Houston Astros punished for 2017 sign stealing

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Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few months, you will know that the Houston Astros have been under investigation for stealing signs illegally during the 2017 season. The baseball world has been waiting eagerly to find out what their punishment would be and it has finally come down.

·      One year suspension for GM Jeff Luhnow and Manager AJ Hinch (both have been subsequently fired)
·      The loss of 1st and 2nd round draft picks in both 2020 and 2021
·      A fine of $5m

On the surface these look like very harsh penalties and it does look like baseball commissioner Rob Manfred is coming down hard on the organisation, but is it enough?

We can talk about how they won the World Series that year, but first, the players. 2017 AL MVP was Jose Altuve, would he have won this title if not for the sign stealing. Players on the Astros have also gone on to sign big, lucrative contracts within the organisation and outside. They’ve made reputations for themselves based on their play that season, reputations that may have been different had it not been for the sign stealing.

It’s important to acknowledge players from outside the organisation, you only have to go to the Twitter page of Trevor Bauer to see Alex Bregman hitting a home run against him from the 2017 season. This is just one example and how this may have or not have affected Bauers career is hard to say, but he is not the only player affected, players will have lost out of future money due to performing poorly against the Astros, players will have been sent down to AAA, coaches will have lost jobs.

Not one player in the Houston Astros team has been punished for taking part in this and reading Jeff Luhnow’s statement on the issue, he believes that the sign stealing was driven and executed by the players. Could the players have been fined? Yes. They make millions already and should be punished. Could they also be banned? Probably. There are lots of players waiting for the chance to play in the big leagues, a chance they may have gotten if it wasn’t for the bloated numbers of the players on that Houston Astros team.

The reality is that the 2017 World Series champions are still the Houston Astros. The reason behind the team cheating like they did was to try and win a championship and to not strip them of this validates everything they did. You can be sure that behind the scenes they will be saying that it was worth it. The $5m fine they received is only a drop in the water compared to how much money they will have made from the season. They will now still always be known as the 2017 Champions and the monkey of never winning a championship will be off their back. The 2017 Championship can certainly be vacated, you don’t need to give it to the Dodgers or the Yankees but certainly, it shouldn’t be the Astros. By leaving them as champions it only vindicated everything they did, if teams see that they can still be Champions if they cheat, the punishment isn’t going to deter them as the reward still out ways the punishment by some distance.

The 2018 Champions Boston Red Sox are soon to find out they will be punished for similar cheating in their championship-winning season. The biggest name on the chopping block is their manager Alex Corra, who funnily enough, was bench coach for the Houston Astros in 2017. He will be expecting a hefty punishment and with it being the Red Sox second time being caught, could be in for a bigger punishment than the Astros.

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