In what is shaping up to be the most infamous and prolonged offseason in the history of Major League Baseball, the Boston Red Sox are the latest team caught in the crosshairs of the electronic sign stealing scandal. On Wednesday afternoon, Major League Baseball announced the conclusion of their investigation into the Boston Red Sox and handed down their “penalties.” Boston has been stripped of its 2020 second-round draft pick, and video replay system operator, J.T. Watkins, who is believed to be at the center of this scandal, has been suspended through the 2020 postseason. In addition, former Red Sox manager, Alex Cora, has been suspended for the 2020 season, but Major League Baseball has clarified that this is suspension is for his involvement in the Houston Astros cheating scandal.
According to the news release by Major League Baseball, Commissioner Rob Manfred stated that the Boston Red Sox scheme was not as ghastly as the one used by the Houston Astros in 2017.
“I find that unlike the Houston Astros’ 2017 conduct, in which players communicated to the batter from the dugout area in real time the precise type of pitch about to be thrown, Watkins’s conduct, by its very nature, was far more limited in scope and impact. The information was only relevant when the Red Sox had a runner on second base (which occurred in 19.7% of plate appearances league wide in 2018), and Watkins communicated sign sequences in a manner that indicated that he had decoded them from the in-game feed in only a small percentage of those occurrences.”
While it is highly probable that the Boston Red Sox’s system was, in fact, less egregious, they still cheated. As a result of what they did, the outcomes of games were tampered with, and the moment even one outcome is manipulated, the legitimacy of the entire season immediately becomes void, especially when these violations occur in postseason play.
As we sit here at the end of April, the Houston Astros and Boston Red Sox both retain their titles from 2017 and 2018 respectively, and not ONE player has received a suspension or any sort of punishment for that matter. Not to mention, those who have been suspended will soon be allowed to return to Major League Baseball action, despite being a part of the most heinous cheating scandals in Major League history. Meanwhile, Pete Rose, who was never found guilty of even being a part of an organization that was manipulating the outcomes of games, lives his life permanently barred from ever being a member of a Major League Baseball organization.
We already know the crimes Houston committed, and it is common knowledge that the punishment they received is insufficient and does nothing to deter them or any other team from risking it all to capture a World Series title and all the glory (or lack thereof) that comes with it. However, I’d like to explore not only the role of the Boston Red Sox in the illegitimacy of baseball during the era of Manfred, but also Major League Baseball’s responsibility in the scandals that are deteriorating the very game that has brought together generations of fans.
During the 2017 season, the Boston Red Sox came under fire when it was discovered that they were using smartwatches during baseball games in conjunction with an illicit scheme to give themselves an unfair advantage. While the Red Sox were only found guilty of this during a game against the New York Yankees, it was never determined that they didn’t employ this scheme for other games, and let’s be real, why would a team go through so many resources and craft such a sleek system to only use in one regular season game?
Aside from the fact that the Boston Red Sox went on to participate in one of the worst examples of illegal gamesmanship we have ever seen immediately after being found guilty by Commissioner Manfred and Major League Baseball, there is another aspect of this story that is most disturbing.
In Wednesday’s news release by Manfred, he states that “MLB rules between 2014 and 2017 stated that ‘no equipment may be used for the purpose of stealing signs or conveying information designed to give a Club an advantage.” After explaining that the unclear nature of these words led players and staff to believe that decoding signs in the replay room was fair game, Manfred explains how in March 2018 “my office clarified in a memorandum sent to all Clubs by then-Chief Baseball Officer Joe Torre that ‘electronic equipment,’ including game feeds in the Club replay room and/or video room, may never be used during a game for the purpose of stealing the opposing team’s signs.”
So prior to the 2018 season beginning, Major League Baseball made it quite clear that any use of electronic equipment for the use of stealing signs from opposing teams was illegal. Did that stop the Boston Red Sox? No. Despite the fact that they were the very team responsible for this memorandum being sent out to every Major League team, the Red Sox clearly felt that directly disobeying it was a worthwhile risk to take. And can you blame them? If the cost of a World Series title is just a second-round draft pick and losing some guy in your video replay room for a season, why should any of us expect them not to accept the deal?
The cheating scandals revealed to the population over the last several months and the subsequent fallout has exposed the failure of Manfred and his regime. Is his news release regarding the Red Sox smartwatch scandal, Manfred stated: “I have received absolute assurances from the Red Sox that there will be no future violations of this type.” Well, as we all know now, this was a blatant lie that Manfred seemingly ate up and then turned a blind eye to. Based on the long-accepted, successful justice systems across the history of mankind, repeat offenders should be subject to more stringent punishments. In no way am I defending the Houston Astros, but why were they handed slightly more serious punishments for their first offense than the Boston Red Sox, who violated the rules twice? And more importantly, why is Rob Manfred and his regime so complacent with these teams violating the integrity of baseball?
Major Leaguers knew about these scandals. Obviously, position players on the Astros and Red Sox knew they were engaging in electronic sign-stealing because they were… the ones stealing signs electronically. They were not the only ones, however.
"I knew about that two years ago"
Jonathan Lucroy talks in detail about his experience with the Astros and their sign-stealing system pic.twitter.com/GNfFOy7uVP
— NBC Sports Boston (@NBCSBoston) February 20, 2020
Jonathan Lucroy was just one of many outside of the Astros organization who was aware of what was going on. Brian Dozier warned all of his teammates on the Washington Nationals of Houston’s shenanigans prior to the 2019 World Series. He first learned about it from several members of the Los Angeles Dodgers, the team he was with during the 2018 season. With this much knowledge among Major League circles about the tactics teams were using to unjustly manipulate ball games, we once again ask, why was Major League Baseball so tolerant of this behavior?
Rob Manfred has made it clear that he cares about two things: boosting ratings and boosting baseball popularity among young, casual fans. He began with ineffective tactics to promote the new pace of play system that has failed miserably. Baseball games are actually longer now than they were just a few years ago. Once Manfred realized his pace of play rules were not moving the needle, Major League Baseball starter a corrupt initiative to increase offense in any way possible.
The first major story came back during the 2017 World Series, when both pitchers and coaches from the Dodgers and Astros complained about baseballs that possessed a much slicker feel than the ones they threw with during the regular season. Though this story seemingly faded away days later as the World Series came to an end, it should’ve served as a wake-up call to not only fans, but players and staff across the league.
Though Manfred and company continued to deny all accusations over the next couple of years, concern and evidence grew to support a theory that baseballs had been manipulated to harm pitchers, aid hitters, and boost offense. Why was the MLB so keen on boosting offense? Because time and time again, it has been proven in sports that offense attracts fans.
While juicing balls certainly puts pitchers at a disadvantage, these flame-throwing beasts with multiple excellent secondary pitches can navigate around this injustice and still perform at a high level, especially in the age of striking out or hitting a home run. However, when offensive players know the signs of another team, the entire strategic side of the game is compromised, and games become home run derbies. I mean, are we really supposed to believe that the dominant Dodgers pitching staff who was leading the league suddenly became a band of high schoolers overnight?
Manfred continued to tout ratings, and we all were led to believe that the rise in analytics that began back in 2002 suddenly transformed an underwhelming offensive league into a sluggers’ paradise roughly fifteen years later. But of course, if you question any of it, you’re a wacky conspiracy theorist that is just upset over the fact that your team didn’t win the World Series.
While Major League Baseball clearly didn’t want this story to leak because the optics are atrocious, but also, from here-on-out, awareness of electronic manipulation schemes will be higher than ever before. With all that being said, Mike Fiers pulling back the curtain on this pandemic was a blessing in disguise in the eyes of Manfred and his regime. Stations like ESPN were talking about baseball in February, daily. Mainstream sports media spends every day covering the NBA, LeBron, Tom Brady, and the NFL. Occasionally, talk shows will touch on baseball for a minute here and there at the trade deadline or during the month of October, but these stations have their paws all over anything basketball, football, or whatever loud athlete made waves the current week 99 percent of the time. The fact that Major League Baseball was getting press, albeit bad press, was still a win in the eyes of Rob Manfred.
Colin Cowherd was spot on when he said that ratings would be through the roof due to the fact that Major League Baseball had created this villain, the Houston Astros (and Boston Red now), who would be must-see-TV. And it is true. With all the sensationalism the media had drummed up with these cheating scandals prior to the novel coronavirus shutting down the entire world, we were about to see a supervillain in professional sports the likes of which we had never seen before. You think people hate the New England Patriots? The Astros were about to dwarf the Pats to the point that they would look like the Sacramento Kings in comparison.
The Houston Astros and Boston Red Sox investigations have now concluded, and their minuscule punishments have now been doled out. After all the sick tactics I just explained the MLB has witnessed over the last few years, it is about time Major League Baseball Executive Board gets investigated.
Featured Image Credit: John Raoux / Associated Press
Ian Nielson has been a writer for @DodgersLowDown since 2018. Follow him on twitter @ianenielson