https://www.latimes.com/sports/dodgers/story/2020-01-15/los-angeles-city-council-vote-mlb-award-dodgers-championship-trophies?_amp=true
The Astros home/road splits in the 2017 playoffs were pretty significant. I havent seen the Sox postseason numbers for 2018, but the regular season splits are not anything close to this pronounced.
2018 Red Sox postseason
Yup. What MLB should have done (which admittedly would have taken more time) was undertake a league-wide investigation into how pervasive the various sign-stealing practices were. If it's true that numerous teams were using the replay room to steal signs a la what the Sox have been accused of, the report could have said that and still punished the Astros for going a few steps further - in other words, "here is what made the Astros conduct worse than other teams and that is what they are being punished for."
Heh, well you wouldn't want to see it if your team was one of the ones who had a title taken away. But to your larger point, yes that would be pretty hilarious. "Yay, we didn't really win, but we kind of won by court ruling so...yay, celebrate...I guess?"
Koufax and Drysdale pitched at a time when Dodgers Stadium had an illegally high pitchers mound, and they (especially Koufax) had pronounced home/road splits during that time. Such cheating is not really cared about or mentioned when listing Koufax as among the greatest pitchers of all time. Pretty sure LA won’t be asking MLB to invalidate their titles from those days.
This is an example of one of the few things that really gets under my skin. Some people love to yuck it up about rule-breaking from "'back in the day". But when similar things happen in the here-and-now, many of the same people rant like its a stain on the very fabric of humanity. Makes me nuts.
This, right here, pretty much sums up why I canceled my MLB.TV subscription. Thanks to the ever-increasing availability of college baseball, I can get my baseball fix that way this spring and summer. MLB and the "right way" (like that means anything) crowd can go screw.
2010, 2002, and I'd throw in 1988 for three straight rounds of crap.
There may have been a law since 1904 governing the maximum mound height but there were no enforcement policies. And even after the 15" limit was imposed, the shape of mounds from park to park wasn't constant: you could have a slope that was basically a straight line or one with a sharp drop-off, or something in between. If your team had short pitchers, you could keep the slope level for the reach of their stride, then have it drop off. If your opponent had taller pitchers, longer stride, they would have a sharp dro[-off.
Reminds me of some documentary I saw awhile back about doping at the Olympics. A US swimmer came in second to a West Getman who was later nabbed for steroids, so they eventually gave the gold medal to the American.
https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/28537712/mlb-no-plans-strip-astros-red-sox-world-series-titles-says-commissioner-rob-manfred?platform=amp
100% agreed. There was so much rule breaking back in the hallowed innocent days when everyone "played the game the right way." Players did everything they could possibly get away with, that is how baseball has always been.
And we are already starting to move that way with regard to PEDs - in another generation the PED outcry will likely be looked on with a mixture of regret, humor, and confusion, and then there will be some new scandal that everyone gets high and mighty about. Which is not to say that it's not a good thing that MLB drummed out the spitball and rampant PED use, but it is to say that each new cheating scandal should be looked at as a natural evolution of the game and something that should be considered as part of baseball's continuum, rather than as something that is uniquely bad and destructive to the game. (Sign-stealing is a perfect example - it's something that has occurred since, presumably, the very origins of baseball but has taken on new importance given technological advancements and rule changes.)
Great post. I'm currently reading The Cheater's Guide to Baseball by Derek Zumsteg, which is pretty revealing.
I'm no fan of the righteous indignation, and I support PED users getting into the Hall. But it seems perfectly consistent to me to draw a distinction between actions where the cheating was limited to the game and the team's coordinated attempts to win the game, vs players poisoning their bodies to gain greater riches and creating an environment where everyone felt pressure to poison their own bodies and lessen their own lifespans just so they could keep up. The former is in service of the team's goals (where the injured party is the opponent who usually has countermeasures available), whereas the latter in service of individual goals (and the injured party is every clean player in baseball).
