Just make it go away
The Astros cheated at baseball. Boy, they just cheated the heck out of some baseball. They woke up in the morning, did some cheating, cheated a little bit after lunch, ended the work day with some afternoon cheating, and then went home and practiced their cheating.
It’s good to have interests.
It was impossible to deny the part the players had in that scandal, because of the two flagrant pieces of evidence: The video/audio evidence of the trash cans getting banged before breaking pitches, and Mike Fiers saying, guess what, I was on the Astros at the time, and you’ll never believe all the rampant cheating we were doing very cheatingly.
Fans wanted blood, so MLB investigated and found, yep, they sure were cheating in the specific ways that the public already knew about and no other ways, and dealt out penalties. They handed out a couple suspensions to management, took some draft picks from the team, and closed the case. Nothing more to see here! Thanks for caring! Goodbye!
So we probably should have expected it when the investigation into the 2018 Red Sox served purely to tell people that everything was fine, they cheated but only a little and anyway it was this one guy who you’ve never heard of and don’t care about, and what he did wasn’t really that big of a deal anyway. Nothing more to see here! Thanks for caring! Goodbye!
Except…
Not once has an MLB investigation told us something interesting that we didn’t already know. The new offense is that a Red Sox replay official sometimes decoded signs in-game instead of before and after games. The Red Sox report is clear that a few players came in and got that information from Watkins during the games — officially he illegally updated his pregame scouting reports with information gathered on live video during the games — but they claimed they didn’t even understand the rules prohibiting it. Even if he hadn’t agreed in advance to not punish players, Rob Manfred said, he wouldn’t have punished any players.
This new offense, by the way, was previously reported in The Athletic, just like the accusations against the Astros. It seems like they do good reporting work over there! Always uncovering new facts and whatnot, pushing things forward. Major League Baseball should take notes.
Only, if we’re being honest here, they shouldn’t take notes. Because they’re not interested in finding new things. The plan in the league office is to investigate previously uncovered offenses, release findings that implicate the people already implicated, and call it a day. Anything else would make the sport look worse for longer, and it’s not like baseball’s owners pay Rob Manfred all that money so that they can look worse for longer. That’s the exact opposite of what they want!
If it turned out that Mookie Betts or JD Martinez was getting outside help during at bats, then that would be a black eye for the league. If it turned out that anyone was getting outside help during at bats in the playoffs — which the report said did not happen — then that would be a black eye and a bloody nose and a couple teeth knocked out.
If the bench coach for the 2017 Astros, who immediately became the Red Sox manager in 2018, had brought the extremely successful cheating system he devised and had won a World Series with over to his new team and won another World Series with it, then that’s two illegitimate World Series winners in a row, which is essentially a decapitation.
I am not saying that is what happened and baseball covered it up. I am saying that if that did happen, and there was not a smoking gun published in the sports media about it, then baseball would have had every reason to act exactly like they ended up acting. They wouldn’t have looked that hard for the cheating. They would have hid behind plausible deniability and obfuscation, finding one goat in Boston to scape all their problems onto.
The Red Sox’s punishment, in the end, was the loss of a second-round draft pick and this one guy being suspended without pay in 2020 and then, in 2021, not being allowed to work the replay room. This was absolutely worth it for them as an organization. They won! They won a World Series, suffered no real lasting long-term harm, and now it’s over and the story will go away. It’s a win for the team and a win for the league.
Good for them. Nobody’s playing baseball right now, but at least someone’s winning.