Houston Astros the Black Sox of the 21st Century

The Houston Astros are now all that is wrong with professional sports.  It seems that the punishment for the Astros has been bungled in every way possible.  You would think that the NCAA was handling this.  There is outrage all over the place for the cheating the Astros purported on the rest of the baseball world.  Two cities in California could not take it any more and have banned the use of the Astros name for any of their teams.  At first I thought this was a bit odd but the more I think about it the more I think that Little Leagues through out the country may want to follow their lead.

Houston Astros Managers Lose Jobs

This is going to come down to how do you punish the Astros for what they did?  AJ Hinch The Manager of the Astros and Jeff Luhnow General Manager and President of baseball operations lost their jobs. They lost their jobs for allowing the cheating to go on.  No players lost their jobs or were punished over this.  This happened because granting immunity was the only way to get the whole story of the cheating.  It is easy to say that they were just following the lead of a superior.  That is fine.  Not sure it is the correct choice but I get it.  Sometimes some people are going to get away with something to catch someone else.

The question is who else should get punished for this and how?   What can be done to ensure that this does not happen again.  You probably can’t completely eliminate it but how do you make it less likely that something like this will happen again.

Astros Could have Won With out Cheating

The really strange thing here is that the Astros had a really good team.  They had the build of a team that could win on their own merit.  We see this kind of stuff happen all the time.  It is the fear of losing that drives you to do strange things.  We don’t even know for sure how much of an advantage the cheating gave the Astros.  It is entirely possible that they might have been even better with out the cheating.  It is difficult to say how much pressure the chance of getting caught might have added.

I have heard several people from players to fans saying that the Astros should have their World Series Championship stripped from them.  I have never been a fan of taking away wins.  We all know what happened.  You can’t take that away.  You could mark the history book with an asterisk that says what the circumstances were that led to that win.  Taking away wins is not a punishment.  Giving that win to the team that lost.  Even if they lost to a team that cheated is a hollow victory.  All those player would still know what the result was of those games.

What Can be Done

There are several things that I can think of that could possibly be done.  Any of the people that were in management and either knew about or told the players to cheat should be banned from the game.  Depending on how bad it was there could be different levels of bans.  I don’t know what the lengths  those bans should be.  Another punishment that could work pretty well as a deterrent would be to fine the team and those involved.  It is relatively easy to figure out how much the Houston Astros Owner made during their World Series run.  Fine the Owner the profit they made from that World Series run.  Hit them right in the wallet.  If you hit people hard especially an owner and taking away their money that could serve as a pretty big deterrent.

Baseball Has not Handled This Well

Rob Manfred is getting a lot of blow back for his lack of punishment for the Astros from the Owners down to the players involved.  He said that the players are going to get pushed enough from their peers.  I do not think that he is wrong there. How ever is that punishment enough.  Hard to tell for sure.  Owners of other teams may punish the players more by not offering them contracts when it is time for them to move on from the Astros.  It would be possible for Manfred to change his stance and punish these players further.

Taking away the possibility of getting awards like making the all star game.  Preventing them from getting the player share if they do make the playoffs again.  Again it is going to come down to taking away money.  Will this work? Maybe.  They already won the game.  That will never be taken away from them.

Of course this all depends on do people care about this.  We really don’t know.  If people care they will vote with their hard earned money.  Either they will support the teams or they will not.  If they support them then we know it really does not matter and nothing more needs to be done.

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