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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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HtownHorn

HtownHorn 14446

Posted
Posted (edited)
1 hour ago, Pimphand said:

Do people still like/defend Hinch‽

2017-2019 playoffs. He was a combined 2-8 at home in the final series the Astros played.

Completely threw the organization/team under the bus, for his own failings as the manager of the team. He could have stopped the trash can banging. 

Edited by HtownHorn
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pacman

pacman 7309

Posted
Posted
On 2/4/2020 at 1:21 PM, David Dennison said:

It all depends on how these guys deal with the adversity they are going to face in other ballparks. I think the hostility is going to be off the charts. Dealing with the media and fans when they are away from Minute Maid is going to present unique challenges during a 162 game season. 

The hostility will last the first month, at most. Nobody in America has the attention span to care the whole year.

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Lat22

Lat22 3990

Posted
Posted
3 hours ago, pacman said:

The hostility will last the first month, at most. Nobody in America has the attention span to care the whole year.

All due respect, but you are dead wrong.  We're going to wear this shit for years.  As for liking A.J.?  HE COULD HAVE STOPPED IT.

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formermav43

formermav43 4599

Posted
Posted

Hating on Hinch is a cop out. This was player initiated, and everyone participated to at least a limited extent. Yeah, he could have stopped it. But if you’re going to throw HIM under the bus, you better be willing to stop watching now if you want to be consistent in your outrage. These aren’t high school kids, they’re grown men-they’re responsible for their own actions. 

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Gut Wagon

Gut Wagon 8052

Posted
Posted (edited)

How you slow down the whining from rival fans is to get out there and just shut down their teams. On the road and at home. Dominate.

All these years after Spygate and Deflategate, how many people still talk about the Patriots being cheaters? Some do, sure. But how many now call that franchise, its coach and its QB the greatest ever? Many. It's hard to fully equate anyone's team, coach or player's actions to anyone else's, especially across two sports, but the bottom line is that a high-profile scandal need not be the end of a franchise. If you're good enough to win without doing any of that stuff, just go prove it and shut them all up.    

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Scraps

Scraps 13531

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, formermav43 said:

Hating on Hinch is a cop out. This was player initiated, and everyone participated to at least a limited extent. Yeah, he could have stopped it. But if you’re going to throw HIM under the bus, you better be willing to stop watching now if you want to be consistent in your outrage. These aren’t high school kids, they’re grown men-they’re responsible for their own actions. 

meh.  Hinch needed to quit being booty buddies with all of them and be a fucking leader.  

 You don't let the inmates run the asylum when you are in full knowledge of what the hell they are doing.  

He "broke" the monitor twice....lulz.....come on dude grow a pair and fucking lay down the law.  

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formermav43

formermav43 4599

Posted
Posted
27 minutes ago, Scraps said:

meh.  Hinch needed to quit being booty buddies with all of them and be a fucking leader.  

 You don't let the inmates run the asylum when you are in full knowledge of what the hell they are doing.  

He "broke" the monitor twice....lulz.....come on dude grow a pair and fucking lay down the law.  

That’s a little more difficult when the player you brought in specifically to be a “fucking leader” is the one who initiated the whole thing. Not to mention Cora. The dynamics of an MLB clubhouse are a little more complex than dad telling the kids to straighten up.

I’m not defending Hinch; he should have done more. But THEY knew what they were doing too. Laying this all at his feet is purely a move to salve the consciences of those who want to be against cheating while still rooting for the “good guys.” Sorry, that won’t work. You can’t have it both ways.

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RGBIII

RGBIII 22798

Posted
Posted

Btw Stros think that if Pedro Leon was in this past draft he would be worth a top 10 pick. Get ready for them to go HEAVILY into the international market the next two years including trading for international bonus money. Perfect strategy to rebuild the farm. They brought in Leon for a Private workout before his public workout and were blown away. He’s short but has big power

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HtownHorn

HtownHorn 14446

Posted
Posted
3 hours ago, formermav43 said:

Hating on Hinch is a cop out. This was player initiated, and everyone participated to at least a limited extent. Yeah, he could have stopped it. But if you’re going to throw HIM under the bus, you better be willing to stop watching now if you want to be consistent in your outrage. These aren’t high school kids, they’re grown men-they’re responsible for their own actions. 

Hinch threw the team under the bus in an effort to make himself look better.

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GHOSTUSER

GHOSTUSER 361

Posted
Posted
10 minutes ago, HtownHorn said:

Hinch threw the team under the bus in an effort to make himself look better.

I agree with this 100% and I was a Hinch supporter. He should have categorically denied that there was any taint on a championship. That is selling out the players and more importantly the fans of Houston. He knows how much that WS means to the city. Fuck him.

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pepper brooks

pepper brooks 579

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, Scraps said:

meh.  Hinch needed to quit being booty buddies with all of them and be a fucking leader.  

 You don't let the inmates run the asylum when you are in full knowledge of what the hell they are doing.  

He "broke" the monitor twice....lulz.....come on dude grow a pair and fucking lay down the law.  

yeah.  this doesn't really work at this level especially given the egos of the guys involved. this isn't some pony league tournament team.  

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pepper brooks

pepper brooks 579

Posted
Posted

is it possible that I am repulsed by the organization setting up camera's, etc to steal signs, but have no issue whatsoever with the players receiving a signal for stolen signs?  Hear me out. Sign stealing is, has been and always will be part of the game.  this is not in question.  there is no way to stop this.  it is absolutely a part, a very big part, of the game.  I simply do not have an issue with signs being stolen and players alerted.  not at all.  I do not consider anyone who has received knowledge of pitches via signs stolen as a "cheater".  theres not a single player who's every played in an MLB game who has not received some form of sign alerting them of something the defense or pitcher is about to do.  none.  It's no different from a football game where the defense sees the offensive alignment, knows the play based on that, or from their calls at the LOS, and audibles into the correct defense accordingly.  HOWEVER, I have an issue when you are using "unnatural" means of collecting the data.  That part is cheating.  100%.  

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tx 3 putt

tx 3 putt 76159

Posted
Posted
4 hours ago, Scraps said:
8 hours ago, pacman said:
The hostility will last the first month, at most. Nobody in America has the attention span to care the whole year.

Lol i will let you know how much shit is talked to me when i go to Minny end of july/start of august

I’ll be wearing my Kirby Puckett jersey 

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Beau Vine

Beau Vine 53965

Posted
Posted

Just in case you don't want to drift over to the other thread...

Quote

On Sept. 22, 2016, an intern in the Houston Astros organization showed general manager Jeff Luhnow a PowerPoint presentation that featured the latest creation by the team’s high-tech front office: an Excel-based application programmed with an algorithm that could decode the opposing catchers’ signs. It was called “Codebreaker.”

This was the beginning of what has turned into one of the biggest scandals in Major League Baseball history. Throughout the 2017 season and for part of 2018, Astros baseball operations employees and video room staffers used Codebreaker to illegally steal signs, which were then relayed to batters in real time. Another Astros employee referred to the system as the “dark arts.”

This previously undisclosed information about the origins and nature of the Astros’ cheating comes from both a letter MLB commissioner Rob Manfred sent to Luhnow on Jan. 2 that outlined the findings of a league investigation, as well as interviews with several people familiar with the matter.

Eleven days after Manfred’s letter, which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, MLB announced that it had suspended Luhnow, as well as field manager A.J. Hinch, for the entire 2020 season. Hours later, the Astros fired both Luhnow and Hinch.

The existence of Codebreaker shows that it was the Astros front office that laid the groundwork for the team’s electronic sign-stealing schemes.

During MLB’s probe, Luhnow maintained that he had no knowledge of any of the Astros’ misconduct. However, Manfred wrote in his letter that “there is more than sufficient evidence to support a conclusion that you knew—and overwhelming evidence that you should have known—that the Astros maintained a sign-stealing program that violated MLB’s rules.”

But while the league collected evidence that showed Luhnow was aware of Codebreaker’s existence and capabilities, it couldn’t prove that he knew how it was used. In response to Manfred’s letter, Luhnow presented investigators with a binder with more than 170 pages that cast at least some doubt on the contents of the initial letter, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.

These people described the situation as a “he said-he said” between Luhnow and Tom Koch-Weser, the team’s director of advance information, who sent two emails to Luhnow in 2017 that referenced “the system” and “our dark arts, sign-stealing department.”

Luhnow opened the emails, but told investigators he did not read to the bottom of them.

Complicating matters further, Koch-Weser’s responsibilities were reduced following the 2019 season, but before allegations of the Astros’ cheating became public in a November story in The Athletic.

MLB couldn’t decipher whose account was truthful. In his final findings, Manfred said that the investigation revealed that “Luhnow neither devised nor actively directed the efforts of the replay review room staff to decode signs in 2017 or 2018.”

Luhnow declined to comment through a spokesman. In a statement released last month, Luhnow said, “As the commissioner set out in his statement, I did not personally direct, oversee or engage in any misconduct.” The Astros did not provide comment on behalf of their employees. Koch-Weser did not respond to requests for comment.

The way Codebreaker worked was simple: Somebody would watch an in-game live feed and log the catcher’s signs into the spreadsheet, as well as the type of pitch that was actually thrown. With that information, Codebreaker determined how the signs corresponded with different pitches. Once decoded, that information would be communicated through intermediaries to a baserunner, who would relay them to the hitter.

Starting around June 2017, the system was embellished by Astros players. They started watching a live game feed on a monitor near the dugout and then would bang on a trash can to communicate the coming pitch to the batter. The “banging scheme” lasted through the 2017 World Series, which the Astros won over the Los Angeles Dodgers. Manfred said Luhnow was unaware of the banging scheme.

But everything started with Codebreaker, and the use of it to steal signs continued into 2018—not just at home, but also on the road.

Luhnow acknowledged to investigators that he recalled the intern’s PowerPoint slide about Codebreaker and even asked questions about how it worked. He said that he was under the impression that it would be used to legally decipher signs from previous game footage—not live in games.

The intern, Derek Vigoa, currently the Astros’ senior manager for team operations, told investigators that he presumed Luhnow knew it would be used in games because that was “where the value would be,” according to the letter. But he said he didn’t recall whether he explicitly told Luhnow that Codebreaker would be used during games.

 

Vigoa’s presentation wasn’t the only time Astros employees say Luhnow was informed about Codebreaker. Koch-Weser, the Astros’ director of advance information, said he discussed Codebreaker with Luhnow in one to three meetings after the 2016 season.

Koch-Weser told MLB that Luhnow would “giggle” at the title and appeared “excited” about it. Koch-Weser also said that Luhnow sometimes entered the Astros’ video room during road games and made comments such as, “You guys Codebreaking?”

Luhnow denied Koch-Weser’s accounts.

im-152100?width=1260&size=1.5

Jeff Luhnow was suspended by MLB on Jan. 13. He was fired by the Astros hours later.

Photo: Patrick Semansky/Associated Press

Other Astros employees told MLB’s investigators that they believed Luhnow knew about Codebreaker, but they provided no definitive proof. Matt Hogan, now the Astros’ manager of pro scouting analysis, told investigators there was no effort to hide the use of Codebreaker in front of Luhnow when he visited the video room. In fact, he told them, “it would have been something to show we were working and get validation of our work.” Luhnow denied seeing evidence of sign-stealing during those visits.

In October 2018, Luhnow met with Koch-Weser to discuss a potential contract extension. In preparation, Koch-Weser outlined his arguments for an extension in a Slack post that included the term “dark arts.” He wrote, in part: “Lastly, I know the secrets that made us a championship team, some of which he[’]d definitely feel a lot safer if they were kept in-house.” Koch-Weser told MLB investigators that during his meeting with Luhnow, he used either the term “dark arts” or “codebreaking” to tout his efforts. Luhnow denied that Koch-Weser referenced either of those things.

 

Koch-Weser also used the term “dark arts” in the Astros’ Advanced Scouting Department’s 2019 budget Excel spreadsheet. Luhnow acknowledged that he reviewed the document but denied reading the tab “dark arts” was written in and denied that any discussion of “dark arts” took place during the budget meeting.

In Manfred’s public report last month, he said that Luhnow received at least two emails that mentioned the Astros’ sign-stealing. His letter to Luhnow expanded upon the content of those emails.

One was sent by Koch-Weser on May 24, 2017, and was titled “Road Notes (April-May).” The five-page email included six underlined topic headings, with the fifth one called, “The System”—a reference to what Koch-Weser described to investigators as “all kind of covert operations,” including sign-stealing. Luhnow told investigators he didn’t read the full email because of its length, and that he was unfamiliar with the term “the system.” Two people familiar with the matter said it was generally known in the Astros front office that Luhnow expected his staff to put pertinent information in the first page of any email.

Luhnow responded to that email a day later: “These are great, thanks.” He wrote another email about three hours later. “How much of this stuff do you think [Hinch] is aware of?” Luhnow asked Koch-Weser.

On Aug. 26, 2017, in another “road notes,” Koch-Weser wrote: “The system: our dark arts, sign-stealing department has been less productive in the second half as the league has become aware of our reputation and now most clubs change their signs a dozen times per game.” He added that struggling teams like the Toronto Blue Jays and Oakland Athletics “seem not to care as much.”

Luhnow responded two weeks later.

“Tom, this type of write up is very helpful,” he wrote. “Seems like our baserunning is still pathetic. What the hell happened to our pitching this series? I mean that was historically bad…”

Nonetheless, Luhnow told investigators that he did not read the full email because of its length and that if he had, he would have followed up because the reference to “dark arts” sounded “nefarious” and “sinister.”

The evidence led Manfred to believe that Luhnow knew about that element of the Astros’ sign-stealing. In the last paragraph of Manfred’s letter, he wrote: “I intend to hold you accountable for the egregious rules violations that took place under your supervision…”

Luhnow was suspended by MLB for a year on Jan. 13. He was fired by the Astros hours later.

 

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Beau Vine

Beau Vine 53965

Posted
Posted
7 hours ago, formermav43 said:

My heads in the sand, says the guy condemning Hinch while sporting a George Springer avatar, one of the most prolific cheaters on the team.

lulz

Hinch is the only one who has handled this like a man -- owned up to his mistakes and apologized.  Look at the article above -- Luhnow is still fucking lying and playing Sargeant Schultz.

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clapclapclap

clapclapclap 9000

Posted
Posted (edited)

This is not a bash of AJ, but in that interview he seemed to have all the contrition of Bill Clinton.  Smart enough to admit to what's proven, say things that people want to hear, sound earnest, while somewhat vague and slick in other areas.   Came off like had he huddled with lawyers and then interview consultants beforehand.  Didn't watch but heard most of it on the radio, did he bite his lower lip in anguish?

Or maybe it was genuine, I don't know for sure.  But if it was Clintonesque, that just means he has the ethics of most managers and players.  I don't get any hate for him, he didn't really throw the team or any player under the bus.  And I'm not sure how much someone who's been Fiered owes their former team.

Actually did he just sink any chance of being an MLB manager again?  Now that we learn what anyone with a brain should have suspected, that this indeed was a Luhnow driven scheme, is it really believable that AJ was kept out of the loop?  He implied that something something was organically hatched in the background by the players and that he should have done more to discourage it.  Maybe, but seems more likely that Luhnow would have at a minimum discussed it with AJ at some point.   He claims he didn't get the memo from MLB, that Luhnow didn't distribute it to the team or discuss it.  But even if true, how would he not have become aware of it just from scuttlebutt and chatting with other teams and players?  C'mon.  MLB dropping the Luhnow revelation after that interview was recorded sure makes some of Hinch's statements look suspect. 

Ever since the "But he broke the monitors twice!" story broke I've wondered if those happened after losses.  The interview says that happened 3 months into the scheme.  So was it really because he wasn't happy that they were cheating, or actually mad that it was becoming a distraction that wasn't paying off like they had hoped?

That said, this whole thing is like the SEC bitching and being all butthurt that Clemson bought some players.  Yankees, Red Sox, Cubs, Dodgers, and some other teams are probably more mad that someone built a better mousetrap.   We got caught, will get punished, as it should be.  But the blowhards comparing it to Pete Rose or the Black Sox scandal are ridiculous, and many are hypocrites.

Edited by clapclapclap
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WBT

WBT 20397

Posted
Posted
20 hours ago, Pimphand said:

Do people still like/defend Hinch‽

100%.  Many teams were doing this or something similar.

So are we ever going to hear about a Red Sox punishment, or nah?  Seems like Manfred is hoping everyone forgets about it.

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TonyTexas

TonyTexas 10478

Posted
Posted
1 minute ago, WBT said:

100%.  Many teams were doing this or something similar.

So are we ever going to hear about a Red Sox punishment, or nah?  Seems like Manfred is hoping everyone forgets about it.

I think that the Red Sox promoting their bench coach of the last 2 years to manager is a clear indication that they are pretty much going to skate. 

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GHOSTUSER

GHOSTUSER 361

Posted
Posted (edited)
4 hours ago, Beau Vine said:

Hinch is the only one who has handled this like a man -- owned up to his mistakes and apologized.  Look at the article above -- Luhnow is still fucking lying and playing Sargeant Schultz.

I far prefer how Luhnow is handling this. Hinch punched Astros fans in the gut by saying the title is tainted. Luhnow has kept his loyalty to the players, fans and organization. That’s what’s important. I would run through a wall for Luhnow. Fuck Hinch and the king rat of them all Mike Fiers. Htown - ride or die with this team. 

Edited by Iconoclast Texan
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