By now everyone tuning into baseball – and sports in general – has heard about the cheating scandal that has embroiled the Houston Astros and their 2017 World Series title. Essentially, the team was found to have used cameras to steal the signs opposing catchers were relaying to their pitchers, and then conveyed that information to the Astros batter so that the type of pitch being thrown was known to the batter before the ball left the pitcher’s hand (this article goes into the scandal a bit more). Now, you don’t need to be a baseball rules expert to deduce that that’s probably not allowed. And the team was fined $5 million and lost several draft picks. What’s made the Astros look even worse has been their handling of the scandal. Rather than apologizing for what happened and owning up to it, they continue to do their best to pretend nothing has really happened. The team – and, to some extent, the MLB – seems to be basically hoping that fans and teams around the league just kind of let it go after a couple of months. It is our opinion that the Astros should be stripped of their 2017 World Series title. Here’s why.
Title was won unfairly
The most obvious reason presenting itself is that the title was won using unfair, illegal means. If, in the middle of the night, a person sneaks into a car dealership and drives off with a brand new Porsche, only to be tracked down and caught the next day, it is society’s expectation that the person will not get to keep the vehicle. In order to fairly own a vehicle, the person trying to own it needs to provide the car dealer with money. When someone decides to buy a car, it is his or her understanding that everyone’s path to owning the car is the same.
Future-looking punishments don’t properly right past wrongs
Imagine how shocking it would be if, after the Porsche thief from our story is tracked down, the police said “Eh, you know what. Keep it. But going forward, you’re going to have to pay more for cars when you want to buy one.” That’s not a solution that most people would find acceptable, because the illegal act itself is not remedied. The thief still gets to keep the car, while anyone else who had been thinking of purchasing it fairly is out of luck. Even if the thief never does buy another car, he or she will always have the one that was stolen. Punishments designed to affect the future of a sports franchise are hardly guaranteed to be effective – the New England Patriots continued having success even after the Spygate scandal saw them lose draft picks. A $5 million fine and a couple of lost draft picks won’t do much to dissuade teams from cheating in the future. If you don’t want people to steal cars (or championships), then you need to make it clear that the thief won’t get to keep the car if he or she steals it.
Doing nothing isn’t a real solution
Many people in favor of letting Houston keep its World Series title argue that it’s simply too difficult and complicated to attempt to rewrite the results of a season in retrospect. Admittedly, there is no easy solution to this problem because it requires conjecturing on all kinds of “what if…” questions. Who should get the title if Houston is stripped of it? Should it be the Dodgers, since they lost to Houston in the World Series? But what about the Yankees, who lost to Houston on the road in game seven of the American League championships? Who can say which team would have won the title if not Houston? What happens to all of the money bettors won or lost on Houston winning the title? Does it need to be paid back? What about the players picked from the draft order of that season? Would it have been any different?
The problem with taking a championship away from a team is that the entire season then comes into question. If a team that missed the playoffs by one or two games lost three road games to the Astros over the course of the season, they’d probably feel they were cheated out of a shot at the playoffs and, therefore, the title (and if you think it’s unlikely that a border-playoff team could possibly win the title, look who won 2019’s.) The entire season is thrown into turmoil when a successful team is found to have cheated.
All of these things said, the complexity of dealing with this situation should not deter the MLB from taking a serious look at how the situation might truly be rectified. Whatever punishment is decided will leave some teams upset – any time a team cheats in a sport, the season has already been compromised. The league should not feel like it’s meddling in the game if it comes to a decision about punishing a team that has already hurt the integrity of baseball. This isn’t a case of “better not overreact or we’ll set a dangerous precedent;” if the MLB can admit that certain circumstances would cause championships to be taken away, then how could this not be one of those circumstances? Where does the league draw the line?
Our recommendation
The Houston Astros deliberately cheated and their World Series 2017 title should be stripped as a result. 2017 should not have a World Series champion, because the complexities of addressing every single team’s claim to the title are just too theoretical and conditional. The aim here is to dissuade other teams from cheating, and if we were the MLB coming to a decision, we would want to make an example out of the Houston Astros. Baseball is a game, and if little kids can play it fairly, then teams worth hundreds of millions of dollars with a lot more to lose should be able to as well.