Why Rob Manfred needs to step up to the plate

There are many unwritten rules of baseball. Don’t steal when winning by seven runs, don’t step on the line, and one of the more pertinent ones: don’t steal signs. Now, when this happens in games, it often leads to a plunking, and not much more. However, when you bring electronics into this, it’s now a whole new story.

The Houston Astros spent their 2017 championship season using cameras in center field and a special app in order to decipher opponents’ signs. They would then relay these signs using a trash can: a bang meant an offspeed pitch was coming and no bang meant fastball. This is an absurdly unfair advantage. When batters have to face 96 mph fastballs, it’s very difficult to adjust to a 79 mph curveball that looks like it’s coming for your head before dropping in for a strike. But when you don’t have to adjust—and instead you can just sit on whatever pitch you’d like—it takes away what makes hitting difficult and what makes baseball interesting.

The Astros’ punishment was one unlike many punishments before, featuring a year-long suspension of their general manager and manager, a fine of five million dollars, and a loss of their first two draft picks in the next two drafts. This may sound like a lot, but when you put it in perspective with what they gained from this scandal, it really isn’t. They won a World Series because of this cheating. In essence, they traded their manager, general manager, a few million dollars, and four draft picks for a World Series title—their first one ever. I can personally guarantee you that if you asked any owner in baseball if they would sacrifice that in exchange for a ring, they would say yes in a heartbeat.

And what about the players? Why don’t they get punished? I understand that the MLB made a deal with the Astros players that they would be immune from punishment in exchange for their honest testimonies, but they were the ones participating in this scandal. These players willingly went ahead with these dishonest actions, and they won’t get reprimanded for it? Maybe they weren’t the ones who started this, but with the Chicago “Black Sox” scandal 100 years ago, Shoeless Joe Jackson didn’t want to go along with the cheating, and yet he’s banned from the Hall of Fame. These Astros players participated in the cheating and they won’t get touched.

Some people, including the Astros’ owner Jim Crane, say that the sign-stealing didn’t affect the outcomes of the games; MLB pitchers seem to disagree. Los Angeles Dodgers starting pitcher Alex Wood chimed in, saying, “I would rather face a player [who] was taking steroids than face a player [who] knew every pitch that was coming.” Trevor Bauer from the Cincinnati Reds agreed with him shortly after. Barry Bonds won’t get into the Hall of Fame because he used steroids, and Alex Rodriguez’s reputation is tarnished because of his PED use. The steroids can only do so much; you still have to know how to hit pitches and have a good swing. Players who know what’s coming just have to put a swing on a ball. It takes out 50 percent of the difficulty.

Not to mention, José Altuve won the MVP award in 2017, edging out Aaron Judge for the honor. This was already a questionable call to give the award to Altuve—and now knowing that he did it by cheating? That doesn’t seem fair to Aaron Judge—does it? Judge was fairly angry at this too, saying, “You cheated and you didn’t earn it.” Judge likely lost millions of dollars because of this scandal, and Altuve won’t be harmed at all.

Aaron Judge isn’t the only player personally hurt by this fiasco. Clayton Kershaw, one of the best pitchers of his generation, is brutally known for choking in the playoffs. He got roughed up by the Astros in the 2017 World Series, further contributing to the notion that he can’t pitch in big games. As Mike Fiers, the pitcher who blew this whole case open, put it, their cheating is hurting pitchers who go into Houston having no idea what’s coming at them. It’s ruining their careers.

To make a long story short, the Astros’ punishment is nowhere near proportional to what they did, especially in perspective with other scandals from the past. Rob Manfred needs to do something more to reprimand the players who carried out the cheating or at least something more to the organization, because five million dollars, a few draft picks, and a manager are a pretty good sacrifice for a World Series title.