https:\/\/twitter.com\/BlakeHarrisTBLA\/status\/1228378155720695808<\/a>
<\/p>\n\n\n\nAfter Bellinger\u2019s comments, a few baseball fans answered some questions surrounding this Astros cheating scandal.
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\u201cI think the Astros players should\u2019ve received a harsher punishment regardless of who was on board in the scheme or not,\u201d Kayla Morton said.
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Meanwhile, big-time baseball aficionado Tyler Kading said Major League Baseball did what they could regarding punishment.
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\u201cI understand the realities of the situation. Without giving the players immunity, no one gets punished for the most egregious cheating scandal in baseball history,\u201d Kading said. \u201cRob Manfred (the MLB commissioner) wasn\u2019t grandstanding, that\u2019s the reality of it. So it wasn\u2019t really possible for them to get harsher punishments.\u201d
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Bransen Schulte thinks the players are getting out of the worst punishment while managers are seeing harsher penalties.
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\u201cYes, I definitely think the players should have received more punishment,\u201d Schulte said. \u201cThe league seemed to only take it out on the managers and coaches.\u201d
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Morton, however, feels as tho it should be management who gets the worst of the punishment.
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\u201cThe manager and general manager should have had the harsher punishments, not the players,\u201d Morton said.
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Kading feels as though the whole cheating scandal could have been put to a stop by Astros GM Jeff Luhnow, and his lack of action is the most damning.
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\u201cJeff Luhnow should have been banned for life,\u201d Kading said. \u201cRealistically, he was the one in charge of all of the players and could have put a stop to everything before it started. So he didn\u2019t get a harsh enough punishment. He should have received the harshest.\u201d
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Schulte feels that not every player was involved the same amount, if at all, and their individual punishments should be based on their involvement.
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\u201cI don\u2019t think they should have received the worst of the punishments,\u201d Schulte said. \u201cEspecially since we have no way of knowing how involved each player was in the entirety of the scandal.\u201d
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With many opposing MLB players calling for the Astros\u2019 2017 championship to be stripped, Morton agrees.
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\u201cI think they should be stripped of the championship,\u201d she said. \u201cIf the sports world is going to strip Lance Armstrong of his Tour de France wins because he was using meds to get through cancer then this is asinine.\u201d
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However, Kading feels as tho the MLB needs to go further than stripping the title, and levy a punishment that is more impactful.
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\u201cStripping the title is a toothless punishment. They won the World Series, that\u2019s never going to go away,\u201d Kading said. \u201cReggie Bush got stripped of the Heisman Trophy in 2005, but if you ask people, who won the Heisman in 2005? Reggie Bush. That\u2019s exactly what would happen if they vacated the 2017 title. They need harsher punishments that actually matter, which stripping the title would not.\u201d
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Schulte feels as tho the entire organization needs to be made example of.
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\u201cYeah I completely agree that the entire organization should be stripped of their World Series, especially considering this is the first time something like this has happened,\u201d Schulte said. \u201cI think the league needs to make an example of the Astros to discourage any further cheating.\u201d
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Not all Astros players were involved with the scandal according to statements from the players; however, it can be difficult to weed out who was or was not involved.
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\u201cThey don\u2019t have to participate to know it\u2019s going on and to do something about it,\u201d Morton said. \u201cIf Jose Altuve didn\u2019t want to be a part of it, he should\u2019ve had no problem reporting it.\u201d
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Kading believes that some players didn\u2019t want to be a part of the cheating scheme, citing their tendencies at the plate as reason not to participate.
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\u201cYou can look at the data, Jose Altuve used the scheme less than almost everyone else,\u201d Kading said. \u201cHitters are creatures of habit, hearing that outside noise may mess with you at the plate, so it is perfectly believable that some players didn\u2019t want to be a part of the scheme. They don\u2019t deserve the benefit of the doubt when they say that, though.\u201d
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Schulte would like to be optimistic that some players weren\u2019t involved, but finds it hard to believe that there were Astros players who didn\u2019t know what was going on or participate.
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\u201cI would like to think some players weren\u2019t involved. But, I don\u2019t think anyone who batted for the team can say they weren\u2019t involved,\u201d Schulte said. \u201cThere\u2019s too much evidence that what was going on was helping everyone at the plate. As for Altuve, I think he was for sure in on the scandal, especially after rewatching the video of him hitting his homer and telling the guys not to rip his jersey. I\u2019m not quite sure how Mike Trout put it, but he said something along the lines of \u2018if that\u2019s me hitting that home run, I\u2019m letting them rip my jersey.\u2019\u2019\u2019
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While the scandal reigns supreme over baseball and into the beginning of Spring Training, many fans are still interested in seeing how the season plays out, including Morton.
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\u201cThe interest won\u2019t change. Just more people will want to see the Astros lose,\u201d Morton said. \u201cMike Fiers is a hero.\u201d
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Kading agrees, saying his life will be baseball 24\/7 no matter what.
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\u201cI think it\u2019s a fantastic thing for baseball though, in the long run, that people seem to care about this,\u201d Kading said. “Baseball is the forefront of the conversation now in the sports world. That\u2019s good.\u201d
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Teams are in the midst of spring training preparing for Opening Day on March 26th. However, the Astros are feeling the wrath of teams and player across the league during spring ball, as there have already been seven Astros players hit by pitches through five spring training games. Time will tell if retaliation will continue into the 2020 season.
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BY BRADEN HOLECEK \u201cCheater, cheater, pumpkin eater.\u201d \u201cCaught red-handed.\u201d The baseball world was appalled by the shocking revelations of the Houston Astros cheating scandal. Not… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":142,"featured_media":53880,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4540,7349],"tags":[13519,13631,13629,69,106,13626,13630,13632,13628,13627,11785,13633,103,290],"class_list":["post-53879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-baseball-sports","category-sports","tag-braden-holeck","tag-cody-bellinger","tag-evan-drellich","tag-fhsu","tag-fort-hays-state-university","tag-houston-astros","tag-jeff-luhnow","tag-kayla-morton","tag-ken-rosenthal","tag-mike-fiers","tag-mlb","tag-rob-manfred","tag-tiger-media-network","tag-tmn"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/tigermedianet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/768px-Houston-Astros-Logo.svg_.png?fit=768%2C768&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/142"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=53879"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53879\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53881,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53879\/revisions\/53881"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/53880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=53879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=53879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=53879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}