Houston Astros: The next sign-stealing casualties

The reputations and Hall of Fame candidacies of several players – not just on the Houston Astros – are tarnished after the sign-stealing scandal.

The sign-stealing scandal ripping through MLB has already claimed several very prominent casualties. Three managers and one general manager have lost their jobs. Beyond that, the report covering illegal activities involving the Houston Astros isn’t the end of the story. Commissioner Rob Manfred’s office is also investigating similar allegations involving the 2018 World Series-winning Boston Red Sox.

We don’t know when that report will be released, but we can be sure that when it is it won’t be good news for the Red Sox.

The casualty rate from this scandal began to pile up with the report’s release. Manfred suspended both Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow and field manager A.J. Hinch through the 2020 World Series. That news had barely begun to sink in when Astros owner Jim Crane announced the firing of both men.

One day later, Boston Red Sox officials announced that they had “mutually parted ways” with that team’s manager, Alex Cora, who as bench coach for the 2017 Astros was identified as a key figure in the development of the sign-stealing process.

Then on Thursday, the Mets made a similar announcement with respect to their newly hired manager, Carlos Beltran, a player on the 2017 Houston Astros identified as an instigator of the idea.

Do not be lulled into the idea that the carnage is now over. Moving forward, several others are likely to feel the pain of their involvement in this business, some soon and some down the road.

Here’s a look ahead at who still stands to be casualties…and why.

Jose Altuve

Altuve suffers for two reasons.

He was a central figure on the 2017 World Series-winning team as well as the 2018 and 2019 Houston Astros. Given his leadership position, the assumption – even if unproven – will be rampant that he was closely involved with the adoption and maintenance of the sign-stealing mechanism.

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Beyond that, his on-air actions during the 2019 ALCS – notably his warning to his teammates not to rip off his shirt following a game-winning home run — and his quick exit into the dugout before emerging in another shirt – are, in the context of what has since become known, highly suspicious.

The best thing Altuve could do to extricate his own reputation from those suspicions would be to make a clean breast of things. It at least would restore the idea that, if not always honest, he was, in the end, contrite. The problem with doing so is that it would likely sour his relationships inside the clubhouse, where the operative culture frowns on players telling secrets.

He addressed this to some degree when spring drills began. But in his interviews with reporters, Altuve failed to directly address the suggestion that he had been wearing a buzzer during the 2019 post-season. Instead, he fell back on the non-denial denial that “the commissioner’s  report didn’t find any evidence of that.”

Since Altuve knows better than anybody whether he was wired when he homered off Aroldis Chapman, his refusal to make a simple, straightforward denial will only serve to continue the speculation.

Altuve’s stakes are more than altruistic. He was the 2017 Most Valuable Player, an award whose merit can now be called into question. And although not yet in his 30s, he has been on a clear Hall of Fame track. Baseball-Reference lists his three most comparable players through age 29 as Ryne Sandberg, Roberto Alomar, and Derek Jeter, all of whom are Hall of Famers.

On the logical assumption that Hall voters look at this in a roughly similar fashion to their reaction to the steroids scandal, Altuve’s developing candidacy is taking a serious hit.

Alex Bregman

As much as Altuve, Bregman’s reputation was damaged by implication.

Among the lasting post-season images that got new life through  all of this was that of Bregman delivering a big hit and then rushing back to the dugout to impart some unknown inside tidbit to his fellow players. In more innocent contexts, that sort of interchange would be natural. In the present context, it is implicative.

The jeopardy to Bregman’s image is only intensified by his practice over the past several seasons to thrust himself into the team’s limelight as a brash, confident, often defiant on-field spokesman. This week’s events force him to adopt one of two utterly contrary approaches to public appearances: either shut up completely and in doing so lose his natural mojo or fess up…and lose his mojo.

For Bregman, there is no third way. His natural instinct, a “go ahead and stop me” defiance, is impossible to maintain in the context of the Manfred report.

Bregman had a chance to do that when the team gathered to address this at the start of spring training. He apologized, but was extremely  guarded in discussing  his own responsibility.

In large measure, because he’s only 25, the potential damage to Bregman’s Hall of Fame reputation is harder to pin down, but it exists. His age 25 comparables are Jim Thome, Nolan Arenado, Scott Rolen and Kris Bryant; Thome’s in the Hall and it’s plausible to envision both Arenado and Bryant someday getting in.

Carlos Beltran

Nobody’s Hall of Fame resume took a harder hit than Beltran’s. The immediate focus in the week of his separation from the Mets managerial job has been on that action. Longer-term, however, what Beltran really lost was some significant percentage of his Hall of Fame support.

And given that Beltran was never a slam-dunk Hall choice, it is likely to be the decisive percent.

Beltran played for 20 years, capping that career with a fateful summer in Houston in 2017. He compiled a .279 batting average with 439 home runs and a 69.6 WAR. Hall of Fame expert Jay Jaffe puts Beltran’s WAR total almost precisely at the 71.1 average for the 19 center fielders who have been enshrined…and above a dozen of them.

He would, absent scandal, have been a strong candidate, and very possibly a successful one.

Now, his candidacy is floundering. Randy Miller, a New Jersey-based baseball writer for nj.com, declared in the wake of the Beltran admissions that he will change his vote on that particular candidacy from yes to no based on the admissions. His is almost certainly only the first such declaration.

Miller has been among the group electing not to support the candidacies of players such as Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens whose raw numbers made them sure things but whose reputations were tainted for other reasons. If even a percentage from his philosophical bloc follow his lead – and there’s no reason to believe those voters won’t — Beltran’s Hall candidacy is kaput.

George Springer

More than any other player, Springer may have lost quickly and financially from the scandal.

He has been a key member of the team since the events of 2017, a season in which he was an All Star who got MVP votes. In January, Springer filed the largest claim of this arbitration season, seeking $22.5 million from the Astros.

The team countered at $17.5 million, meaning $5 million rode on the arbitration panel’s decision.

Following release of the commissioner’s report, Springer agreed to a negotiated compromise that  will pay him $21 million. It would be easy to make the argument that once the commissioner’s report  broke, Springer opted against pursuing his arbitration claim at a cost of $1.5 million.

Although Springer was not implicated by name in the scandal, his role as the team’s star center fielder and leadoff hitter brings all of his accomplishments under legitimate question.

In the aftermath of the events, Springer must have understand that he would have been grilled about his knowledge and role in the scandal, and although the meeting itself would have taken place in private, he would be a fool to assume that the statements he made would not be closely scrutinized.

Legacies

Until the report’s release, both the Houston Astros and Red Sox were viewed as among the great dynasties of the game’s modern history. Both won World Series titles, and the Astros nearly came away with a second this past season.

Those teams’ performances now are forever tainted.

The 2017 Astros win was the franchise’s most glorious moment, its first championship in a nearly 60-year history. Technically that championship still exists but was a practical matter it has been dragged through the mud.

Tainting a World Series in any matter is not the kind of thing that wears away. A full century after the Black Sox scandal, there remains a widespread view that the Cincinnati Reds’ championship is colored by the Sox’ failure to play their best. This continues even though the Reds did nothing wrong and actually had a better regular-season record than the White Sox.

As for the Red Sox’ 2018 World Series win, the extent of damage to that event is not yet fully calculated. MLB continues to investigate electronic sign-stealing allegations that may have marred that Series. Other current or former personnel could yet be implicated.

But the Sox have a lot on the line beyond that one World Series win. It was their fourth since 2004, and they are the only big league team to have won that often in that time period. So at least to a degree, the findings compromise a claim Boston fans have loved to make, that theirs is the pre-eminent franchise of the 21st Century to date.