Those waiting excitedly to hear about Major League Baseball’s findings regarding the Houston Astros’ alleged sign-stealing operation are likely going to have to wait a bit longer.
According to Ken Rosenthal and Evan Drellich of The Athletic, the league is unlikely to conclude its investigation by the end of the year due to the amount of evidence that investigators must go through. MLB has over 70,000 emails in its possession as they investigate what the Astros were up to, and that work is likely to go into 2020.
The league is also dealing with an extended time period. While the bulk of the investigation focuses on the 2017 season, they are also trying to figure out what, if anything, was taking place in both 2018 and 2019. While there are leads relating to the 2018 season, those are said to be more sporadic.
Commissioner Rob Manfred wants a thorough investigation that will “stand the test of time,” and he knows that anything short of that will call the league’s credibility into question.
While the evidence that cheating took place is pretty clear, MLB will want to know details. They will want to deduce how prevalent it was, who was behind it, and how high up in the organization it went so the appropriate people will be hit with the appropriate punishments. That’s going to take time, even though the league will want a report done as soon as possible.
