The Case Against Stripping the Astros of Their World Series Title
Monday afternoon, the Major League Baseball commissioner, Rob Manfred, handed out the for in-game misconduct in the sport’s recent history. The guilty party was the Houston Astros, designed a system of stealing opposing teams’ pitching signs and relaying them to their own hitters. Their means of gathering the data were modern (the team used a high-definition camera to beam images to monitors in the dugout), and their means of dispensing them were old-school (players banged on trash cans in a kind of Morse code). Manfred found that both Houston’s general manager, Jeff Luhnow, and its manager, A. J. Hinch, knew of the plan and failed to stop it; Lunhow and Hinch were suspended by the Astros themselves. Manfred also took away the team’s top draft picks in 2020 and 2021 and levied a fine against the organization: $5 million, the largest he’s authorized to impose. (In the face of an ongoing investigation involving the Red Sox manager, Alex Cora, a former Astros coach, using similar techniques during Boston’s 2018 title run, last night.)
