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MLB 2020: This One’s For Kobe


Myshkin

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I was reading a recent story on the Athletic about the scandal fall-out, and this is some sociopathic bullshit:

Quote

When Chris Archer returned to his hotel room in Houston after a puzzling start against the Astros on Aug. 1, 2017, his cell phone buzzed with a FaceTime call from an Astros player. Archer answered.

“Dude, you’ve got good shit,” the Astro told him. “You were just tipping.”

Archer had pitched into the seventh inning that night in a 6-4 Rays win, but on a few swings it seemed like the Astros hitters knew what pitch was coming. It turns out, they did. The player on FaceTime, whose name Archer won’t disclose, had his answer: He was tipping his pitches. It was fixable.

At the time, Archer bought that explanation. Now, he knows it was a lie. He wasn’t tipping. The Astros were stealing his signs and smacking a trash can.

“It’s pretty messed up,” Archer told The Athletic this week. “The whole thing is messed up.” Later, he added, “It sucks when you dedicate your whole life to something, and somebody’s out there doing some shady shit like that.”

The article goes on to kinda sorta suggest it might have been Bregman who Facetimed Archer to lie to him.

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I hope Mike Bolsinger, who ruined my birthday in 2015*, wins his lawsuit.

* He was the starting pitcher against the Giants. MC paid $$ to wish me happy birthday on the scoreboard during the game and it was great. Until it wasn't. 

https://www.latimes.com/sports/dodgers/dodgersnow/la-sp-dn-dodgers-mike-bolsinger-course-correction-20150619-story.html

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I don't think you can strip them of their title, but the penalties should have been way worse and the players should have been punished too. I bet they will be though. Who wants to bet that the Astros set a record next year for most players HBP?

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1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

I don't think you can strip them of their title, but the penalties should have been way worse and the players should have been punished too. I bet they will be though. Who wants to bet that the Astros set a record next year for most players HBP?

Probably. Which will of course lead to retaliation, brawls, injuries, and suspensions. So, nice job limiting the damage on this one Manfred.

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So Carlos Correa has been getting a lot of (undeserved) praise over the last couple of days for giving maybe the least shitty apology of all the Astro personnel. But today he went out there and played the victim because he doesn’t like other players calling him and his teammates cheaters. Which you know, they fucking are. This asshole who lied and obfuscated for three years had the fucking gall to say other players needed learn the facts. Oh, and he also said Altuve didn’t want his jersey ripped off because he has a shitty tattoo. 

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I must apologize to José Altuve. According to super trustworthy sources there are a number of very good and totally believable reasons he didn’t want his shirt ripped off after hitting a walk off HR to send his team to the WS. These are:

1) His wife wouldn’t have liked it

2) He has a really shitty tattoo on his chest

3) He has the “wrong” number of nipples

4) He spilled mustard on his undershirt 

5) He’s embarrassed about how buff he is

6) He’d accidentally taped a baby monitor to his chest, but it wasn’t turned on and even if it was the baby on the other end hadn’t been briefed on the stolen signs 

As you can see these are all perfectly acceptable reasons for not wanting your shirt ripped off. So please, learn the facts and just move on.

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15 hours ago, Triskele said:

I wonder if anything else will maybe come out between now and the end and stuff...holy shit are these guys handling this badly...

I give it better than even odds that a lot more will come out. There’s been whispers of all sorts of shady shit the Astros have been doing for years now, but baseball’s omertà code kept it all from becoming anything more than whispers. But it would now seem that code has been thrown out the window. We’re gonna hear more about stolen signs, and maybe more about other ways in which the Astros cheated, like pitchers using foreign substances and the front office doctoring the advanced analytics on their prospects.

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On 2/12/2020 at 1:32 PM, Myshkin said:

Red Sox name Ron Roenicke their new interim manager. They say the “interim” will be dropped after the MLB investigation into their sign stealing is completed. Which says to me that the Sawks thinks there’s at least a possibility that Roenicke will be named in the MLB’s report.

@the Red Sox -- 

Week: Which coach was involved, Sawks?
Week: Which coach was involved, Sawks?
Sawks: I don't know.
Week: You don't know? YOU DON'T KNOW?
/facepalm -- I want to say I can't imagine that have the "interim" tag on him because he *might* be implicated...because that would be monumentally stupid. Then I remember they traded Mookie Betts for bucks. There is no glimmer of hope for any decency or social intelligence in front offices right now.

On 2/13/2020 at 6:28 PM, Tywin et al. said:

There are reasons why the PR team had scripts for them. I’m not sure which player said it, but one admitted that he/they understand that their actions ruined people’s careers and lives. I’d think his lawyer could use that to establish that even the Astros cheaters knew about the emotional and financial damages they inflicted on his client.

This is typically pointed to as a reason for shitty apologies -- I wonder how legitimate it is. Are there many cases of truly contrite apologies leading to additional charges or opening up an organization to risk? If that does happen, it seems like those crimes/offenses will be discovered at some point anyway -- nipping it in the bud with contrition and honesty will lessen the damage ultimately rather than continuing to lie and obfuscate. Am I being naive?

On 2/15/2020 at 12:50 PM, Triskele said:

As undignified as this type of cheating is I think going with something like "our cheating didn't impact games" is a really effective way to look even worse.  

THEN WHY DID YOU DEDICATE TIME AND RESOURCES TO IT OVER MULTIPLE SEASONS. I'm still sometimes stunned by how stupid the media and public are treated by public figures and they are able to get away with it. I don't know if it is an erosion of journalism (poor questioning, inability to focus, and coziness of reporters to sources/teams) or the strength of PR. Some of it all, I suppose.

 

eta-- Agree with Mysh, I wonder if this will erode the "unwritten rule" against going public with cheating accusations and evidence.

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2 hours ago, Week said:

eta-- Agree with Mysh, I wonder if this will erode the "unwritten rule" against going public with cheating accusations and evidence.

For those looking for background on how the breakdown of omerta will play out, there's a Godfather marathon on AMC right now.

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I keep seeing the same narrative pop up in coverage of the Astros, and it’s really starting to piss me off. Many of the articles I see about the sign stealing scheme will contain a line or two about how the Astros were almost certainly not the only ones doing it. Maybe they took it a little farther than other teams, but for sure other teams were stealing signs. This is horseshit. I’m sure other teams use technology to steal signs, but the Astros’ major sin wasn’t the actual stealing of signs; it was the communicating of those signs to batters in real time. This is a difference in kind, not a difference in degree. And anybody who covers baseball should know that.

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5 hours ago, Week said:

This is typically pointed to as a reason for shitty apologies -- I wonder how legitimate it is. Are there many cases of truly contrite apologies leading to additional charges or opening up an organization to risk? If that does happen, it seems like those crimes/offenses will be discovered at some point anyway -- nipping it in the bud with contrition and honesty will lessen the damage ultimately rather than continuing to lie and obfuscate. Am I being naive?

In general a more contrite apology will take you further, but we have to consider the scale here. Given the amount of money on the line here, it’s probably best to just go bland and hope the news cycle moves on. The Astros behaviors suggests more than anything that they’re doing everything they can to protect the owner.

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Aubrey Huff, who I guess has been doing his best Curt Schilling impersonation, has been disinvited from the Giants 2010 WS anniversary extravaganza, and boy is he ever being a crybaby about it.

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