Houston Astros manager AJ Hinch and his general manager Jeff Luhnow were fired by the team on Monday after the Major League Baseball commissioner suspended them for a year and fined the club with $ 5 million for stealing signals in the 2017 seasons - in which Houston won the World Series - and 2018.
It is not yet known what luck the Red Sox driver Alex Cora will run. Commissioner Rob Manfred said Cora had created the signal theft system used by the Astros and that there will also be punishment for him. Cora was Hinch's assistant in 2017.
The team will also lose their first two selections of the first and second round of the draft.
https://twitter.com/astros/status/1216812191094992896
Manfred said Houston owner Jim Crane was not aware of the signal theft system. An hour after Manfred's announcement, Crane said that Hinch and Luhnow had been fired.
"We have to make a blur and a new account," he said.
For his part, the former general manager of the Astros, Brandon Taubman, was suspended until the World Series for his conduct during the final of the American League championship last year, when he made offensive comments to a journalist. Taubman first denied the incident and then apologized.
Houston had the best brand in the league (204-120) in the two years in question, where it won the World Series for the first time.
For Manfred, the team's philosophy was to win. "It is clear to me that the culture of the department that manages baseball was very problematic," said the commissioner. He added that "the results were valued and rewarded over any other consideration."
Baseball's penalties were much more severe than those in the NFL for similar infractions. Patriots coach Bill Belichick was fined $ 500,000 in 2007 and the Patriots were $ 250,000 for using videos to steal signals from rivals. Eight years later the Patriots were fined with a million dollars for deflating the balls used in the final of the American Conference. Quarterback Tom Brady was suspended for four games.
Everyone "was aware"
The current Mets manager Carlos Beltrán was then an Astros player, but Manfred said that no player will be punished: the decision was that the manager and the general manager were responsible for everything.
"Virtually all the Astros players participated in some way or were aware, but I am not in a position, from the result of the investigations, to determine with certainty what level of responsibility each one had or their degree of guilt," he wrote Manfred "It is not practical given the number of players involved and the fact that many of those players now militate in other clubs."
The investigation into the Astros infractions began when Mike Fiers, a team pitcher who now plays with Oakland, denounced the theft of signals in an article published in The Atlantic on November 12.
The Major League Investigations Department interviewed 27 witnesses, including 23 players and former Astros players, and reviewed tens of thousands of emails, Slack messages, text messages, videos and photographs.
"Some Astros players told investigators that the signal theft system was not effective and that it was rather a distraction," according to Manfred, who said he was not "in a position to determine if the system helped batters the Astros or helped the Astros win games. ”
Astros employees said the team began deciphering signals using the central garden camera in early 2017. A player took the information to the dugout , where they passed it to a runner in second. The runner deciphered the signals from the catcher to the pitcher and passed it to the batter. Sometimes the staff in the video analysis room transmitted information through the clock or phone of a member of the dugout.
Cora started calling the video room to ask for information at the beginning of the season. After a group of baseball players, including Beltrán, analyzed how to improve the system after two months, Cora arranged for a screen to be installed in the dugout to transmit what the central garden camera caught. Players reported throws by hitting a bat or massage gun against a trash can. Two strokes usually indicated throws out of speed, no noise anticipated a fast ball.
Edited with AP information.
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