Friday Morning Hot Links

When does an apology fall short of satisfying the aggrieved party? I thought about this a lot today. There are a number of reasons why an apology is rejected or at least treated with skepticism:

1. The apologizing party was told to apologize. Someone told them they were to apologize - that it's something that they should do. They don't really want to do it, but did it, anyway.
2. The apologizing party is not actually sorry.
3. The apologizing party knows/thinks others were doing the same things for which they are currently apologizing, and thus the apology sounds insincere.

Regardless, the Astros held Apology Day yesterday in West Palm Beach.

Statements

Bregman:
I am really sorry about the choices that were made by my team, by the organization, and by me. I have learned from this and I hope to regain the trust of baseball fans. I would also like to thank the Astros fans for all of their support. We as a team are totally focused on moving forward to the 2020 season.

Springer:
The amount of remorse, regret that's very, very obvious to us in this room...There's no real way to express how much regret we have. How much remorse we have.

Reddick was asked if the World Series was worth breaking the rules:
I don't think so...It's something that we're gonna probably regret and feel bad for for the rest of our careers.

Carlos Correa had a lot to say, on Twitter and to the media. Correa entertained a question on Twitter from noted troll Incarcerated Bob (who is credibly accused of being behind the "Beltran's Niece" Twitter account) and said there was nothing going on in 2018 or 2019. Correa also confirmed Manfred's findings in the report, but rejected the idea that the Astros were wearing buzzers. Altuve:
It was a fake Twitter account that started everything. It makes me upset that a fake Twitter account had that much credibility. Like I said, I feel bad for 2017, but I can say something I didn't do was the buzzer thing. No one on this team wore a buzzer.

A.J. Hinch tried to clarify that he was not aware of any buzzers. What reality is this, even. Hinch:
There has been a significant reaction to my answer to the 'buzzer' question. To be clear, I have never seen any such device used in baseball. I am not aware of any such device existing or being utilized with the Astros, the players, or any other team.

Correa, On Beltran steamrolling everyone into buying into the trash can scheme:
[Beltran] was the best teammate we've ever had...We all had a say in everything...When the anonymous source is saying we felt intimidated, we were too young to say something, that's straight up bullshit.

Verlander:
It's been difficult, showing up in 2017. And once I spent some time there, understood what was happening. I didn't - I wish I had said more. Looking back, I can't go back. I can't reverse my decision. I wish I had said more, and I didn't, and for that I'm sorry.

McCullers:
I think that's something none of us can go back and change. I think the important thing we've all come together here. We met (Wednesday) and we stand behind Alex and Altuve and are remorseful for what happened for what happened that season and look forward to moving on.

Dusty Baker:
At the meeting [Wednesday] night the players showed tremendous remorse and sorrow and embarrassment for their families, the organization, the city of Houston and for baseball.

Jim Crane completely misread the situation:
Our opinion is this didn't impact the game. We had a good team. We won the World Series and we'll leave it at that.

This is, of course, completely stupid. The Astros had a good team, they won the World Series. It impacted the game. Click that link to see the logical gymnastics Crane does. 10.0 from all judges, including the East German one. More Crane, on whether he should be punished by Rob Manfred, who is an employee of Jim Crane and 29 of his closest billionaire friends:
Well, clearly, the report states that I didn't know about it. Had I known about it, certainly I would have done something about it. I did hire Jeff, and I think Jeff did a lot of great things for the organization over the years. You know, no, I don't think I should be held accountable. 

"Our opinion is that this didn't impact the game." - Jim Crane

"I didn't say it didn't impact the game." - Jim Crane 55 seconds later pic.twitter.com/MnpPeeTUPL

— CBS Sports (@CBSSports) February 13, 2020

Billionaires never think they should be held accountable. Read more to see how Crane threw Hinch and Luhnow under the bus. Jim Crane wants to be the new White Knight who leads the Astros into the Garden of Nevermore or whatever dreamland Crane is the mayor of. Billionaire wants all of the credit and none of the blame.

Will Harris told Nationals reporters that he wishes he would have made better choices.

Reactions

*Ken Rosenthal:
The Astros screwed up their news conference on live television Thursday as only they can.

*The San Antonio Express-News' Mike Finger: The Astros apologized, but for what, exactly?
The Astros might have gone to unprecedented lengths to break the rules, putting careers and legacies in peril in the process, but they did not do this to affect the outcome of games. The players, who obviously would have won the World Series without any help, are profoundly sorry for taking part in the scheme, even though the whole thing was beyond their control. The owner, who was completely oblivious to what happened before, can absolutely guarantee everything will be above board from now on.

*A's pitcher Sean Manaea:
I saw a couple of interviews and they all said pretty much the same thing - they skated by everything, they swept everything under the rug. They didn't own up to anything and they're trying to move on which is like - what are you guys trying to move on from? You haven't even said what it is you did. They're just now saying they're sorry, but what about this entire offseason? It was like: deny, deny, deny. When the time comes, you have to say what you're trying to move on from. It's crazy.

*Rays pitcher Chris Archer, on his August 1, 2017 start, in which he allowed 6H/4ER, 5K:0BB, 2HR in a 6-4 win against Houston the day after Dallas Keuchel said the Trade Deadline was "Disappointing to say the least." Archer:
It's pretty messed up. The whole thing is messed up. It sucks when you dedicate your whole life to something, and somebody's out there doing some shady shit like that.

Mike Fiers was the opposing pitcher that game. He allowed 3ER in the first inning. Archer allowed four runs, all were driven in on homers from Beltran and Bregman and hits from...Beltran and Bregman. Archer:
You heard some rumors but I don't think anybody expected it to be to that extent, especially when you know these dudes on a personal level. You've talked to them. You've gone to dinner with them. You've even been on the same team with some of them - Team USA and stuff [Archer played with Bregman in 2017 for the World Baseball Classic]. FaceTimed with them throughout the season and offseason. Texted with them. Whatever. And then to find out to find out I was a part of them being successful. It was definitely disheartening. It's bad for the game. They set out the punishments, and it is what it is at this point. I guess it's time for everybody to move on.

*Clean-shaven pretty boy Gerrit Cole:
My feelings really haven't changed much. Nobody is getting a win out of this. It doesn't look very good. I guess I'm just fortunate to be able to be here and move past this and get to experience all the good things about coming to a new team and all that kind of stuff.

Hero, really. Enjoy Central Park and Serendipity and whatnot.

*Add Former Hitting Coach Dave Hudgens to the list of dudes who are really sorry.

*Evan Drellich: Blame is a tangled mess.

*SI: Breaking down the Astros' latest PR meltdown.

*Dave Roberts "believes in karma."

*LA stays LA:

KTLA made their thoughts on Jose Altuve abundantly clear https://t.co/K7g34qcMke

— SI Extra Mustard (@SI_ExtraMustard) February 13, 2020

Other Notes

*Pete Putila will retain his Assistant GM role. Tom Koch-Weser and Derek Vigoa will remain with the Astros...for now. James Click hedged a little:
I think any new GM coming in would want to take a full view of the baseball operations staff and figure out how we take the awesome people that we have here and maximize them and put them in the right position to succeed. It's something definitely on the front-burner for me.

*Chris Speier has been added to the staff as a Quality Control Coach.

Ed. Note:

I've flirted with actually typing this out for most of the offseason, but as Spring Training actually starts in earnest (for real! You can watch Forrest Whitley throw right here!) I want to get this out. There is a certain part of me that is defined by the Astros. I get mad when they lose a game they have no business losing, when they get shut down by a guy making his 2nd career start, when the bullpen blows a Quality Start, when they go 1x13 w/RISP, when they go 0-4 at home in the World Series. Obviously I've had an Astros blog for over 11 years. I've been on Twitter for almost 11 years and have not changed my banner photo once. The Astros are a part of me. Not anywhere close to all of me, but I do spend a lot of time thinking and writing about this particular organization because I was really homesick in Upstate New York in 2008.

Many of you know I'm a public high school history teacher. I also coach soccer. The 2016-17 school year was the absolute hardest year of my life. I taught US History and AP US History for the first time each, and I was in charge of my own team under a ridiculously demanding boss with whose personality I clashed on an atomic level. So I would get home from a road game and an almost-two-hour bus ride and have to then prepare for two different classes the next day.

I love - truly love - two sports teams: the Houston Astros, and Leeds United. I was at the game that sent Leeds to the Champions League quarterfinals WITHOUT Robbie Keane and Eirik Bakke and Rio Ferdinand and Olivier Dacourt! (Leeds United has been a train-wreck since 2003 - it was a real bad time when the Astros AND Leeds were both just complete disasters and affronts to their sport). This was how I was spending my leisure time. Anyhow, when, on June 3, 2017 - the final day of the hardest year I've ever encountered - the Astros beat the Rangers to go to 40-16, the 2017 Astros brought me joy. Later that Autumn, a team I actually loved actually did something. They won the World Series. Since then it has been Hans Gruber falling from Nakatomi: they traded for Osuna, Taubman did Taubman things, Fiers talked to Evan Drellich. It's all shadows now. To me, it's tainted. It doesn't need an asterisk, the asterisk is implied. Were other teams doing it? Maybe, probably, I don't know. I know a lot of people worked really hard to get that World Series and, as advanced as the Astros were with analytics, a freaking trash can, the guy the Astros let walk to the Mets, and the Other Guy From The Carlos Gomez Trade, brought them down.

No one will ever replace the feeling I had at 10:59pm on November 1, 2017. But I know now that it's not the same, that there is shame involved. And if the players don't feel it themselves, I sure do.

Throughout this offseason I have considered shutting Astros County Dot Com down. Getting Randos (and, to be honest, some friends I've known for a long time) in my mentions blasting me for having the gall to be happy for 25 guys doing cool things who happen to have "Houston" stitched across the front of their shirt is not fun. I simultaneously want the Astros to beat the hell out of everybody and also to not have done what they did. And what they did was to cheat their way to the postseason. I'll go to my grave wondering how Alex Bregman could hear a trash can getting hit with 42000 people yelling at the top of their lungs in the bottom of the 10th of Game 5. I'll also go to my grave wondering why a team with that much talent would risk it all. No one - including Mike Fiers - has turned in their Ring, so maybe that's why I'm going to keep this dumb blog going for the time being.

I was not immediately affected by Hurricane Harvey. My mom and my dad live on different sides of Houston. Neither of their houses flooded. I've met a lot of you in real life. I know a lot of you on Twitter. I'll go with the maxim (which I didn't come up with) that Facebook is for friends who are now strangers, and Twitter is for strangers who are now friends. The 2017 World Series saved a lot of you - it was a welcome respite when your world was literally floating away or rotting under floodwaters (which Yankees fans would like to have happen every single year). Now, I'm just sad. I'm beaten down by pretty much everything. The Apologies are hollow because it didn't need to come to this in the first place.

That said, I don't think the Astros were the only team dabbling in the "dark arts" of using technology MLB made available for an edge. Still, when you're the first one caught, it's not pleasant. And you can bet that if Even Drellich With Reporting From Ken Rosenthal (the Carlos Santana feat. Rob Thomas of our generation) tugs at this thread long enough, he/they could unravel the whole thing. I just don't know if they will, or if the Fury of Baseball can stay stoked long enough to care if another team did.

A Musical Selection:

Wednesday Morning Hot Links

*Just as we all suspected - or at least hoped - they would, more details emerged about the Astros' sign-stealing scandal; Namely, that it originated with Former Mets Great Carlos Beltran, according to Ken Rosenthal and Evan Drellich:
Carlos Beltran, a highly-respected veteran with a Hall-of-Fame resume, had helped create the system, and as the senior member of the [2017 Astros], his voice functionally prevailed over all other. Clubhouse dynamics are a powerful force, conditioning players to keep quiet and respect veterans, and ultimately played a role in the Astros' snowballing scandal.

(A non-paywalled version of the story can be found here)

This new reporting uncovers a few new details:
1) There was a system in place to relay signs to a runner on second base in real-time on the road via the replay room.
2) Brian McCann tried to get Beltran to stop on at least two occasions.
3) It was Beltran who told the Astros that their sign-stealing was "behind the times."
4) Codebreaker - the predictive Excel spreadsheet - was legal (as has been noted) as an advance scouting tool. "Cora and Beltran decided that this video room stuff Koch-Weser was doing was just not working, inefficient, too slow."
5) Depending on who Rosenthal and Drellich talked to, Astros players were either uncomfortable with the trash-can banging, or they loved it.
6) Beltran went from Houston and the parade back to the Yankees as an executive, and disclosed some of what the Astros were doing to New York.

Joe Musgrove:
I was in my first year, man, along with Bregman and a lot of those guys, and in your first year in the big leagues you're around guys like Beltran and McCann, some big names. And I'm not going to be the pitcher to walk up and tell 'em to knock it off.

(Speaking of Musgrove, he also said:
I don't want to say [the 2017 World Series] is tainted, but I think it is....If MLB did an investigation as thorough as they did on the Astros with every team in baseball, they're going to find a lot more than they want to find.

So Beltran arrives in Houston after 2.5 seasons in New York (and part of the 2016 season with the Ramgers, of which I have zero recollection) and tells them their sign-stealing isn't up to par, then he "fixes" it and goes back to New York. Yeah I see no Yankees connections to it at all.

And that's the thing: Manfred wanted this to be quick and easy and everyone hates the Astros anyway thanks to Brandon Taubman and the Osuna trade, he hoped MLB would just move on. Here's hoping they don't.

*This article from the Washington Post's Barry Svrluga and Dave Sheinin says that the Astros' sign-stealing was "a big open secret...throughout baseball" beginning as early as 2016 and "maybe earlier." And then, "the whole industry knows they've been cheating their asses off for three or four years."
Former Astros Great Tony Sipp warned the Nationals about their sign-stealing, as did several members of the Dodgers.

*Marwin Gonzalez, speaking to reporters:
I'm remorseful for everything that happened in 2017, for everything that we did as a group, and for the players that were affected directly by us doing this and some other things. That's why I feel more regret and that's why I'm remorseful.

*Speaking of players that were affected directly, Former Blue Jays Great Mike Bolsinger has filed a civil lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court accusing the Astros of unfair business practices, negligence, and intentional interference with contractual and economic relations.

Bolsinger is from McKinney [raises eyebrows]. He posted a career 0.5 fWAR in parts of four seasons, and walked 27 batters in 41.1IP in 2017. Bolsinger enjoyed an ERA of 5.50 or higher in three of his four MLB seasons. Bolsinger's last game was August 4, 2017 when he allowed 4H/4ER, 1K:3BB in 0.1IP at Minute Maid Park. The Astros fan behind SignStealingScandal.com noted that the August 4 game was when the trash-can banging peaked. Bolinger:
I don't think [Manfred's] punishment has fit the crime. And let's be honest, all these guys are going to get managing jobs again...Guys like us that were cheated? I don't have a job. I'm not playing.

Man, it would be a real shame for this to go to actual trial where details about what other teams were doing were required under oath. Sports Lawyer Michael McCann fleshes out Bolsinger's case.

*Jim Crane will head to West Palm Beach on Wednesday (today) to talk with the 2020 Astros about how to address the sign-stealing scandal to the media, which the team will apparently do on Thursday.

*Baseball Prospectus' updated PECOTA standings have the Astros winning the 2020 AL West by 12 games.

*Jesse Sanchez notes that the Astros have the AL West's best bullpen.

*The proposal to shake up MLB's postseason.

*Love and Lhotse.

*She was a running prodigy. He was the most powerful man in track. How her promising career unraveled.

*A Musical Selection:

A Liar Wrote This

Baseball has always been a sport by and for the liars.  

For example, the popular origins of the game are manifestly a lie.   Albert Spalding, a former player who became wealthy by selling and packaging the game, invented the myth that the rules of baseball sprung into the mind of Civil War hero Abner Doubleday during his idyllic boyhood in the hamlet of Cooperstown, New York.  As baseball historian John Thorn put it in his excellent book Baseball in the Garden of Eden,  “If in the end no one invented our national game, and its innocent Eden is a continuing state of delusion, he,” meaning Spalding, “as unwittingly as Abner Doubleday invented baseball, invented its religion and its shrine.”  Continuing states of delusion are big business, and always have been.  Anyone who’s gone to Cooperstown can tell you this.  The place is beautiful.  On Hall of Fame Induction weekends, packed.  Does it matter that this place has nothing to do with the origins of the game?  Of course not, but it’s nice to think so.  We love the lie.  The lie feels comforting. 

Integrity is a another lie that baseball has always sold with great success.  After the 1919 Chicago White Sox threw the World Series, organized baseball hired Kenesaw Mountain Landis as its Captain Renault to announce they were shocked, shocked to find gambling in baseball, banning the accused players for life.  Of course, gambling was far more widespread than professional baseball has ever been comfortable admitting, and there is some evidence that Landis had less appetite to punish Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker, true icons of the era, for similar antics.  That pattern has repeated itself, in recent times most famously with the steroid scandal.  Baseball willfully avoided what was an open secret until it was impossible to do so when a player finally went on the record about how widespread the problem was. 

Sound familiar?

The scandal over the use of cameras to steal signs has exploded across baseball and social media.  The Astros have been punished, and deserve it.  This scandal has several similarities to the historical scandals noted above.  Like the steroids scandal, there has been much hand-wringing over the effect of the players not participating in the scheme.  Whistleblower Mike Fiers said as much to Ken Rosenthal about his motivation for speaking up about the Astros malfeasance: “I just want the game to be cleaned up a little bit because there are guys who are losing their jobs because they’re going in there not knowing… Young guys getting hit around in the first couple of innings starting a game, and then they get sent down.”  This echoes the lamentations about steroid use: clean players wouldn’t be able to make it in a game full of juiced players.  Like both scandals, MLB would clearly prefer to sell us a new lie: that this was the fault of a few, outed malefactors and to pay no attention to what’s behind the curtain:  it’s only AJ Hinch sitting on his hands while Carlos Beltran and Alex Cora cook the books. 

But an interesting thing is happening:  The mob wants to see what’s behind the curtain for itself.  Maybe it’s social media or the fact that most of us have grown up with a 24/7 news cycle, but we want everything out of any sensational story we can possibly get.  MLB’s refusal to give us that has led to a circus atmosphere on Twitter where everything could be, and might be, true.  Rumors from fake niece accounts are retweeted by respectable journalists.  The son of the Mariners’ former first base coach posts on Instagram that the MLB is hushing up the fact that Mike Trout uses HGH.  Circus, hell, there’s even confetti.

Maybe this is free-for-all is a symptom of us losing our patience for the lie.  As a manager told Ken Rosenthal in the original story, this issue “permeates” the whole league.  MLB doesn’t want to hear that, but Twitter definitely does.  But the truth might be that the Banging Scheme’s best corollary might not be Steroids or the Black Sox, but something more mundane and widespread.  What I’m speaking of is the widely-acknowledged fact that pitchers doctor the baseball, and have always doctored the baseball.  Like electronic sign-stealing, putting a foreign substance on the baseball is illegal.  However, the latter is winked and nodded at.   Rob Friedman, of Pitching Ninja fame, tweets out video of Pedro Martinez snapping off hellacious changeups while also tweeting videos of Pedro joking about Jheri curls.  No one is troubled by this, seemingly not Mike Fiers, but why? Aren’t the careers of young hitters potentially harmed when they fail to perform against pitchers throwing baseballs breaking more than they otherwise would if not slick with pine tar?  Couldn’t young hitters get sent down? 

I suppose the answer is two-fold.  As ESPN’s David Shoenfield has written, “Applying a foreign substance to the ball seems to be an accepted part of the game, unless you're clearly and obviously violating the rule.”  Meaning, it’s possible to cross a visible line to the point where the cheating is impossible to ignore.  This is a weird ethical scheme in which some cheating is okay as long as it’s possible for the other side to check on you that you don’t cheat too much.  The second point is that people have been doctoring baseballs forever, and the longevity of the practice lends it a certain acceptance. 

But how effective are these distinctions? To the first, it seems that players have been policing electronic sign-stealing, monitoring the opposing teams for what is deemed as excessive and obvious behavior.  Perhaps that’s why the rumors of the Astros wearing wearable buzzers have triggered paranoia by even hitters, because this would take an acceptable form of cheating entirely under the table.  After all, even if you use an camera to crack the signs, you still have to get to signal the hitter.  If the other side can’t monitor your signals, all bets are off. And let’s be honest on this Astros fan blog: no one would, or should, put the use of buzzers past them.  It’s notable that in this scandal, it’s mostly been pitchers who have been vocal critics of the Astros' tactics.  The hitters know how widespread this practice has been, and that they have benefited.  Before Fiers went on the record, electronic sign-stealing seemed to be an increasingly accepted part of the game.  Heck, Lance McCullers Jr. openly tweeted about it a year ago.  One of the most honest responses by any player to the Astros scandal came from Logan Morrison, who admitted that he viewed electronic sign-stealing as a “tool in the tool belt” for sign-stealing.  Do we honestly think Logan Morrison is alone in his sentiment among current players?  It’s possible to view Mike Fiers as breaking an unwritten rule of engagement in the Cold War between hitters and pitchers: “We don’t talk about goo, you don’t talk about sign-stealing.” 

But what about the second point, that doctoring baseballs has always been a part of the game, and electronic sign-stealing has not?  That’s not entirely true.

One of the most famous moments in baseball history, one that’s lionized throughout the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, is the “Shot Heard Round the World.”  In 1951, in the third game of a three-game playoff to decide the National League pennant between the Dodgers and Giants at the Polo Grounds, Giants third baseman Bobby Thompson hit a three-run walk-off homerun in the bottom of the ninth inning off of the Dodgers’ Ralph Branca to send the Giants to the World Series.  Broadcaster Russ Hodges hysterical radio refrain of “The Giants win the pennant!” is embedded in baseball lore.  But according to Joshua Prager in his 2008 book The Echoing Green, Thompson knew the pitch was coming.  The Giants third base coach was hidden in centerfield with a telescope, and once he cracked the Dodgers signs he pressed a button to signal the Giants bullpen with a buzzer.  One buzz was a fastball, two buzzes was an off-speed pitch.  The Giants backup catcher relayed the sign to the hitter.  Interestingly, Prager reported that when he first wrote about the sign-stealing scheme in 2001, he was accused by old guard sportswriters of messing with the myth of the American game.  Bobby Thompson never had to worry about a Jomboy.  In the aftermath of Rob Manfred’s punishment of the Astros, we are starting to see more veteran baseball players admit that using cameras to steal signs is way more wide-spread than previously thought. The 2017 Astros were not a team of scheming millennial ballplayers unwise to the unwritten rules of the game: they were led by widely respected veterans, including one infamous for policing those unwritten rules.  This begs the question: if using cameras to steal signs was part of the game in at least the 1950s,  1980s, and 2010s, when was it definitively not being used? Can we say that any particular dramatic moment on a professional baseball diamond didn’t feature electronic sign-stealing?

I’m not writing this to absolve the actions of the Astros.  Despite the fact that it’s widespread and been part of the game for years, electronic sign-stealing is against the rules, and rule-breakers should get punished.  I suppose you could reduce what I’m doing to “adding context.”  But maybe that’s a lie, too.  Even if what the Astros did was not unique, it seems clear from that, as McCullers pointed out: the tech is too far ahead.  The game has slowed down as the diamond has become a presumed surveillance state.  In the end, it’s probably for the best that Rob Manfred came down hard on someone, even if it happened to be the Astros.  Maybe now the owners, general managers, and managers who allowed electronic sign-stealing to permeate will get serious about self-policing a game that is becoming admittedly slower and harder to watch. 

And maybe the only utility of this article is to tell a story to myself about the actions of players that I genuinely like, about one of the best sports moments of my life, to give me the space to feel better about what they did and achieved.  It’s comforting to live in that space, like Cooperstown is comforting.  

Friday Morning Hot Links

I had a really cool thing happen yesterday and, no, I'm not going to tell you about it. And I will not let what popped up ruin that. Let us also observe that paranoia and conspiracy theories arise out of a place of distrust. And while nobody trusts the Astros, there's an awful lot of distrust getting thrown towards Manfred and MLB. Anyway, just to be on record, let's do this.

*Everyone's favorite YouTube jacknut Jomboy had himself a flawed theory and, since he had a lot of funny Ejection Videos and isolated some trash can banging, everyone went ALL IN. 

Noted Imbecile Jomboy claimed that there were a couple of tweets from Carlos Beltran's niece saying that Altuve was wearing a buzzer on his shoulder when he hit the Pennant-Winning Walk-Off (and he had five different anonymous parties corroborating it).

Plot Twist: It was not Carlos Beltran's niece. In fact, there's some chatter that the initial tweets came from a player's burner account. Oh, and also that Mike Trout takes HGH and MLB has known this for two years. Sure, let's burn everything down and go back to the days of barnstorming. Of course Altuve denied it.

Jomboy got a taste of the big time when everyone legitimized his spending hours upon hours of watching the Astros beat the Yankees. And now he can just tweet whatever InfoWars douchebaggery he wants to make himself feel better and get instant validation. A great recipe!

*Joel Sherman got a quote from MLB:

MLB explored wearable devices during the investigation but found no evidence to substantiate it.

*Ranking the absurdities of this week in baseball. 

*Marc Carig said the Astros started the biggest scandal in sports since Steroids.

*Tom Verducci: Baseball is in an ethical crisis.

*Josh Reddick became the first player to speak out about the Astros' Winter of Discontent, saying:

We're not talking much about it...We've got to keep our focus on winning. It's as simple as that. We keep our focus on winning and everything will work itself out.

*The Astros interviewed Buck Showalter on Wednesday, John Gibbons yesterday, and will interview Will Venable today. McTaggart:

A source told MLB.com the Astros would like to have a manager in place by Feb. 1 before the club turns its attention to finding a new general manager.

Dan Connolly writes that Buck Showalter is a perfect candidate:

...Two of Showalter's best attributes are the two things that the Astros probably need the most right now: He brings immediate accountability and credibility, and he's a maestro at getting a team to believe that it is them against the world.

Dusty Baker said he's interested, hasn't been contacted, but "there's a few questions" he'd want to ask.

*George Springer avoided an arbitration hearing with the Astros when he agreed to a $21m deal for 2020.

*Dean Deetz, who was DFAd last week, was assigned to Round Rock.

*The 2017 Astros are here to wreck all the franchises: Carlos Beltran stepped down before ever managing a game. His statement was strong to quite strong.

*File this under, "I Thought This Happened Two Years Ago:" Carlos Gomez retired.

*Alyssa Nakken is about to become the first woman to be on an MLB coaching staff.

*GQ: Why is Putin's power play so shocking?

*Japanese billionaire's girlfriend entrants top 20,000 to go to the moon.

*A Musical Selection:

Thursday Morning Hot Links

Let's get this crap over with. Tired of Trash Can Bangin'? TOO BAD. THIS IS OUR EXISTENCE NOW.

*Check the Chronicle's editorial: The Astros Never Let Us Down, Until Now.

*Jayson Stark has an excellent piece in The Atlantic about how the "Take (the Astros' 2017 Championship) Back" narrative is flawed. Stark:
The making of history is an integral part of the fabric of baseball. But nowhere in that fabric has anyone ever dared to un-make history. And as we learned again this week, Rob Manfred was not going to be the first.

*Reid Ryan:
That joy in winning in Los Angeles will never be taken away

*Brian McTaggart reports that the Astros have targeted some potential managerial...targets. It's...it's just...here's the fing list:
Dusty Baker (sure)
Jeff Banister (gotta be kidding me don't let Banny Rooster anywhere near this team I will literally light crap on fire if this happens)
Bruce Bochy (okay, I suppose)
Joe Espada (YES)
Raul Ibanez (interesting, I'm listening)
Buck Showalter (Bruh)
Will Venable (I think he's 24, but I'm not sure)

Espada is the odds-on favorite to get the gig.

*How big of a house does Jim Crane want to clean?

*The Astros players, who did all this crap in concert with Alex Cora, have yet to speak out, but that could change soon. Related, Brian T. Smith says FanFest on Saturday is a perfect time for the Astros players to say literally anything. I know how you feel about #BTS columns, but this is a good one.

*Jake Kaplan evaluates Pete Putila's chances of becoming the Astros' GM.

*Chandler Rome: The Astros' acumen in the draft will be tested in 2020.

*Yordan Alvarez switched agencies, if that's something that matters to you.

*A disgraced former bench coach got fired. Long may he never be spoken of again.

*Should the Mets fire Carlos Beltran?

*The 30 Most Dangerous Tech Companies, according to those who Know.

*The Ringer: Who is Ken Jennings?

*Outside: The Bizarre Bank Robbery That Shook An Arctic Town.

*A Musical Selection:

Judgment Day

The official punishment from MLB came to Minute Maid Park today. It is not a good day in Astros history. Is it the worst day in Astros history? I don't know about that - there have been a lot of them, some of them even as part of this saga. Anyway, let's discuss what we know so far:

The Punishment

Let's first start with what did not happen:

-The Astros were not stripped of the 2017 World Series Championship.
-No actual current Astros players were suspended.

Commissioner Rob Manfred issued the following punishments on the Houston Astros after interviewing 68 people, 23 current and former Astros, 76,000 emails, who knows how many texts and Slack conversations

-$5 million fine.
-Loss of 1st and 2nd Round picks in the 2020 and 2021 drafts.
-A ban through the 2020 World Series on GM Jeff Luhnow, Manager A.J. Hinch, and former assistant GM Brandon Taubman. Taubman can apply for reinstatement after the World Series, and any subsequent infractions could result in a lifetime ban.

The punishment is consistent with previous punishments levied by MLB: the Cardinals were fined $2 million and lost their 1st & 2nd Round picks after their own technological endeavors.

Manfred issued a 9-page statement that began with the following:
On November 12, 2019, former Houston Astros player Mike Fiers publicly alleged in an article published by Ken Rosenthal and Evan Drellich of The Athletic that the Astros had engaged in sign-stealing methods in 2017 that violated MLB's rules.

Within the first 1.5 pages of the report, Alex Cora and Carlos Beltran are specifically named as co-conspirators. The trash can banging was confirmed. Manfred:
Witnesses consistently describe this new scheme as player-driven, and with the exception of Cora, non-player staff, including individuals in the video replay room, had no involvement in the banging scheme.

After the September 15, 2017 memo circulated to all clubs, the investigation concluded that
...The Astros continued to both utilize the replay review room and the monitor located next to the dugout to decode signs for the remainder of the regular season and throughout the Postseason.

Then:
The investigation uncovered no evidence that Astros players utilized the banging scheme (Ed. Note: Thank you, Rob Manfred, for naming every single Astros fan's fantasy baseball team in 2020) in 2018. However, the Astros' replay review room staff continued, at least for part of the 2018 season, to decode signs using the live center field camera feed, and to transmit the signs to the dugout through in-person communication. At some point during the 2018 season, the Astros stopped using the replay review room to decode signs because the players no longer believed it was effective. The investigation did not reveal any attempt by the Astros to utilize electronic equipment to decode and transmit signs in the 2018 postseason.

The 2019 Astros were cleared, as well. However:
The efforts involving the replay review room staff were mentioned in at least two emails sent to Luhnow, and there is conflicting evidence about conversations with Luhnow on the topic. Regardless of the level of Luhnow's actual knowledge, the Astros' violation of rules in 2017 and 2018 is attributable, in my view, to a failure by the leaders of the baseball operations department and the Field Manager (meaning: Hinch) to adequately manage the employees under their supervision, to establish a culture in which adherence to the rules is ingrained in the fabric of the organization, and to stop bad behavior as soon as it occurred.

Regarding the 2017 Astros' player involvement:
Most of the position players on the 2017 team either received sign information from the banging scheme or participated in the scheme by helping to decode signs or bang on the trash can. Many of the players who were interviewed admitted that they knew the scheme was wrong because it crossed the line from what the player believed was fair competition and/or violated MLB rules. Players stated that if Manager A.J. Hinch told them to stop engaging in the conduct, they would have immediately stopped. 

This feels really stupid. If you know it's wrong, stop doing it. If you - a grown-ass adult - is waiting on a more-grown-ass adult to tell you to stop, you didn't really want to stop. Ultimately, the report concluded, the Astros stopped because they said it wasn't really all that effective. All this because of something that might not have actually helped. Great work, dudes.

On Luhnow, Manfred:
Although Luhnow denies having any awareness that his replay review room staff was decoding and transmitting signs, there is both documentary and testimonial evidence that indicates Luhnow had some knowledge of those efforts, but he did not give it much attention...

...While no one can dispute that Luhnow's baseball operations department is an industry leader in its analytics, it is very clear to me that the culture of the baseball operations department, manifesting itself in the way its employees are treated, its relations with other Clubs, and its relations with the media and external stakeholders, has been very problematic.

The handling of The Taubman Incident should be taught in Public Relations courses in the Don't Do It Like This portion of the syllabus.

On Hinch:
Hinch attempted to signal his disapproval of the scheme by physically damaging the monitor on two occasions, necessitating its replacement. However, Hinch admits he did not stop it and he did not notify players or Cora that he disapproved of it, even after the Red Sox were disciplined in September 2017. Similarly, he knew of and did not stop the communication of sign information from the replay review room, although he disagreed with this practice as well and specifically voiced his concerns on at least one occasion about the use of the replay phone for this purpose. As the person with responsibility for managing his players and coaches, there simply is no justification for Hinch's failure to act.

So Hinch, here, is taking the fall for what Alex Cora and Former Mets Great Carlos Beltran (who will apparently not face any punishment, given that he was a player and not management), and who knows how many of the current members of the Houston Astros, did. That he did not forcefully disagree with it - other than actually breaking the monitor on two occasions - is what led to his suspension.

On Alex Cora:
Cora participated in both schemes, and through his active participation, implicitly condoned the players' conduct. I will withhold determining the appropriate level of discipline for Cora until after the DOI completes its investigation of the allegations that the Red Sox engaged in impermissible electronic sign stealing in 2018 while Cora was the manager.

Cora is screwed, and deservedly so. And I would say this if he was still a part of the Astros' organization: let him burn. The Truly One Good SportsThing that has happened to me (and it's always about me) has been called into question because of Mike Fing Fiers, the one-year bench coach, and a Douchebag Ivy League bro.

Anyhow, those are the main points of Manfred's report. Whether you want to believe that Manfred is suddenly the Angel of Light in the wake of the What's Up With The Actual Baseballs fiasco is up to you. That said, I don't want to deflect from the very real conclusion that members of the Astros players and coaching staff cheated when it was questionable at best, and continued after it was explicitly impermissible. And then they quit doing it when they couldn't figure out if it was actually helpful. That's an impossibly stupid turn of events.

In the press conference held today, owner Jim Crane officially fired both Luhnow and Hinch. Crane:
Neither one of them started this, but neither one of them did anything about it...We need to move forward with a clean slate.

Luhnow:
I did not know rules were being broken...The sign-stealing initiative was not planned or directed by baseball management; the trash-can banging was driven and executed by players, and the video decoding of signs originated and was executed by lower-level employees working with the bench coach. I am deeply upset that I wasn't informed of any misconduct because I would have stopped it.

Manfred explicitly said in his report - again, its believability is up to you - that Luhnow was aware, and ignored it.

Hinch:
While the evidence showed I didn't endorse or participate in the sign-stealing practices, I failed to stop them and I am deeply sorry.

What Now

Crane fired Luhnow and Hinch.

Crane:
I have higher standards for the city and franchise, and I am going above and beyond MLB's penalty. We need to move forward with a clean slate, and the Astros will become a stronger organization because of this today. You can be confident that we will always do the right thing and will not have this happen again on my watch. 

The Astros now have two positions to fill: their GM, and their manager. Crane:
We'll quickly look for someone to manage the team. As soon as we get out of here today. Certainly, we have possibilities internally; we'll also look outside. The baseball operation, I will oversee. We have a number of capable guys that can run that operation. A number of them were interviewed for GM spots, one in particular (whom McTaggart notes is Pete Putila). And so we'll sit down today and start working on that and move as quickly as we can.

It's logical to assume that bench coach Joe Espada, who was a finalist for both the Cubs and Giants' managerial openings, would take over the Astros, and I'm perfectly okay with that. Joe Espada is a highly-respected bilingual baseball man who has been around the Astros players (some of whom, let's not forget, sunk this whole thing with an alley-oop from Mike MF Fiers). Crane:
Certainly, we have a bench coach that's capable. We'll certainly look outside, but we know we've got to have somebody in charge when we go to Spring Training. That could be interim. I don't have the answer yet, but we'll make it work.

If the Astros promote Espada, he'll need a bench coach to replace...himself.

Teh Medier's Reaction:

The Chronicle is loving it.

*Chandler Rome: Where do the Astros go from here?
With the firings, the most amazing era of Astros baseball is indelibly sullied by an electronic sign-stealing scheme that Major League Baseball confirmed was in existence during the 2017 and 2018 seasons.

Brian T. Smith: Cheating Astros* (sic) Pay Painful Price For Golden Era.

*Dodgers People are in a hipster canyon coffee shop just seething:

Bill Plaschke: Dodgers cheated out of a championship.

*My Dude Bill Baer: MLB's punishment for the Astros is both too harsh and also not enough.

My Reaction:

*No one will take away the joy I felt on November 1, 2017. What it does take away is Luhnow and Hinch's legacy. I've long been Anti-Asterisk. You don't need to know why Hugh Duffy needs an asterisk when he hit .440 in 1894. You don't need an asterisk on Barry Bonds' much-deserved plaque in Cooperstown. It's understood by anyone who would know who Hugh Duffy is or by anyone who would actually make the effort to go to Cooperstown. The 2017 Astros don't need an asterisk because now we all know. This is the outcome.

*The draft picks lost are more of a penalty down the road than they are an immediate penalty. It's way more of a long-term penalty than the immediate downer of today's news.

*The punishment levied on Hinch and Luhnow robs them of their legacy. That's the penalty. Hinch will probably, and deservedly, be okay, and God help us if Seattle hires him.

*Every time you get Excited About The Astros Online, you have to wear the tweets from other teams responding with an aforementioned asterisk, or a "27 Rangz" tweet, or a complete dismissal. That's how it is now. The Astros made the Yankees feel like they have the moral high ground. Do you know how hard that is to achieve?

*This is all because of unnamed players who are currently on the Astros, because of Alex Cora, because of Mike Fiers, because of Carlos Beltran, because of Brandon Taubman, because of Roberto Osuna, because of how the front office officially decided to handle the last two items. Everything came due today.

*Other teams were probably doing the same thing, but it doesn't make it okay to do it as well.

*Today wasn't fun. Let's not do this again.

Sunday Morning Hot Links

Short one this morning.

*Just about the only Astros news of the day was another report from The Athletic's Ken Rosenthal and Evan Drellich (again, get used to this) in which the headline reads: Astros executive asked scouts for help stealing signs and suggested using cameras, email shows.

That's a damning headline! I wonder what the article says!

Well, the email is from August 2017. The sender and recipients are unidentified. The email:

One thing in specific we are looking for is picking up signs coming out of the dugout. What we are looking for is how much we can see, how we would log things, if we need cameras/binoculars, etc. So go to game, see what you can (or can't) do and report back your findings.

Well that doesn't seem as bad, if you're willing to read past the headline. The unnamed executive sent an email asking if they could pick up signs coming out of the dugout whether through cameras (not okay) or binoculars (Extreme Grey Area). The "see what you can (or can't) do" portion is the kicker for me. Obviously I'm on record as being Against Cheating. But if you're wondering how to pick up signs and the sender says "see what you can (or can't) do" that's hardly a directive to commit Baseball Fraud.

Scouts discussed sign stealing with the executive outside of email as well, on phone calls and in a group Slack channel. Multiple Astros scouts said they were appalled by the possibility they would be asked to use a camera - and said that some scouts indeed voiced as much to management...

..."Nobody wanted to do that, and take a chance of getting caught and ruining their reputation, not only as a scout but then ever further damage what the Astros had going," one person directly involved in the conversations said...

...A longtime scout outside of the Astros organization said that, across the sport, asking advance scouts to attempt to track signs is not uncommon. A general manager confirmed the same. But the potential use of a camera stood out to both.

Keith Law tweeted that the email was "a third-rate burglary attempt."

ESPN's Jeff Passan has the story, as well, if you want the unpaywalled version. He notes that the email was sent by Kevin Goldstein, special assistant to GM Jeff Luhnow. Passan:

The 2017 plans relayed by Goldstein involved a pro scouting department that has since been gutted, with the Astros' analytics-scouting balance since then tilting to the side of analytics "99 to 1," according to a person familiar with the team's resources. Much of the Astros' scouting work today, sources said, involves cameras and video.

The New York Post's Ken Davidoff looks for comparisons to the Patriots and their many scandals as Rob Manfred figures out what to do with the Astros. Davidoff:

Most obviously, Houston's manager A.J. Hinch and president of baseball operations Jeff Luhnow should be suspended for lengthy periods - half a season, at least - if a preponderance of evidence suggests that they knew what was going down.

SNY's Andy Martino: What MLB needs to learn, and how it could still get Carlos Beltran suspended.

I guess the point of articles like this is to further build the case against the Astros and the front office regarding a "culture" of cheating. It's going to be a long offseason.

*ESPN has an AL West Offseason Preview for your pleasure. Houston's offseason preview focuses on payroll, which is projected to be almost $229m - or about $21m over the luxury tax - for 2020, and that's before you get into Gerrit Cole discussions.

*RIP Vera Clemente.

*Restaurant/Food Critic Adam Platt wrote about what it's like to be targeted by a chef.

*Would 19 hours and 16 minutes on a plane make you crazy?

*Barry Petchesky wrote in the NY Times about not sticking to sports.

*A Musical Selection:

Thursday Morning Hot Links

Join me, as well as the entire Astros organization, on offering the most fervent of distracting congratulations to Justin Verlander on winning his 2nd Cy Young Award. Verlander got 17 first place votes and 13 second place votes. Gerrit Cole got 13 first place votes and 17 second place votes. I have no opinion on this. I would have been fine if Cole had won and Verlander came in second. Anyhow, Verlander is the 4th Astros pitcher (Mike Scott, Roger Clemens, Dallas Keuchel) to win a Cy Young Award. Eight seasons between Cy Young Awards is the longest in MLB history.

Here's how the BBWAA writers voted, by BBWAA chapter (each AL MLB city gets two writers to vote):
Baltimore: Verlander
Boston: Cole
Chicago: Split
Cleveland: Split
Detroit: Cole (shocking)
Houston: Verlander
Kansas City: Split
Los Angeles: Cole
Minnesota: Verlander
New York: Verlander
Oakland: Verlander
Seattle: Cole
Tampa: Verlander
Arlington: Split
Toronto: Split

MLB.com's writers explained their vote. The rationale for Verlander over Cole ranged from the number of innings pitched, body of work, Verlander's no-hitter, consistency. Click the link. Gerrit Cole's reaction:
Justin Verlander is a stud. It was a pleasure to run alongside him this summer. Congratulations!

It's Verlander's 8th Top-5 Cy Young finish, he's finished 5th twice, 3rd once, 2nd three times - most recently losing in 2018 (17-13) to Blake Snell. Verlander:
It was starting to become disappointing every time I came so close and it just didn't happen. I put up some historic numbers in the history of baseball [in 2018], and every time somebody had done something similar, they had won the Cy Young. Is it meant to be for me to win another one? I don't want to call [winning a second] a relief, because it wasn't. It just put things in perspective and made it all the better, all the more exciting for me and my family.

So let's talk about Verlander's previous three 2nd-place finishes:

2012:
David Price: 14 1st Place votes, 20-5, 211IP, 2.56 ERA / 1.10 WHIP,  150 ERA+, 4.3 fWAR
Verlander: 13 1st Place votes, 17-8, 238.1IP, 2.64 ERA / 1.06 WHIP, 161 ERA+, 6.9 fWAR

2016:
Rick Porcello: 8 1st Place votes, 22-4, 223IP, 3.15 ERA / 1.01 WHIP, 142 ERA+, 5.1 fWAR
J. Verlander: 14 1st Place votes, 16-9, 227.2IP, 3.04 ERA / 1.00 WHIP, 140 ERA+, 5.4 fWAR

Two Tampa writers - Fred Goodall and Bill Chastain - did note vote for Verlander at all (1st-5th Place). The 2016 vote led to this legendary tweet. Goodall "talked to guys" and Chastain sent his ballot in a week early.

2018:
Blake Snell: 17 1st Place votes, 21-5, 180.2IP, 1.89 ERA / 0.97 WHIP, 217 ERA+, 4.8 fWAR
Verlander: 13 1st Place votes, 16-9, 214IP, 2.52 ERA / 0.90 WHIP, 164 ERA+, 6.6 fWAR

It's reasonable to think that this should have at least been Verlander's 4th Cy Young Award.

Justin Verlander and Gerrit Cole are the fourth pair of teammates to finish 1st & 2nd in Cy Young voting, first since Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling in 2002, and again in 2001. Verlander and NL Cy Young winner Jacob deGrom are the 20th and 21st pitchers in MLB history to win multiple Cy Youngs Cys Young. 15 more facts and figures about the 2019 Cy Young Award winners. Verlander, on Cole:
One of the great things about the way we pushed each other is the conversations we would have after, about what we saw and felt and adjustments we could make one way or another. Just always really trying to help each other but push each other at the same time.

*Meanwhile, this report says Scott Boras (more like Bore Us, amirite) says Gerrit Cole is unlikely to sign before January. You could look at Gerrit Cole's reaction to Verlander winning the Cy Young as coming from a guy who, in his Age 29 season, will start the first of a multi-year contract worth over $250m...somewhere else because he's a SoCal guy. Scott Boras says NAY to all of that:
I don't think geography matters...as much as what matters is the continuance of winning and being able to achieve their goal of getting that rare win.

And on that January thing? Boras:
I heard today that Gerrit Cole wasn't signing until January. I have no idea who said that or why. It's completely inaccurate.

Boras also said that MLB's system is corrupt. Do we believe anything Boras says on November 13? Stay tuned.

Add the Phillies to a list of clubs that should, in total, number 30, as to who could benefit from Gerrit Cole in their rotation.

*A new report from The Athletic's Ken Rosenthal and Evan Drellich says that Hinch, Cora, and Beltran are all connected to the sign-stealing debacle. The most notable thing in this new report, MLB's investigation into the Astros has already begun.

There are two fairly well-defined camps on this:

1. You have blind allegiance to the Houston Astros and literally nothing they can do will change that. That's certainly A Way to live.

2. You have to admit that the Astros have done some shady things in the past. Part of the point of my little recap of the last four seasons of Astros and sign-stealing was to show that other teams, and specifically named were the Red Sox, Yankees, Dodgers, and Rangers, are at least credibly accused of sign-stealing in the same manner. To me, and you can get on Twitter and refer to me as a part of the female anatomy because of this, the Astros currently make me feel gross and I want a break from this team for a while (probably won't happen, but whatever). This is not why I like baseball, but baseball has a funny way of reflecting what's happening in society.

I caught a whole bunch of shade from Ramger Fans I work with who barely know anything about baseball and would rather have Rougned Odor than Jose Altuve yesterday. That's fair. The Athletic's report is literally the best thing that has happened to them since 2011. Yankees fans are going to be salty because the Astros have ended their season in three of the past five years. That douche from Dazed & Confused is gonna get up in Bregman's mentions (and if anyone knows about cheating it's Mike Clevinger). It's open season on the Astros, and we all just have to understand that. Gonna have to wear this one for...a good long while. It's how it is now.

Yahoo!'s Tim Brown: This could be the final nail in the Astros' reputation coffin.

Beyond the Box Score: MLB needs to suspend Jeff Luhnow. Trigger Warning: This article is a hatchet job. But it's worth reading to find out how the Rest of Baseball feels.

The Nationals had a plan to counter the Astros' dUGouT hIJinKs.

*Dr. Meredith Willis has an interesting astrophysicist look at what happened to the baseballs in the postseason.

*The Atlantic: How America Ends.

*A Musical Selection:

Wednesday Morning Hot Links

I spent the majority of Tuesday working on a write-up related to the report in The Athletic.

The Astros released a statement promising to cooperate with MLB's investigation. In that statement, Luhnow:
The reason we won the World Series in 2017 is Jose Altuve and Alex Bregman, Justin Verlander, and a lot of great players and they do things the right way and we as an organization, that's what we aspire to do as well.

Also, Luhnow:
We haven't done everything properly, but I do feel confident that in general, most of the time, we did things right and we try and follow the rules. We try to be good citizens and we try to compete as hard as we can.

Carlos Beltran denied The Athletic's [and Mike Fiers'] report:
I'm not aware of that camera. We were studying the opposite team every day.

The Yankees are Big Mad about the whole thing. An anonymous member of the 2017 Yankees:
To actually have somebody hitting a garbage can, pretty much the whole game, that's pretty much your job, whoever is doing that. It stinks. You wish you could go back in time and figure that out earlier, because we thought we were the better team. We probably were the better team.

Brian Cashman:
I don't think it's a technological question alone. It's just conduct. You decide to play by the rules, or you don't. And if you don't, there's consequences. You're putting yourself at risk whether it's future employment, current employment, or sanctions or what have you. It's not a technology question as much as how you want to operate.

*Sports Illustrated's Mike Rosenberg: Why the Astros must admit they cheated.

*Parts of the Front Office are in Arizona for the GM Meetings. Jeff Luhnow met with members of Scott Boras' team yesterday, which makes sense as Scott Boras represents basically every free agent. Chandler Rome says that Luhnow is hoping to add multiple veteran starters:
We're looking for multiple players, whether it's internally or externally, that can give us innings in a rotation. Typically, it's eight or nine guys competing for five spots. Right now, we need to build that list.

*MLB.com: The case for each Cy Young candidate.

*Oakland's Bob Melvin got more Manager of the Year votes than A.J. Hinch, who finished 5th.

*Gabe Kapler is the new manager of the San Francisco Giants. Presumably Joe Espada will remain as the Astros' bench coach.

*Six of the Astros' Top 30 prospects are Rule 5 Draft-eligible: (9) Cristian Javier, (13) Enoli Paredes, (16) Ronnie Dawson, (25) Jonathan Arauz, (26) Nivaldo Rodriguez, (28) Taylor Jones.

*Fighting crime with San Diego's real-life superhero squad.

*A Musical Selection: