There seems to be a growing consensus among some MLB players that the Houston Astros weren’t punished harshly enough for their 2017 electronic sign stealing operation.
Toronto Blue Jays outfielder Randal Grichuk wasn’t even on a team that was hurt by the Astros cheating, as he played for the St. Louis Cardinals in 2017. Still, on Saturday, he publicly called for the Astros to be stripped of their 2017 title and for players on the team to lose their rings over their involvement in the scandal.
Randal Grichuk on MLB's discipline to Astros
"Hopefully that hurts. I hope they go hard and even harder.”
Take rings away?
“I’d like to see that. I bet the Dodgers would like to see that."
— Ben Nicholson-Smith (@bnicholsonsmith) January 18, 2020
Short of suspending individual players, this is probably the harshest penalty MLB could have imposed on the Astros that it didn’t actually do. There’s a debate over whether it would actually matter — no amount of punishment is going to give the Dodgers a championship — but it’s pretty clear that many in the game would have liked to see Rob Manfred do more.
The biggest complaint is that the system that was player-driven did not see any players get punished, and that isn’t sitting well with a lot of people. From that perspective, Grichuk’s disappointment is easy to understand.
The Houston Astros are confirmed cheaters and deserve an asterisk. Send that message by wearing our Houston Asterisks T-shirt! You can buy it here:
