The MLB cheating scandal claims another head: Alex Cora out as Red Sox manager.
Cora was a former Astros bench coach, and was implicated in setting up the Astros cheating scheme: MLB has not announced any discipline for him yet, but there are allegations that he also set up a cheating scheme with the 2018 Red Sox.
Cora, who worked as an ESPN analyst before leaving for the Astros, played 14 MLB seasons, including parts of four seasons with the Red Sox, winning the 2007 World Series with Boston. He also played for the Dodgers, Indians, Mets and Rangers before finishing his career with the Washington Nationals in 2011.
There’s an interesting piece at ESPN about how other teams are reacting to Rob Manfred’s disciplinary actions:
Multiple ownership-level sources told ESPN that dissatisfaction with the penalties had emerged following a conference call with Manfred, in which he explained how the Astros would be disciplined, then told teams to keep their thoughts to themselves.
“The impression,” one person familiar with the call told ESPN, “was that the penalty for complaining would be more than Houston got.”
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Initially, Manfred planned on limiting the investigation to the Astros. Now MLB is looking into the Red Sox — and considering that their use of an Apple Watch to relay signs in August 2017 was the original sin of modern technological cheating, the penalties for any second offense could be severe. Though they’re the only other team with a known investigation pending, Sports Illustrated reported that the Astros named eight other teams they believe cheated in 2017 and 2018 — and Crane said “the commissioner assured me that every team and every allegation will be checked out.”
This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 15th, 2020 at 6:53 am and is filed under Firings, Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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A lot of people have obviously forgotten the Black Sox. Manfred obviously hasn’t.
It is interesting. Manfred has permanently banned four people in almost exactly five years (counting Brandon Taubman, who is supposedly on the list but can apply for reinstatement after the 2020 World Series). Of those, I’d argue two were for cheating.
Selig banned one person in
six years[Edit: more like 23 years.] (Marge Schott, who, let’s face it, was a pretty egregious case) and Vincent banned two in two years. None of those were for what I’d call “cheating”.