 Now turned into a punishment day for the Houston Astros. As Major League Baseball has handed down an extraordinary punishment to the Astros for what was institutionalized, sign stealing and cheating during the 2017 season and post season and post season. So this is what happened. If you just tuned in and you have been off the grid, this came down at about two o'clock. Manager AJ Hinch from Stanford, good guy. Kind of looked down his nose when the Yankees accused him of the whistling during this previous post season that that was an attempt at sign stealing. He gets suspended for one full year without pay. Jeff Lunow, the GM of the Astros, gets suspended for one full year without pay. Now they have not yet announced, but my thought process would be that the bench coach, Joe Espada, is probably going to be the interim manager. The organization, although Jim Crane, the owner, is said to have had no input at all and did not know about the cheating, the organization is going to be fined $5 million. They will lose their first round and second round draft pick this year and next year. None of the players on the team will be punished according to Manfred, a very long release that the baseball sent out. Because although most of the players knew, if not all of the players knew what was going on, their level of involvement is not known and would be tough to prove. He also said it's the general manager and manager's job to inform the players of what's legal and what's not legal, what's on the line, what's over the line. He also went after Manfred did in the release the Astros baseball operations culture. He called it, according to Mark Carrig of the athletic quote, very problematic, close quote, and quote insular, close quote, and quote, one that valued and rewarded results over other considerations. I've told you this for a long time, people. They are not liked within Major League Baseball. And I think within the front offices of baseball right now, there's a lot of chortling, there's some raised glasses, ding dong, the witch is dead. That's gonna be the feeling, because the Astros walked around when you played them as if they invented the game of baseball that they had found a better way to make a wheel. And they did. So in 2017, all that cheating led to a championship. If you're a Yankee fan, the Yankees lost to the Astros in seven games in the ALCS that year. If you're a Dodger fan, who lost to the Astros in the World Series that year, you're red hot. And I understand you're being red hot. You might have lost a chance at winning a championship, but I understand I'm not taking away a champion. What does that mean? That's totally an optic. Would it have worked? Yeah, maybe it works. Maybe it makes people feel better, but that doesn't mean you make the Yankees the champions. That doesn't mean that you make the Dodgers the champions, but I will tell you this, everybody, a lot of people lost jobs. Joe Girardi might have lost his job because the Yankees lost in that series. Although the word from the Yankees is even, they won the World Series, he was not gonna be brought it back. But that's neither here nor there. We don't know. So was this enough? I think it's a pretty hefty punishment. I really do. The $5 million means nothing to Jim Crane. Nothing. The draft picks me a lot. If you're gonna keep restocking your farm system, that means a lot. Losing your GM means a lot. Losing your manager means a lot. Do you know that this off-season, the Astros has spent the fewest amount of dollars on free agents? The fewest. So I don't know if they're just phoning in 2020. How do they go out and take the field now? Do they have the same desire that they had before? And if cheating done was propelling them, are they gonna be able to win at the same clip? And if you're a Yankee fan, let's go to 2019. Do you start to think whether or not Jose Altuve knew that was a breaking ball coming from, or all this Chapman. That was a lousy breaking ball. But did he know? All decent questions, I think. Well, I couldn't disagree with you more. To me, this is a slap on the wrist. Absolute slap on the wrist. First of all, $5 million, that's pocket change to an owner. All right? So the $5 million is nothing, all right? A general manager and a manager being- Wait, wait, wait, let me just, I'll stop. Jim Crane, the owner of the Astros, just fired A.J. Hinge and Jeff Luna. Just fired them. All right, well, that shows me how disgusted he was with the whole thing. But also, it almost makes your point for you. But it does. So now they're not even punished? Because, well, also is that, hey, we're gonna replace them anyway. They're replaceable because the system is in place, right? I was gonna say, all right, a general manager can't go to the building, probably can't go to spring training, but he can't tell me that he can't still be involved in some way, shape, or form. But they've already set what they are as a franchise, all right? So the general manager, no big deal, the manager, they're an analytics team. All we talked about, how the manager has been devalued anyway, so anybody could probably step in and do what they have been doing and still win at the same clip. So that's not really even that much of a question. Yeah, but you know what? Firing Luna, he's the genius behind all this. He put this whole thing together and his assistant Taubman has already been fired for what happened during the playoffs. So they're rudderless. But that's a self-inflicted wound. Nobody told him to fire him. Right. But maybe it tells me how replaceable or maybe it just tells me how replaceable these guys are that he's able to throw out, look what I did. I fired the guys knowing darn well, he's got guys within the company that can replace them and then not miss a beat. And as far as the draft picks are concerned, I keep going back to a Buck Showalter set. The punishment has to hurt them in the win-loss column for next year. Draft picks don't bear fruit sometimes, Michael, for three, four years down the road. So you might be punishing an Astros team that will obviously have a different general manager, different manager, different structure. This team has presently constituted, gets off scot-free. None of the players got punished, all right? Their manager and general manager obviously replaceable and the players don't give a darn that ownership was fined $5 million. So what exactly's happened here? Does it even discourage them from trying to do something new? Yeah, I think it discourages. I just don't think it punishes. Oh, I think it certainly doesn't punish. First of all, suspending them for years of punishment. Now they lost their job. If that's not a deterrent for other GMs and managers to stop the nonsense with the sign stealing, that's a deterrent. I agree with you, it punishes them, but I'm saying now that they've been fired and they'll bring in new people, while it stinks that they lose them, how effective are the Astros as an organization? I think it, firing Jeff Luna. Now, AJ Hinch has thought of as a really good manager. All managers are fungible. I mean, some are better than they are. It's not like they're gonna be without a manager. Joe Espada could do a great job. But losing Jeff Luna is a killer. Well, they've built the whole system. He built what the Astros are about. But the Astros fired him. Major League Baseball didn't fire him. I get it, but I like what Jim Crane did. He's embarrassed. No, he's embarrassed by it for sure. But if that ends up hurting them down the road, it's gonna be because they fired him. Major League Baseball didn't force him to fire him. Part of it is punishment, part of it is a deterrent, all right? Any manager or general manager that wants to do this down the road, they reinvent the wheel, think of another way of cheating. They don't have to worry about losing their jobs if ownership is behind them. But the players get away with this, Michael, only because, in my opinion, because they've got a union that can support them. But where's the union for Luna? Where's the union for Hinch? So those guys can easily lose their jobs or get suspended for a year. Nobody can touch them, but the players can actively participate in cheating and get away with it. And they don't lose their championships. Tell me it wasn't worth it. Maybe Hinch is thinking differently now because he lost his job, but he lost his job by his owner. But from Major League Baseball, Michael, what exactly happened here? But I'll ask you straight out, what should they have done? Well, you have to affect them and their ability to do their jobs while they're presently constituted. The only thing that could hurt them are draft picks that don't bear fruit for another few years. But all the players that won that championship in 17, won that championship in 19, Michael, they got away with it. But they didn't win a championship in 19. But they won an American League championship and went to the World Series. But they forever now have an asterisk next to them. But they wouldn't have had that anyway. But now they do for sure because that is a tainted championship, whether they give it to the Dodgers or the Yankees. And also, if you look at the history of baseball, Don, no manager has been treated like this other than Pete Rose, none. It's never, one year, it's unprecedented other than Pete Rose who got suspended for life. This is a major punishment. As big as it's ever been handed down. I don't know what more you wanted them to do. Well, it just... If anything, maybe find the organization 20 million. Again, money is fungible with Jim Crane, the amount of money he's made from this team. But I think that he looks good today because the institutional disregard for rules by those two men, he said enough is enough. I don't want to be connected with that. So he fired them. But even if you didn't do anything to them, they were not going to be able to cheat the same way they were cheating because everybody was onto them. Right. All right. But are they going to be affected at all next year by this? I don't know if it affects them, Don, but I think that when you hand down a punishment like this, if you're Manfred, aren't you trying to stop anybody else from ever doing it again? I think this is pretty worthy of stopping it. If Carlos Beltran decides to institute something like this and he gets suspended from baseball for the rest of his life, he deserves it. This is an awakening for people. This stuff can't go on. Well, you hope so, Michael, but it went on and to me kind of got away with it. And as far as the reputation is concerned, look at the Patriots. Their reputation has been sullied, Michael, but it doesn't matter, right? Yeah, people will whisper. But if the Astros turn around and win the World Series next year, I don't think anybody would be surprised by that. They're a very good team. So the whispers will be happening in New York and Boston and Los Angeles, but does anybody care? Has it hurt the Patriots at all? From a reputation standpoint? No, it's been slow. And I'm sorry. If you were to suspend a coach in the NFL for a year, that's gonna affect the team more than suspending a manager. We've seen in the analytic era the little responsibility that managers have left anymore. So if a Spada, who was a very hot candidate during the offseason, ends up managing them next year, you tell me they're not the favorites to win their division? No. They're not. I don't think so, but they lost Garrett Cole. They don't have the same team. All right, but not because of this. If you don't believe in the Astros is because they lost Cole or whatever from a baseball standpoint, but nothing that happened today is affecting the team currently. But how would you... Other than losing the manager, which we're not even sure matters anyway. But how would you have done it, Don? Just suspend all the players? Well, I don't like the idea that the players who participated in cheating get nothing and a manager just lost his job and would have at the bare minimum would have been suspended an entire year. This is part of the decision that was handed down, approximately two months into the 17th season, a group of players, including Carlos Belcher, on disgust that the team could improve on decoding opposing teams' signs and communicating the signs to the batter. Alex Cora arranged for a video room technician to install a monitor displaying the center field camera feed immediately outside of the Astros dugout. Center field camera was primarily used for player development purposes and was allowed under MLB rules at the time when used for that purpose. Witnesses have provided largely consistent accounts of how the monitor was utilized and we move forward. Witnesses consistently scrubbed this new scheme as player driven. And with the exception of Cora, non-player staff, including individuals in the video replay review room had no involvement in the banging scheme. However, witnesses made clear that everyone proximate to the Astros dugout presumptively heard also of the banging. Now, Cora's gonna get zapped because right now they are investigating the 2018 World Series winning Red Sox and he's the manager there. They're being accused of cheating as well. He was not a player. He was a bench coach. I would not be surprised if A, he gets suspended. And Pete Abraham, who covers the Red Sox for the globe has already tweeted out, he wonders whether that would fall under the heading of enough for John Henry to fire Cora as the manager of the Red Sox if he gets suspended for doing this. We'll see, but... Because Crane has already set the template. And listen, Michael, this would obviously affect the Mets and their new manager, but how has Carlos Beltran get away with this? Because he was a player. But does that sit well with you? All right, here's part three of the release. Astro's methods in 17, 18 to decode and communicate to the batter and opposing team's club signs was not an initiative that was planned or directed by the club's top baseball officials. Blah, blah, blah, blah. Let's see, I wanna get to the Astro players. Most of the position players on the 17 team either received sign information from the banking 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. Although the Astro players did not attempt to hide what they were doing from Hinch or other Astro employees, they were concerned about getting caught by players from other teams. Several players told my investigators that there was a sense of panic in the Astro dugout after White Sock pitcher Danny Farquhar appeared to notice the trash can bangs. Before the game ended, a group of Astro players removed the monitor from the wall in the tunnel and hid it in the office. For the postseason, a portable monitor was set up on a table to replace the monitor that had been affixed to the wall near the dugout. I will not assess discipline against individual Astro players. I made the decision in September 2017 that it would hold a club's GM and field manager accountable for misconduct of this kind and I will not depart from that decision. Assessing disciplined players for this type of conduct is both difficult and impractical. It's difficult because virtually all of the Astro players had some involvement or knowledge of the scheme and I am not in a position based on the investigative record to determine with any degree of certainty every player who should be held accountable or their relative degree of culpability. It is impractical given the large number of players involved and the fact that many of those players now play for other clubs. I will tell you this though and you know I'm a personal friend of Carlos Beltran. It almost seems like he has to be punished since he was one of the regulators. Well, I'm just wondering, are you going out of your way because you know the kingpin is a player in Beltran and you can't go after him because he'll get protection from the players association because this happened as a player. Right. But it does seem like that they are getting away with participating in this thing. I understand it's hard, Michael, it's hard being in the commissioner. It's hard dealing with these things. But that doesn't mean that they get off scot-free when now two people are completely out of their jobs. Right. And draft picks are being lost. Some guys have been punished pretty harshly for this, Peter, and the players get away with it because it's just too hard to punish them that they're protected by the union but nobody else is. But don't please, that's just part of my take. But that's the logical thing. But he's saying the guys are on other teams, he doesn't know the level of culpability. I'm saying the union has to play some role in it. But if Beltran helped organize the scheme, that seems like he even mentioned his name. Well, you know his degree of culpability, how is there not a punishment there? Also, if they've determined it to be this level of planning, you know, really a full-blown operation, how do we do something, how do we do this better? Well, let's come up with this plan, this will be effective, and then they benefited with championships. How do you not strip the titles? Well, what does that mean? It means a lot, they don't have any others. They would again be an organization with no World Series. At least it's acknowledged. They would go, we need to win our first World Series again. It's stronger than this. It's my stronger than this to lose all of that when fans talk about their team and they go, well, we won the World Series. It changes everything, it changes history. To me, this couple of draft picks in baseball, it's not the same as the NBA. Well, what's to stop another organization from deciding to do this, but leaving their manager, general manager, and ownership out of it? Just keeping it within the locker room, knowing that you can't punish me. I don't see that. I do think that, I think how big a deal it's become, Don will serve as a deterrent, and people would think we don't want this kind of heat. I just don't think it's really a huge punishment for anyone except Lunal and Hinch. I mean, losing him, I understand losing a GM, but he already did his job. He brought them great success already, and they're not losing that success. No, no. And the team's still in place that he built. But it's gonna go downhill. This guy was the lynchpin behind everything. He built the Astro System and the analytic-based Astro System. I'm telling you, it's a big deal losing Lunal, much bigger deal to me than losing Hinch. Do you think they can now go back and rehire the sexist dude fired last year? As part of this punishment, he has been indefinitely suspended from, he's on the ineligible list. So he's effectively suspended for life. He has to reapply. Wait, who? The guy, Taubman. Taubman is now because of this? No, they said not because they decided that what happened during the playoffs, he is on the ineligible list. So that's more than a year. Wow. So I mean, I can hear what you guys are saying, and maybe you're not getting the pound of flesh that you want, but these punishments are unprecedented. It's not easy for a commissioner to do stuff like this and make your suspension stick. With the players, they might not stick. Hinch and Lunal sticks, and then they have Crane come in and fire both of them, which leads me to believe that John Henry is gonna fire Cora because Cora is going to be punished. And they have a new GM anyway in crime bloom who probably want to bring in his own manager anyway. So Cora leaves with that one, I'm not saying that this is a done deal, but if the red socks are punished, while the template has been set for John Henry, the owner of the red socks, by Jim Crane, the owner of the Astros, you got to fire your manager. This just seems like so many hands were in this that go out without any punishment whatsoever. Right, the heads get chopped off, but you're telling me the body wasn't involved, that all the coaches this dad, do we know a spot is not involved in this? And he become, I become the manager of the Astros, knowing all the information that was already handed down to him, like I just don't know if you have the head off. I think a spot was on the Yankee staff in 2017. But this is just 17, we're not investigating anything beyond that. I think 2017, it seemed like they mentioned 18, but this for the most part is about 17, so. But there's still a lot of other people, and again, the players too. And I know it's very hard to discipline players, but they still, they're partaking of this. And if you are in fact, a fan of a team that got steamrolled by the Astros in 2017, there's two ways to look at it. You got to make sure that your team didn't do anything wrong itself. That's number one, and number two, if you're clean, you have every right to be red hot, but please don't expect for your team to be awarded a championship. No, you're not rewarding a championship. You take the championship away from the Astros and leave a big title. I think that's what, Peter's point is, nobody's awarding the Dodgers the World Series or that the Yankees played the Dodgers in a World Series that never had taken place, but you're taking away the only Astro World Series. It's not acknowledged anymore, and the embarrassment that comes with that. I don't have a problem, I'm surprised they didn't do that. And the players participate in this thing, nothing ends up happening to them. I think it might be enough of a deterrent for other people to try to get involved in this, but you could work really hard to then try to learn from the mistakes of the Astros. Astros are very brazen, Michael. Didn't sound like that they were hiding this at all while it was going on, but there's a lot of people that participate in this thing that just got away with it, and it just sounds to me like it was just too hard to discipline everybody, but that's how colossal I think this is. What if I'm a player that's languishing in the minor leagues because I got shelled at MinuteMade and I got cut by my team or demoted because of the five home rungs I gave up in Houston and finding out that that happened to me because they were cheating. I mean, how do I feel? And that player's association is supposed to take care of me. So if indeed, Manfred went the way he did with the players because he just didn't want to get into a fight with the union, well, is that fair to the players that aren't in baseball anymore because of what happened with the Astros? All right, we'll take your phone.