Oh boy.
Cody Bellinger ripped the Astros yesterday. He claimed among other things that the Astros stole the 2017 World Series, that Jose Altuve stole the MVP award from Aaron Judge, and that Jim Crane’s claim that the banging scheme didn’t impact games was “weak.” Astros shortstop Carlos Correa has now responded to Bellinger. Ken Rosenthal’s got the full transcript over at The Athletic, and I highly recommend giving it a read.
Correa gives plenty of interesting quotes here, but the money shot is his claim that part of the reason that Altuve didn’t want his shirt ripped off at the end of the ALCS is because Altuve had an ugly unfinished tattoo on his collarbone that he didn’t want anyone to see. Legions of Internet sleuths are combing through Altuve photos for evidence of this supposedly horrifying tattoo as we speak. For what it’s worth, Altuve does not have a tattoo on his collarbone in these pictures from July 29th, but could have theoretically gotten one between then and the ALCS. Where were you when this meme was born?
He also claimed that Altuve in fact did not cheat, because he didn’t want to partake in the banging scheme and therefore won the MVP cleanly. Additionally, Correa claimed that the Dodgers’ signs in the World Series were too complex to decipher, so therefore (according to Correa) the Astros won their rings without cheating.
Correa said Bellinger was being unfair when he claimed that the Astros were cheating in 2018 and 2019, and said that Rob Manfred’s report cleared them of wrongdoing in those years. He had to backtrack when Rosenthal reminded him that the report stated that the Astros continued to illegally use their video room to decode signs in 2018. The report hasn’t proved to be the most ironclad retelling of events, so Correa using it as a crutch here is not the greatest thing in the world.
If there’s one thing to be said for Correa, it’s that he hasn’t shied away from speaking his mind in the wake of all this nonsense like so many of his teammates have. His comments after the press conference earlier this week were some of the most genuinely apologetic quotes from any Astro since this story broke. That being said, some of his claims in this interview strain credulity.
This is now the third different reason that’s been given for Altuve’s aversion to getting his jersey ripped off, alongside the “I’m shy” and “My wife doesn’t like it” excuses offered back-to-back by Altuve immediately after the game. His defense of Altuve’s MVP award is novel at best. Does Jose Altuve really have a bad tattoo on his collarbone? Did he really not want to participate in the banging scheme? They’re both possible, but do the Astros have any credibility to stand on right now? The answer is no.
As for the 2017 World Series, you can decide for yourselves whether or not the “We tried to cheat but couldn’t because their signs were too hard to decode, so therefore we didn’t cheat” argument is compelling. I personally find it to be farcical.
I can’t totally criticize Correa for wanting to stand up for a teammate and the leader of his clubhouse. Yet at the same time, Correa needs to understand that he doesn’t have to fight these uphill battles, especially when he and his fellow Astros don’t really have a leg to stand on. It’s all good and fine to want to defend whatever shreds of credibility they have left. But to do so by offering more excuses that strain believability and to go the whole we-tried-to-cheat-but-couldn’t-therefore-we-did-nothing-wrong route for the World Series is misguided at best.
Sometimes the best course of action is to just bite your tongue and take your lumps, especially when you’re clearly in the wrong. Correa may want to consider that for the future.
UPDATE [2:00 PM EST]: The ever-reliable Jomboy seems to have found evidence of Altuve’s tattoo.
Looks like he has the tattoo on his chest here. Some cursive writing pic.twitter.com/wgdQA63744
— Jomboy (@Jomboy_) February 15, 2020
So, there’s that. That’s the 2019 World Series patch on his jersey too. Maybe this tattoo really does exist after all.
ESPN posted a 45-minute interview with Commissioner Rob Manfred about the fallout from the Astros investigation and subsequent outcry. Here’s the full video. It’s worth watching.
This is the first of two major media hits for Manfred today, who will give a press conference at 4:30 EST. The interview here ranges far and wide. It predominantly focuses on Astros-related stuff, but he also touches on stuff like upcoming rules changes and the controversy with minor league contraction.
First and foremost, Manfred at least knows how to sell what he’s selling, even if some of it doesn’t quite make sense. A good portion of the interview is about the decision to not punish the players and give them immunity in exchange for their testimony. Manfred claims that he wouldn’t have been able to get the information he needed without offering immunity. He also claims that he would have had to deal with all sorts of grievances from the MLBPA had he attempted to suspend players for their participation in the scheme, given that former Houston GM Jeff Lunhow didn’t pass on a directive from the league to stop using video footage during games to decipher signs, and the players were therefore unaware of the league’s warnings. Here’s a full quote from that.
“The memorandum went to the general manager, and then nothing was done from the GM down. So we knew if we had disciplined the players, in all likelihood we were going to have grievances and grievances that we were going to lose on the basis that we never properly informed them of the rules. So given those two things, number one, I knew where – or I’m certain where the responsibilities should lay in the first instance, and given the fact we didn’t think we could make discipline stick with the players, we made the decision we made. Having said that, I understand the reaction. The players, some of them in a more articulate way than others, have said, admitted they did the wrong thing. And I understand that people want to see them punished for that, and in a perfect world, they would have been punished.”
Huh?
I’ll give Manfred that it’s possible that the players may not have adequately cooperated otherwise, but the idea that the players were completely unaware of the league directive is laughable. That directive came down in the wake of the wrist-slapping punishment the Yankees and Red Sox got for the Apple Watch incident. Those instructions went out to all thirty teams and were highly publicized in the media. We’re meant to believe that not a single Astros player heard a peep about it because Lunhow failed to walk down to the clubhouse and tell the players about it? It’s the sort of technicality that can provide headaches for these sorts of proceedings, but let’s be honest. It beggars belief that nobody knew about this.
And in terms of the grievances, would it really have been impossible to reason with the MLBPA? Did they not foresee that not punishing the players would encourage the beanballs that are going to start flying soon? The players are furious about a lack of punishment, and it’s hard to imagine that the union wouldn’t have been at least a little receptive to talks about this.
Manfred also addresses his decision to not discipline Astros owner Jim Crane. He argues that Crane did enough to escape explicit personal punishment by instructing Lunhow to make sure the Astros were operating within the rules, but also that the $5 million fine, loss of draft picks and public embarrassment are punishment in their own ways.
We’ll agree to disagree there. Manfred says that the Astros players’ and Crane aren’t exactly waltzing into camp scot-free because of the public focus on them right now, but at the end of the day, they still get to play baseball and Crane still gets to get fabulously wealthy off his team. I think both the players and Crane would gladly trade this for a championship and the wealth generated from it. Having to answer some uncomfortable questions and being vilified because you got caught in one of the worst cheating scandals of the sport aren’t punishments. That’s just part of reaping what you sowed. At least Manfred acknowledged that the press conference the other day was a mess.
Other noteworthy Houston-related tidbits here include a continued insistence that the investigation turned up no evidence of buzzers being used, and some thinly-veiled annoyance from Manfred at players like Cody Bellinger and Trevor Bauer questioning his leadership. That’s part of the job, unfortunately, and it’s hard to argue from here that those players’ concerns are unfounded.
One other thing to touch on is Manfred’s answer about the minor league contraction proposal. Karl Ravech asks a good question about how Manfred can square wanting to contract teams with wanting to grow the game, and Manfred basically dodges it. He blames Minor League Baseball for misrepresenting what MLB actually wants to do, and then blames minor league owners for making players operate in inadequate and dangerous facilities. Ravech then moves on without following up.
Let’s be clear. If big league teams really cared about making sure their players were being developed in ideal facilities, they’d simply spend the money to make sure that happened. They could just buy their affiliates (as some teams are already doing) and take direct control of developmental facilities. Instead they’re pinching pennies and trying to save even more by cutting teams. It’s a joke.
Hopefully the commissioner’s second chance to give quotes today will better than this.
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