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2020 astros offseason

elfenix

By elfenix
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Eastwood
Eastwood

Here's the thing that makes me absolutely livid about this... Cheating happens all the time in baseball. At all levels. All levels. The MLB itself cheats the game by juicing the ball. Players juiced t

Asithappens
Asithappens

It's not the end, I agree. The Astros are still sacks of giant shit, though.  Shame on them.

Asithappens
Asithappens

Very sad to see that the Astros are basically dipshit cheaters from the top down. Hey, at least the Black Sox are happy that someone else is wearing their crown of infamy.    

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TexArcher

TexArcher 37455

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A buddy sent me a text with a KHOU link talking about how L.A. is feeling sour about the sign-stealing and they want to be awarded the championships they lost to Houston and Boston.

A team that put Yasiel Puig in the box on horse steroids in both of those series is taking the moral high ground?

And Buster Olney was on ESPN talking about how everybody's gonna throw at the Astros this season.

I really hope we shove it up everyone's pee holes and win the whole...  fuckin'...  thing...

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Beau Vine

Beau Vine 53964

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I knew y'all were wondering what SBBruin's neighbor and favorite columnist had to say about the Astros, so here it is, enjoy:

 

:

Quote
By BILL PLASCHKECOLUMNIST 
JAN. 21, 2020
 
4:44 PM

The theft of the 2017 World Series championship continues.

A week after the revelation of their sign-stealing scandal, the pathetic Houston Astros are still cheating the Dodgers.

They’re cheating them out of any show of remorse. They’re cheating them out of any words of regret. They’re cheating them out of any transparency that could lead to any sort of closure.

The arrogant Astros have spent the week behaving like innocent bystanders in an accident whose smoking wreckage somehow landed on their front lawn.

We’re cleaning it up, they told us.

 

The grass will grow back even stronger, they promised.

Nothing to see here, they claimed.

Not once has any member of the organization accepted blame for causing the mess in the first place. Not one person has uttered a word recognizing the pain their actions brought upon other teams. There has been zero accountability for what has been stolen, and from whom.

 

How about, “Hey baseball, we’re sorry”?

Or how about, “Hey Dodgers, this is exactly how we cheated you in that World Series, and we regret the indelible damage it caused”?

Instead, did you hear Astros owner Jim Crane in his recent post-scandal news conference?

 

About the sign stealing, he said, “There’s nothing that’s clear to suggest it affected the outcome.”

Yu Darvish and Clayton Kershaw might disagree.

About whether this tainted the World Series championship, Crane said, “I think absolutely not. I think we’ve had a very good team for a number of years before [20]17, we were turning the corner. . . . I don’t think it taints it.”

Wrong. It taints it forever.

Asked about the upheaval that led him to fire suspended general manager Jeff Luhnow and manager A.J. Hinch, he said, “I think we’ll have a speed bump here.”

 

A speed bump. The Astros still view the Dodgers as nothing more than a speed bump. Instead of acknowledging them as victims of a clear crime that resulted in the blatant pilfering of a legacy-changing title, the Astros still see the entire incident as little more than a road hazard on their journey back to domination.

This is what happens when Major League Baseball shamefully allows the Astros to keep the title, display the trophy, and wear the rings. This is what happens when the Astros are allowed to continue benefiting from their literally trashy behavior — they sometimes banged a trash can to alert hitters — with a championship that will not even contain an official asterisk.

Commissioner Rob Manfred was a tough guy when it came to suspending Luhnow and Hinch while fining the organization $5 million and some draft picks. But he has no backbone when it came to actually punishing one of the owners who employs him.

By not forcing the Astros to vacate the theft of a title, Manfred actually endorsed that championship, essentially agreed with Crane that the sign-stealing had negligible effect on the outcome of games, and set the scary price for future championships.

How many long-suffering baseball teams would be willing to trade their general manager and manager if it meant they could cheat their way to a title they could keep? Hmm. You don’t want to know.

It’s not that the trophy should go to the Dodgers. Absolutely not. The Dodgers can’t possibly want it. The Dodgers didn’t win it. A Los Angeles City Council resolution Tuesday that demanded the championships be stripped from both the Astros and Boston Red Sox and given to the Dodgers was a cheap publicity stunt and a colossal misguided waste of time by a governing body that surely has more important matters on its plate.

The Dodgers surely don’t want what they didn’t earn on the field. But it’s sickening to see the Astros continue to claim something they didn’t earn either. The trophy should be returned and its notations in the record books should be deleted. The 2017 title was won by cheaters, so it should belong to nobody.

 

But, hey, we’re actually supposed to feel sorry for the Astros. Just listen to second baseman Jose Altuve at last weekend’s FanFest.

 

“We have to stay together as a team,” he told reporters. “I haven’t changed my opinion about my teammates. They’re the best teammates I’ve ever had. We’re going to stay together, hold our heads and move forward to next season.”

That’s right, Jose, you hold your heads up and hang in there against all those idiots who believe in fair play.

Asked about being called a cheater, Altuve said, “You don’t want anybody to call you like that. But I have two options. One is cry and one is to go out there and play the game to help my team. You know which one I’m going to do.”

There’s also a third option. It’s called an apology. But neither Altuve nor teammate Alex Bregman offered one during interview sessions that surely left other teams steaming.

Bregman, in fact, wouldn’t even acknowledge anything was wrong, saying, “The commissioner made his report, made his decision, the Astros made their decision, and no further comment on it.”

 

You want a comment on it? In Game 5 of the 2017 World Series at Minute Maid Park, with the Astros’ sign-stealing in full effect, Kershaw crumbling twice, Altuve and Bregman were a combined five for 10 with five RBIs and one home run in Houston’s 13-12 victory in 10 innings. There’s your comment.

“The 2020 year, our actions will speak louder than our words,” said Bregman.

Dude, they already have.

This arrogance is what happens when Manfred lacks the spine to take on the players’ union and penalize the players. Every other baseball scandal, from the Black Sox to Pete Rose to steroids, has cost the offending players their careers. This scandal determined a World Series, yet it has cost the players nothing more than the inconvenience of a few extra questions they aren’t going to answer anyway.

This almighty union that Manfred fears so much? So it only stands up for the cheaters? You have to wonder about the large percentage of its members who play the right way, all those players who were negatively affected by the cheating. Who stands up for them?

To make matters worse, baseball has ordered its players to keep silent on the subject, an edict some of them have thankfully ignored, but a mandate that reveals priorities currently embodied by the cheating Astros.

 

Nothing to see here. Nothing at all.

“Believe me, at the end of the year everything will be fine,” Altuve said. “We’re going to be in the World Series again. People don’t believe it. We will.”

If that happens, someone else can mine their battered souls, chronicle their uphill fight and celebrate their triumphant battle against an unforgiving world.

Me, I’ll be interviewing the trash can.

 

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Beau Vine

Beau Vine 53964

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very funny lol GIF

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The Dodgers are not scheduled to play the Houston Astros next season. That would seem to spare the Astros the in-person wrath of Dodgers fans.

Unless, of course, Dodgers fans bring their wrath to the Astros. And the baseball gods have teed this one up for Dodgers fans: The Astros play their first weekend road series this year at Angel Stadium.

So we checked with Pantone 294, the Dodgers fan group that has delivered as many as 2,200 diehards to a Dodgers road game. And, yeah, Pantone 294 is thinking about chartering a fleet of buses, packing them with a thousand or more Dodgers fans, and forming a caravan down Interstate 5 to greet the Astros in Anaheim.

“It would be a really cool idea to do,” co-owner Desiree Garcia said.

 

On Monday, Commissioner Rob Manfred issued a report detailing how the Astros illegally used technology to steal signs during the 2017 season, when the Astros beat the Dodgers in the World Series. Manfred fined the Astros $5 million and suspended manager A.J. Hinch and general manager Jeff Luhnow for this season.

 

Hinch and Luhnow were subsequently fired by the Astros. Alex Cora, then the Astros’ bench coach, was fired as manager of the Boston Red Sox. Carlos Beltran, then the Astros’ clubhouse sage, was fired as manager of the New York Mets.

None of that discipline eases the sting for Dodgers fans. The cries for justice have manifested themselves in emotional ways: calls for a 2017 championship parade that would not interest the players; threats of a lawsuit against the Astros for fraud that surely would be laughed out of court; a pending Los Angeles City Council vote on a purely symbolic resolution that would ask Major League Baseball to strip the Astros of their title and award it to the Dodgers. (MLB won’t do that.)

 

“It was getting ridiculous,” Garcia said.

 
 

Nine innings of Pantone 294 would seem to be an appropriate fan punishment for the Astros: sustained booing, an assortment of Dodgers T-shirts and clever slogans, and the unveiling of the traditional Dodgers flag that covers an entire section.

But Garcia said the Pantone 294 owners need to respect the Angels too. She said the group plans to buy 1,200 tickets from the Angels when the Dodgers play in Anaheim in July, and she said she would consult with the Angels before trying to buy a block of tickets for Dodgers fans to boo the Astros.

 

“As Dodger fans, we definitely feel like we’ve been cheated out of something,” she said. “We don’t know if we’re willing to take that business risk and bring a bunch of angry people to Angel Stadium.”

Once the initial wave of raw emotion dies down, Garcia said Pantone 294 would be in a better position to decide whether the trip to Anaheim -- to boo the Astros in a game the Dodgers would not be playing -- would be worth pursuing.

All she knows for sure right now is what would have happened had the Dodgers played in Houston this year.

“We would already have arranged flights,” she said.

 

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UTHornFan014

UTHornFan014 710

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I knew y'all were wondering what SBBruin's neighbor and favorite columnist had to say about the Astros, so here it is, enjoy:
  :
By BILL PLASCHKECOLUMNIST  JAN. 21, 2020   4:44 PM The theft of the 2017 World Series championship continues.
A week after the revelation of their sign-stealing scandal, the pathetic Houston Astros are still cheating the Dodgers.
They’re cheating them out of any show of remorse. They’re cheating them out of any words of regret. They’re cheating them out of any transparency that could lead to any sort of closure.
The arrogant Astros have spent the week behaving like innocent bystanders in an accident whose smoking wreckage somehow landed on their front lawn.
We’re cleaning it up, they told us.
  The grass will grow back even stronger, they promised.
Nothing to see here, they claimed.
Not once has any member of the organization accepted blame for causing the mess in the first place. Not one person has uttered a word recognizing the pain their actions brought upon other teams. There has been zero accountability for what has been stolen, and from whom.
  How about, “Hey baseball, we’re sorry”?
Or how about, “Hey Dodgers, this is exactly how we cheated you in that World Series, and we regret the indelible damage it caused”?
Instead, did you hear Astros owner Jim Crane in his recent post-scandal news conference?
  About the sign stealing, he said, “There’s nothing that’s clear to suggest it affected the outcome.”
Yu Darvish and Clayton Kershaw might disagree.
About whether this tainted the World Series championship, Crane said, “I think absolutely not. I think we’ve had a very good team for a number of years before [20]17, we were turning the corner. . . . I don’t think it taints it.”
Wrong. It taints it forever.
Asked about the upheaval that led him to fire suspended general manager Jeff Luhnow and manager A.J. Hinch, he said, “I think we’ll have a speed bump here.”
  A speed bump. The Astros still view the Dodgers as nothing more than a speed bump. Instead of acknowledging them as victims of a clear crime that resulted in the blatant pilfering of a legacy-changing title, the Astros still see the entire incident as little more than a road hazard on their journey back to domination.
?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F78%2Ff3%2F2442941f4ae0b06f5fa58f308271%2Fimage-from-ios.jpg CALIFORNIA L.A. City Council votes to ask MLB to award 2017, 2018 World Series titles to Dodgers Jan. 21, 2020 This is what happens when Major League Baseball shamefully allows the Astros to keep the title, display the trophy, and wear the rings. This is what happens when the Astros are allowed to continue benefiting from their literally trashy behavior — they sometimes banged a trash can to alert hitters — with a championship that will not even contain an official asterisk.
Commissioner Rob Manfred was a tough guy when it came to suspending Luhnow and Hinch while fining the organization $5 million and some draft picks. But he has no backbone when it came to actually punishing one of the owners who employs him.
By not forcing the Astros to vacate the theft of a title, Manfred actually endorsed that championship, essentially agreed with Crane that the sign-stealing had negligible effect on the outcome of games, and set the scary price for future championships.
How many long-suffering baseball teams would be willing to trade their general manager and manager if it meant they could cheat their way to a title they could keep? Hmm. You don’t want to know.
It’s not that the trophy should go to the Dodgers. Absolutely not. The Dodgers can’t possibly want it. The Dodgers didn’t win it. A Los Angeles City Council resolution Tuesday that demanded the championships be stripped from both the Astros and Boston Red Sox and given to the Dodgers was a cheap publicity stunt and a colossal misguided waste of time by a governing body that surely has more important matters on its plate.
The Dodgers surely don’t want what they didn’t earn on the field. But it’s sickening to see the Astros continue to claim something they didn’t earn either. The trophy should be returned and its notations in the record books should be deleted. The 2017 title was won by cheaters, so it should belong to nobody.
  But, hey, we’re actually supposed to feel sorry for the Astros. Just listen to second baseman Jose Altuve at last weekend’s FanFest.
  “We have to stay together as a team,” he told reporters. “I haven’t changed my opinion about my teammates. They’re the best teammates I’ve ever had. We’re going to stay together, hold our heads and move forward to next season.”
That’s right, Jose, you hold your heads up and hang in there against all those idiots who believe in fair play.
Asked about being called a cheater, Altuve said, “You don’t want anybody to call you like that. But I have two options. One is cry and one is to go out there and play the game to help my team. You know which one I’m going to do.”
There’s also a third option. It’s called an apology. But neither Altuve nor teammate Alex Bregman offered one during interview sessions that surely left other teams steaming.
Bregman, in fact, wouldn’t even acknowledge anything was wrong, saying, “The commissioner made his report, made his decision, the Astros made their decision, and no further comment on it.”
  You want a comment on it? In Game 5 of the 2017 World Series at Minute Maid Park, with the Astros’ sign-stealing in full effect, Kershaw crumbling twice, Altuve and Bregman were a combined five for 10 with five RBIs and one home run in Houston’s 13-12 victory in 10 innings. There’s your comment.
“The 2020 year, our actions will speak louder than our words,” said Bregman.
Dude, they already have.
This arrogance is what happens when Manfred lacks the spine to take on the players’ union and penalize the players. Every other baseball scandal, from the Black Sox to Pete Rose to steroids, has cost the offending players their careers. This scandal determined a World Series, yet it has cost the players nothing more than the inconvenience of a few extra questions they aren’t going to answer anyway.
This almighty union that Manfred fears so much? So it only stands up for the cheaters? You have to wonder about the large percentage of its members who play the right way, all those players who were negatively affected by the cheating. Who stands up for them?
To make matters worse, baseball has ordered its players to keep silent on the subject, an edict some of them have thankfully ignored, but a mandate that reveals priorities currently embodied by the cheating Astros.
  Nothing to see here. Nothing at all.
“Believe me, at the end of the year everything will be fine,” Altuve said. “We’re going to be in the World Series again. People don’t believe it. We will.”
If that happens, someone else can mine their battered souls, chronicle their uphill fight and celebrate their triumphant battle against an unforgiving world.
Me, I’ll be interviewing the trash can.
 
Unfortunately we are going to have to hear this shit until the season starts. The Astros front office successfully pissed off so many people they have made it their goal to have the title vacated.

But... There is zero chance the trash can technique was of any use in game 5 of the 2017 World Series. That place was so damn loud no one could have heard it.
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henrygandorf

henrygandorf 29174

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bring it.

Unless, of course, Dodgers fans bring their wrath to the Astros. And the baseball gods have teed this one up for Dodgers fans: The Astros play their first weekend road series this year at Angel Stadium.

So we checked with Pantone 294, the Dodgers fan group that has delivered as many as 2,200 diehards to a Dodgers road game. And, yeah, Pantone 294 is thinking about chartering a fleet of buses, packing them with a thousand or more Dodgers fans, and forming a caravan down Interstate 5 to greet the Astros in Anaheim.

“It would be a really cool idea to do,” co-owner Desiree Garcia said.

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UTexasFight

UTexasFight 9369

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But... There is zero chance the trash can technique was of any use in game 5 of the 2017 World Series. That place was so damn loud no one could have heard it.


Uhhh not in the first 4 innings
the first 4 innings, pre-Yuli bomb, was the quietest I’ve ever heard an home Astros playoff game (other than the late innings of 2019 game )

The white noise of the crowd was literally putting me sleep in right field because there was absolutely no change in crowd tone/volume for the first hour of that game
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UTHornFan014

UTHornFan014 710

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Uhhh not in the first 4 innings
the first 4 innings, pre-Yuli bomb, was the quietest I’ve ever heard an home Astros playoff game (other than the late innings of 2019 game )

The white noise of the crowd was literally putting me sleep in right field because there was absolutely no change in crowd tone/volume for the first hour of that game
I've probably mentally blocked out the first 4 innings of the game. Just like I no longer remember the last 3 innings of 2019 game 7.
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UTexasFight

UTexasFight 9369

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I've probably mentally blocked out the first 4 innings of the game. Just like I no longer remember the last 3 innings of 2019 game 7.
I hear ya, but you gotta remember the first 4 innings to truly appreciate game 5.

That place was dead...and seemingly the Astros season.

Down 3-0 after a half inning and kershaw in cruise control, facing the minimum through 3.

And then we get a couple of runners on and it’s like Yuli knew what was coming...

 

 

Kidding, but maybe my biggest question now in all of this is what Beltran’s “dos ojos” advice to Yuli last year really meant....

and more importantly who else knows about and can Yuli continue it this year please

 

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HtownHorn

HtownHorn 14446

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58 minutes ago, UTHornFan014 said:
1 hour ago, Storm the Field said:
Sorry Plaschke and whiny bitch Dodger fans.

This just furthers my suspicion that sign stealing (using technology) runs far deeper than just the Astros and Red Sox... And MLB doesn't want all that getting out there.

Including the Dodgers.

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WBT

WBT 20397

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5 hours ago, Pimphand said:

So you guys honestly want a guy who has a 23-32 record in the postseason to be our manager?

If we're going to dig out of the people in their 70s list just give me Phil Garner back again.

Dierk still seems lucid

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Fozzz

Fozzz 152

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2 hours ago, Texas St. Armadillos said:

Dammit.  I hate that I'm saying this, but Bannister might be a decent option.  Houston native.  Knows the division and league.  Not afraid to give the finger to an opponent.  Trolling the Rangers is also a plus.

Good interview at the airport.

 

#teambany

Hot daughter. Firey and pretty funny dude. 

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Scraps

Scraps 13531

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5 minutes ago, RGBIII said:

My guy just told me that the mystery candidate Heyman was alluding to yesterday is Bruce Bochy

Bochy will regret not taking the Stros job if he is on the radar.  I know he has said he just wants to take 1 year off, but these type of jobs aren't around every season.  This team is still WS caliber.  He needs to nut up and just be all in.  

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Snake Diggity

Snake Diggity 4614

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1 hour ago, Scraps said:

Bochy will regret not taking the Stros job if he is on the radar.  I know he has said he just wants to take 1 year off, but these type of jobs aren't around every season.  This team is still WS caliber.  He needs to nut up and just be all in.  

Yup, giving Bochy 2 years and opening up the checkbook to extend/replace/upgrade Gurriel, Brantley, Springer, Garneau, and Pruitt after this season would give them a great chance to add a “legitimate” ring (or two).

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RGBIII

RGBIII 22798

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51 minutes ago, Amos Moses said:

Are we really falling for info from “your guy” again?  
 

Of course I reserve the right to a mea culpa if this comes to pass, but .... 🤔

Believe what you would like. I have zero reason to bullshit yall and my guy hasnt missed besides the 2 moves I posted here and for reasons outside of baseball (of course). The trades fell apart because of the scandal and Luhnow losing his job, theres plenty of smoke out there to substantiate it as well. He called the Miley signing , the Grienke trade, the sanchez trade, Martes being popped for PEDs, the Brantley signing, the Harper near trade, Joe Smith tearing his achilles, JD Davis trade, Bregman extension, Pressly Extension, JV extension. I can send all of this with time stamps if I cared to

My guy didnt say Bochy was the favorite or any other information besides hes the mystery candidate. Makes sense as he would want to keep his name quiet, what other reason would there be to keep a managerial name quiet? Ill keep posting info that I get, do with it what you will

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