules in 2018 and again in 2019 in attempts to broadly combat electronic sign-stealing. The league may make further changes for the upcoming season.
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As someone who attended a game in Minute Maid Park in 2009 (the night before Wrestlemania XXV), I want to confirm that I thoroughly disapprove of sign-stealing.
Just say nuttin when you see me behind davy in wexford park with a wheelie bin and hammer
I never wanted to believe that my Dad was stealing from his job with the council.
But when I got home, all the signs were there.
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Jose Altuve accused of wearing a buzzer I see.
Nice money if you can get it.
Taken from ESPN - Other notable examples of deferred-money contracts
• Bobby Bonilla (again): A second deferred-contract plan with the Mets and Orioles pays him $500,000 a year for 25 years. Those payments began in 2004.
• Bret Saberhagen: Saberhagen will receive $250,000 a year from the Mets for 25 years (payments also began in 2004; this was the inspiration for Bonilla’s deal).
• Max Scherzer: Will receive $105 million total from the Nationals that will be paid out through 2028.
• Manny Ramírez: Will collect $24.2 million total from the Red Sox through 2026.
• Bruce Sutter: Signed a deal with the Braves before the 1985 season with deferred money. He was to be paid $750,000 per year while with the Braves, then for 30 years after he retired, he’d receive at least $1.12 million per year. The Braves will be paying him through 2020. He received the $750,000 figure in 1989 and 1990 because he retired with two years left on the six-year deal, so his 30 years of the other installments didn’t begin until 1991.
Good article
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