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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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mbtex

mbtex 697

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https://twitter.com/ReformedWriter/status/1230185036051288065
Steve Campbell
@ReformedWriter
I don't pretend to speak for everybody who roots for the Astros. But I think one of the reasons many are pushing back on the cheating scandal is all the absolutely manufactured outrage as if the Astros committed the worst crime ever against baseball./1
Do you know why we know it's after-the-fact, manufactured outrage? Let's start with the fact that when the commissioner sanctioned the Red Sox and Yankees for the Apple watch scheme, it was a virtual non-story around baseball. It got covered lightly but nobody .../2
was talking about it. Did we have ESPN running around from player to player around the league, asking about the sanctity of the game and what needed to be done? No. The matter went away quietly, because people basically decided (right or wrong) that it was no big deal./3
How serious was the matter to MLB? Well, yes, Rob Manfred did send out an e-mail to the teams. But notice, he didn't loop in the Players Association or do anything to make sure the players knew this is something that the league was going to start taking seriously./4
Anybody who knows MLB at all knows how powerful and influential the players union is. Are you telling me that MLB considered the sign-stealing a threat to the integrity of the sport and yet failed to turn loop in the union on its efforts to address the problem?/5
OK, let's take this down on a smaller scale. Remember the now-famous video of White Sox pitcher Danny Farquhar apparently catching on to the trashcan banging scheme and summoning his catcher to the mound? And do you remember what happened that day, and the ensuing days?/6
Nothing. Absolutely nothing. So let's get this straight. Farquhar and the White Sox caught the Astros red-handed, perpetrating this great affront to baseball and the integrity of baseball. They had video evidence to show what the Astros were doing and how./7
And they didn't immediately call out the Astros publicly, demanding the problem get addressed immediately? Now, why do you think that is? I don't know, I'm going to spitball here and suggest that maybe, just maybe, players considered such things an annoyance rather than /8
THE END OF CIVILIZATION AS WE KNOW IT. I mean, the White Sox had video evidence of another team committing this egregious act, yet the whistleblower turned out to be a disgruntled ex-Astro who got left off the playoff roster yet was all smiles when the team gave him /9
his World Series ring. In other words, we have all this retroactive outrage when the fact of the matter is that at the time, nobody -- MLB, team management, players -- were treating it like a serious issue. Yes, games were slowing to a crawl because teams were changing /10
signs constantly in games, especially during the postseason. But this was happening across the board, not just Astros games, which kind of points to teams presuming that everybody was up to something./11
So yes, the Astros took sign stealing to a levels that weren't available when lesser technology existed. But we really don't know what tricks other teams had up their sleeves -- but that other teams had all kinds of suspicions about each other./12
Now, if the Astros were literally the only team that was employing advanced sign-stealing, yes, that gave them an advantage over everybody else. We'll never know large the advantage was, because there's no way to measure it, but it would put them at an advantage. No doubt./13
But making the assumption the Astros were the only team operating that way is naive at best. Nobody else was brazen enough to bang trash cans, but we don't know what other strategies were in play. We do know that the Red Sox are under investigation for things they did /14
when one of the leaders of the Astros scheme, Joey Corey, went over to manage that team. We do know that the Yankees and Red Sox had previously been sanctioned. At least two teams have expressed suspicions about the ever-outspoken Dodgers, whose new star Mookie Betts /15
had by far the best year in his career and won an MVP award the year (2018) Cora came over from Houston to Boston. Hmmmm. Now, there have been reports of it being "an open secret" that the Astros have been cheating for years. If so, shame on them. But again, if players around /16
MLB truly considered this a huge workplace issue, then why didn't the union make it an issue and insist that MLB fix it? The answer is that nobody's actions -- players, management, MLB headquarters -- points to them thinking it was an important matter at the time./17
The outrage is selective and after the fact. This is a failure across the sport, but it's much more convenient to demonize one team for the sins of everybody. /18

 

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Js1

Js1 87185

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13 hours ago, Chuckie Finster said:

I’m so fucking tired of other fanbases acting like the reaction by Astros fans is unusual in any way. There’s not a fanbase in professional sports that would act different if their team was in the crosshairs.

Right?

Look at the Pats.  Spygate - got caught.  Then they kept it going with Deflategate.  Then they got caught filming opponents' sidelines again!  

Pats fans don't seem to think anything is tainted, asterisked, etc.

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Fozzz

Fozzz 152

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3 hours ago, David Dennison said:

Rick Reilly has labeled us the crookedest team in baseball history.

He also notes we got away with it.

Burn.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/02/major-league-baseball-goes-soft-cheating-astros/606850/

I think it's tough to say whether the punishment was severe enough.  The Astros probably accrued around $20-40M in extra wins from their cheating and were stripped of around $30-50M worth of draft picks.  Given that you have to discount the value of the punishment by the probability of getting caught, is the punishment the Astros received really that much of a deterrent?  Maybe you think Luhnow is so good that losing him makes the punishment especially severe, but that may not be the case for other teams.  

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Fozzz

Fozzz 152

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5 minutes ago, NeverMarryAStripper said:

Please show your work

I was actually underselling it a bit - at around $10M per win, this was worth around $30-50M.  

Quote

If we just focus on 2017 and compare the Astros performance before and after the presumed May 19 start date, we can see that they did indeed see a big boost after implementing their trash can system. They saw better results at home against every pitch type, whether or not they swung. And when we compare their home splits against their road performance, we can see that they performed better at home when taking pitches. Looking at the data this way removes some of the noise that was complicating my previous analysis — we don’t have to worry about the change in talent from 2016 to 2017. It also supports the Arthur’s conclusions; the Astros gained a significant advantage at home after implementing their sign-stealing system. I estimate its total cumulative value at somewhere around five wins.

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/which-players-might-have-benefited-from-the-astros-sign-stealing/

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Chuckie Finster

Chuckie Finster 23079

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Posted

Mike Fiers: The 2017 Astros ruined the integrity of baseball and it is my duty to report their actions

Also Mike Fiers: Sure do like this ring though

https://www.sfchronicle.com/athletics/article/A-s-Mike-Fiers-I-ve-dealt-with-death-15071066.php

One contention among Astros fans is that Fiers was a part of the 2017 World Series team and as a result, he benefited from the team’s use of video technology to steal signs, too. There have been calls for him to return his World Series ring.

Asked if he’s considered doing that, Fiers said he might have once mentioned it as a possibility to A’s teammate Ryan Buchter, but he has no plans to do so now, unless it is required of the rest of the 2017 team.

 

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David Dennison

David Dennison 19542

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21 minutes ago, Chuckie Finster said:

Mike Fiers: The 2017 Astros ruined the integrity of baseball and it is my duty to report their actions

Also Mike Fiers: Sure do like this ring though

https://www.sfchronicle.com/athletics/article/A-s-Mike-Fiers-I-ve-dealt-with-death-15071066.php

One contention among Astros fans is that Fiers was a part of the 2017 World Series team and as a result, he benefited from the team’s use of video technology to steal signs, too. There have been calls for him to return his World Series ring.

Asked if he’s considered doing that, Fiers said he might have once mentioned it as a possibility to A’s teammate Ryan Buchter, but he has no plans to do so now, unless it is required of the rest of the 2017 team.

 

Someone is going to whip his ass.

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NeverMarryAStripper

NeverMarryAStripper 22301

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31 minutes ago, Fozzz said:

I was actually underselling it a bit - at around $10M per win, this was worth around $30-50M.  

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/which-players-might-have-benefited-from-the-astros-sign-stealing/

Astro's total revenue for 2017 was $347 Million, so these extra 5 wins that they for sure, definitely, with out a doubt because one guy said so, that they got from cheating accounted for 15% of their revenue?

image.png

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Cornfusion

Cornfusion 250

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Posted

I think I have come up with a "suitable punishment" compromise for the signal stealing that we all can tolerate:  

Let opposing fans at away game shine laser pointers into the eyes of the Houston Astros batters for the entire 2020 season. 

  • Is it cheating?  Probably, but everybody does it. 
  • Is it fair?  No, but don't be a whiny ass.   
  • Will it have any real effect on the season?  No, because it's still hard to strike out a major league batter, even with an unfair advantage.

I think that covers most rebuttal points.

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txhorns

txhorns 2421

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57 minutes ago, NeverMarryAStripper said:

Astro's total revenue for 2017 was $347 Million, so these extra 5 wins that they for sure, definitely, with out a doubt because one guy said so, that they got from cheating accounted for 15% of their revenue?

image.png

I don't know how that $30-50 million number came about but I assume it would include playoff revenue plus the value of winning the World Series.

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Fozzz

Fozzz 152

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We're not talking about the actual revenue brought in by the team during that time, we're talking about how much those extra wins the Astros obtained through cheating are worth on the market.  If the Astros were forced to pay the market rate for those additional 3-5 wins they got for free through cheating, then they would have had to pay an additional $30-50M.

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NeverMarryAStripper

NeverMarryAStripper 22301

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51 minutes ago, Fozzz said:

We're not talking about the actual revenue brought in by the team during that time, we're talking about how much those extra wins the Astros obtained through cheating are worth on the market.  If the Astros were forced to pay the market rate for those additional 3-5 wins they got for free through cheating, then they would have had to pay an additional $30-50M.

The Astros won 101games in 2017.  Take away the 5 "free" cheating wins and that leaves 96.  Taking his value of $30 - $50 Million per 5 wins then the Astros must have paid $2.88 Billion to $4.8 Billion on the open market for their "legally" obtained wins.

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Fozzz

Fozzz 152

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5 minutes ago, NeverMarryAStripper said:

The Astros won 101games in 2017.  Take away the 5 "free" cheating winds and that leaves 96.  Taking his value of $30 - $50 Million per 5 wins then the Astros must have paid $2.88 Billion to $4.8 Billion on the open market for their "legally" obtained wins.

The Astros tanked and thus acquired a lot of premium draft picks and were fortunate/smart enough to hit on many of them.  They were also smart at development and in trades.  This has nothing to do with the market value of the wins the Astros were able to steal through cheating.  The Astros, too, sign free agents to acquire additional wins and pay market value for the players they sign.  

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Rockethorn1978

Rockethorn1978 6205

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My favorite part of all the whining are the ranger fans trying to inject themselves as some major victim of it all. Yes Rangers we are so sorry we destroyed your hopes and dreams of that incredible 70 win season. I can take it from Dodgers and Yankee fans but when it's from a Team that had nothing going on and is a shit stain on the bottom of our shoe it makes me laugh. 

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NeverMarryAStripper

NeverMarryAStripper 22301

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28 minutes ago, Fozzz said:

The Astros tanked and thus acquired a lot of premium draft picks and were fortunate/smart enough to hit on many of them.  They were also smart at development and in trades.  This has nothing to do with the market value of the wins the Astros were able to steal through cheating.  The Astros, too, sign free agents to acquire additional wins and pay market value for the players they sign.  

Then I guess no team in the history of baseball has paid market value for their wins

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runthebone

runthebone 8377

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Manfred fucked the whole situation up by issuing the Astros report first without completing the entire investigation.  If in the end, the Astros truly were the biggest systemic sign stealers, then they deserve the histrionic hatred.  They probably were one of many teams that stole signs electronically, however.

Instead, he is letting them get killed for 2 months.  Then the next report will show the Red Sox did something equally bad, but the damage has already been done.

He should have sent out a blanket warning putting everyone on notice that electronic sign stealing has to stop now then issued a complete report.

 

 

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WBT

WBT 20979

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1 hour ago, NeverMarryAStripper said:

Then I guess no team in the history of baseball has paid market value for their wins

Correct.  In this case, the "market value" for wins is what you have to pay per win that a free agent is projected to be responsible for.  Players in their first 6/7 years that are still under team control get pennies on the dollar of the free agent rate.

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Guadaloopy

Guadaloopy 11130

Posted
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4 hours ago, Cornfusion said:

I think I have come up with a "suitable punishment" compromise for the signal stealing that we all can tolerate:  

Let opposing fans at away game shine laser pointers into the eyes of the Houston Astros batters for the entire 2020 season. 

  • Is it cheating?  Probably, but everybody does it. 
  • Is it fair?  No, but don't be a whiny ass.   
  • Will it have any real effect on the season?  No, because it's still hard to strike out a major league batter, even with an unfair advantage.

I think that covers most rebuttal points.

I didn’t neg this because it was anti-Astros or anti-Astros fan.  I negged it because I picture you sniffing your own farts and congratulating yourself about how clever you are after you posted it.   I’m all for sharp-witted jabs at the Astros and their fans - we deserve it.   This is just dumb.  

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Cornfusion

Cornfusion 250

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I didn’t neg this because...

Thanks for the feedback, I will be sure to factor your this input and your opinions in to the rest of my life henceforth.

Now, enough with the bullshit.  You didn't like my post because I took the three main excuses that all of the Astro fanboys have used to excuse or mitigate their team's cheating and threw them back into their faces.  Probably you face is one of them?  Since you had no comeback, clever or otherwise, you went with a rather coarse ad hominem (look it up) attack and then gave me a neg, whatever that does.  My guess is it's a World of Warcraft thing.

Did I miss anything important here, Guadaloopy?  Nope.

You get the last word Ace.  Put it out there for whoever might read it.

Edited by Cornfusion
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henrygandorf

henrygandorf 29225

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3 hours ago, Cornfusion said:

Thanks for the feedback, I will be sure to factor your this input and your opinions in to the rest of my life henceforth.

Now, enough with the bullshit.  You didn't like my post because I took the three main excuses that all of the Astro fanboys have used to excuse or mitigate their team's cheating and threw them back into their faces.  Probably you face is one of them?  Since you had no comeback, clever or otherwise, you went with a rather coarse ad hominem (look it up) attack and then gave me a neg, whatever that does.  My guess is it's a World of Warcraft thing.

Did I miss anything important here, Guadaloopy?  Nope.

You get the last word Ace.  Put it out there for whoever might read it.

rare to see “look it up” in a smug rant which also contains 2-3 typos/grammatical errors. well played. 

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formermav43

formermav43 4630

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7 hours ago, Cornfusion said:

Thanks for the feedback, I will be sure to factor your this input and your opinions in to the rest of my life henceforth.

Now, enough with the bullshit.  You didn't like my post because I took the three main excuses that all of the Astro fanboys have used to excuse or mitigate their team's cheating and threw them back into their faces.  Probably you face is one of them?  Since you had no comeback, clever or otherwise, you went with a rather coarse ad hominem (look it up) attack and then gave me a neg, whatever that does.  My guess is it's a World of Warcraft thing.

Did I miss anything important here, Guadaloopy?  Nope.

You get the last word Ace.  Put it out there for whoever might read it.

No, he didn’t like it because it was dumb. He was pretty clear on that. And correct.

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Chuckie Finster

Chuckie Finster 23079

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18 minutes ago, Dr. Beeper said:

I know this isn’t near the transgression but do you realize how similar Astros fans sound to Penn St. and Baylor fans?

I’m a Rangers fan that lived in Houston for awhile and grew up in Austin. I’ve always been a bigger Dallas sports fan and live here now. Never gotten into the Dallas-Houston rivalry. Always have a soft spot for Stros and Rockets.  I was ecstatic they won the series in ‘17 and was upset they lost last year  

But this circling the wagons is so Aggie-esque that it’s laughable. 

One, it's fucking bullshit to compare the situations.  

Two, show me a situation where a fanbase came under attack for ANY reason where the fanbase didn't circle the wagons.  I'm not talking about a player/owner doing something shitty, I'm talking about where the entire team becomes a topic of scorn by the rest of the spot.  Just show me once EVER where the fanbase of that team joined in.  It doesn't happen.  Expecting the Astros fanbase to turn on the team is as dumb as comparing breaking the rules of a game to institutionalized rape.

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IDIOTsavant

IDIOTsavant 8688

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21 minutes ago, Dr. Beeper said:

I know this isn’t near the transgression but do you realize how similar Astros fans sound to Penn St. and Baylor fans?

I’m a Rangers fan that lived in Houston for awhile and grew up in Austin. I’ve always been a bigger Dallas sports fan and live here now. Never gotten into the Dallas-Houston rivalry. Always have a soft spot for Stros and Rockets.  I was ecstatic they won the series in ‘17 and was upset they lost last year  

But this circling the wagons is so Aggie-esque that it’s laughable. 

No. Not even remotely the same. Just no.

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Fozzz

Fozzz 152

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14 hours ago, WBT said:

Correct.  In this case, the "market value" for wins is what you have to pay per win that a free agent is projected to be responsible for.  Players in their first 6/7 years that are still under team control get pennies on the dollar of the free agent rate.

If a team wants to obtain five extra wins they can cheat, pray that one materializes within their farm system, trade for them, they can acquire them through free agency.  The latter two categories are the only two options that will be legitimately available for most teams, and each is dictated by the market value of the players involved.  Even if you are obtaining players through trade that are under team control and thus are being paid far less than the value they create on the field, the price you will have to pay through trade will be dictated by their surplus value which is again tied to that same $/WAR figure.  70 grade position prospects produce around 12-13 WAR on average so they are valued at around $110M.  If you want to trade for one then you need to find $100M+ surplus value of your own to make the deal work. 

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/an-update-to-prospect-valuation/

 

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ChickenSandwich

ChickenSandwich 9959

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9 hours ago, Cornfusion said:

Thanks for the feedback, I will be sure to factor your this input and your opinions in to the rest of my life henceforth.

Now, enough with the bullshit.  You didn't like my post because I took the three main excuses that all of the Astro fanboys have used to excuse or mitigate their team's cheating and threw them back into their faces.  Probably you face is one of them?  Since you had no comeback, clever or otherwise, you went with a rather coarse ad hominem (look it up) attack and then gave me a neg, whatever that does.  My guess is it's a World of Warcraft thing.

Did I miss anything important here, Guadaloopy?  Nope.

You get the last word Ace.  Put it out there for whoever might read it.

Your team stole signs last year and attempted to use them during live action. They just weren’t savvy enough to use a trash can. 

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