Astros, Red Sox: Are the 2017 and 2018 World Series tarnished?

Another scandal has struck MLB, a game we all hold near and dear to our hearts, leaving us wondering if the 17 Astros and 18 Red Sox are plain old shams.

MLB has dropped the hammer and not only were Houston Astros manager and GM, AJ Hinch and Jeff Luhnow, suspended one year, but the Astros have now decided to cut bait entirely with Hinch and send him on his way as we inch closer to the 2020 season. The word around the league now is that Alex Cora, manager of the Boston Red Sox, is next on the chopping block and even Carlos Beltran, newly-named manager of the New York Mets, could be in some hot water as well with the Hall of Fame voters when he becomes eligible.

“Wait, what’s going on?” You may ask.

Well, as baseball fans, I’m sure by now you all know the gist of what went down with the Astros and their 2017 World Series season. Throughout the course of the year, it has been discovered that the ‘Stros used a system of sign-stealing that included the use of video cameras positioned in the outfield of their home games that were subsequently relayed from team personnel to players at the plate through the use of calculated “banging” of trash cans. The batter would then pick up that signal and know what pitch was coming.

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Now, while it’s’ true sign-stealing is a part of baseball, what the Astros did here was cheating due to the fact that they used technology rather than intuition and instinct as many of us former baseball players are accustomed to.

Throughout the course of our careers, we were always taught to try and pick up on certain tells and quirks that were going on to try and get an edge whether it be at the plate, on the base paths, or in the field. There’s an art to sign-stealing that’s not necessarily “cheating” as it is more “gamesmanship” where a player picks up on a certain tell of a catcher (for example) before a particular pitch, to which he can relay that information to the rest of his team and they can all get edges during their at-bats.

The problem here is that the Astros have been proven to not have done that. They, instead, took a lazier approach and worked off the feeds of cameras and technology to get them that edge.

So, why was Hinch fired? This situation has gotten too dirty for the Astros to keep him on. He was at the helm of the 2017 team when all of this was occurring and as long as he stays on the team, the team’s reputation continues to nosedive. At least now the Astros can work on making reparations.

Why is Alex Cora now on the hot seat? Well, apparently (due to reports) he was the brains behind the whole operation as an assistant coach on the 2017 Astros, which now ties in the 2018 Red Sox of which he was the manager of when they went on their World Series run. We have two teams in back-to-back years (’17 and ’18) that have managers heavily involved in this sign-stealing scandal.

But the big question here is whether or not the 2017 and 2018 World Champion Astros and Red Sox are tarnished. We now know the Astros engaged in blatant and uninspired sign-stealing during their 2017 run, and we also know there were times during the 2018 season that the Sox got caught up in technology-inspired sign-stealing fiascos.

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Does this make the Astros or Red Sox any less of a World Series champion? I don’t believe so and here’s why. I view this along the same lines as steroid use. Yes, it’s wrong and is rightfully prohibited by MLB. But at the same time, in the case of steroid use, you still need to make contact with the baseball in order to utilize that increased power. You still need to make proper pitch selection as a pitcher that can fool the batter even with your added velocity. It doesn’t matter how strong you are at the plate or how fast you throw from the mound because in the end, opposing pitchers can still strike you out if they outsmart you and opposing batters can still hit 100 mph fastballs yard if they make a good read.

In the case of the Astros, they were proven to use this “sign-stealing” primarily during the regular season and only during home games. That means there were 81 away games for the ‘Stros that year to which they went 53-28 in, not to mention the playoff run itself. We also have to take into consideration that this “sign-stealing” only benefited the offense. They still had to pitch, and the Astros pitching struck out 168 batters in 159 innings during their postseason run. The same goes for the 2018 Red Sox.

What I’m trying to say is yes these teams stepped over the line at various points of their respective seasons, but at the same time, nobody beat them when it came to crunch time, and if batters knew what pitch was coming, they still had to make contact with the ball and they still had to pitch on the flip side.

Now, we’re going to see not only more strict parameters be put in place to curtail this kind of malarkey, but we’re also going to see teams get smarter with their sign-giving, which is going to make the game even more intriguing and more of a chess match.

Fire who needs to be fired to send a message, but we cannot take away what either the 2017 Astros or 2018 Red Sox did because with or without the sign-stealing, they were still the best teams that year. Baseball seasons are marathons after all. There’s a lot that goes into winning a championship. I wish these two teams would’ve done things a little cleaner because I believe neither of them really needed that much of an edge in the hitting department, but it is what it is and nobody could beat them regardless of what they did or didn’t do.