The continuing, colossal incompetence of Rob Manfred has somehow made him the face of the Houston Astros sign-stealing scandal, and I’m sure Astros players and executives everywhere are OK with that.
But there looms another name that will soon resonate more than any other: Mike Bolsinger.
Mike Bolsinger Who?
Yep, exactly the point. Bolsinger is a former MLB reliever, one of the hundreds who are trying to make it in The Show, and he’s set himself up as the perfect showpiece for the nightmare that has unfolded in what has to be the worst scandal in the Major Leagues since the Chicago Black Sox threw the 1919 World Series.
A little background: Bolsinger was pitching for the Toronto Blue Jays against Houston on Aug. 4, 2017. Audio recordings of the game found that the Astros’ trashcan-banging system was used on 12 of the 29 pitches Bolsinger threw. He managed to get one out, gave up four runs, and was cut from the Major League team the next day. Bolsinger hasn’t pitched in the MLB since, although he has toiled professionally in Japan the last two seasons.
He filed a civil suit on Feb. 10, alleging the Astros had engaged in unfair business practices and negligence via a “duplicitous and tortious scheme of sign-stealing.” In layman’s terms, he was cheated. He has since included Houston owner Jim Crane and baseball operations staffer Derek Vigoa in the scheme. More on Vigoa shortly.
If you’re the cynical type, you can think what you want of this lawsuit: Maybe Bolsinger wasn’t good enough to be a Major League Baseball pitcher anyway, or maybe this is just an opportunistic money-grab, or perhaps this will just get thrown out as frivolous litigation.
But I don’t think so. I prefer to see this as the perfect chance to crack open this case and see what we’ve been missing. There’s a whole crockpot of crap stewing on this one, and I’m certain that Rob Manfred has been the ultimate crock-block.
Investigation and the Real Dirt
None of this scandal would be public if not for the print media chasing down the facts, but a lawsuit is a whole ‘nother story. Early in the lawsuit process is the discovery phase, where legal information is exchanged between the two sides. You can’t hide what you want to be hidden anymore. This is where Bolsinger’s attorneys get to see all the damning emails and texts, and question everyone under oath.
All that Rob Manfred’s investigation found was what the Astros’ players were willing to tell. Everything else we know was dug up by reporters from gutsy whistleblowers like Mike Fiers and Jonathan Lucroy.
The real dirt? I don’t think we’ve reached the real grime yet. Buzzers and bad tattoos, Derek Vigoa and the “Codebreaker” excel spreadsheets, cameras in the visitors’ dugouts … who knows where this will go?
And when that stuff does come out, expect more lawsuits.
Manfred has bumbled through this scandal with the grace and artistry of an unsupervised two-year-old with a box of crayons and some Elmer’s Glue. Turns out, this was not a well-kept secret in the game of baseball. There are too many players who bounce from team to team for this to not leak. Manfred was always well behind the issue, working like the lawyer he is to mask the problems instead of getting ahead and stopping them.
Jonathan Lucroy: “I knew about that two years ago, that it was going on. Everybody in baseball, especially in the division playing against them, we were all aware of the Astros doing those things.”
Dirty Deeds
Lucroy was playing for the A’s that year, as was former Astros’ pitcher Mike Fiers, who revealed the dirty deeds. Lucroy alerted Oakland GM David Forst, who relayed the info to Manfred. And then … nothing.
“They didn’t go through the whole investigation,” Lucroy said. “It wasn’t until Fiers came out publicly that they looked at it really hard.”
The firestorm sparked by Fiers and The Athletic put the MLB commissioner on the spot. He had to do something, so he suspended some executives, took away some draft picks and fined the team $5 million. No players were penalized. The 2017 World Series championship was not vacated, and Manfred trivialized the WS championship by famously calling the trophy “a piece of metal.” Wow.
“I don’t know if the commissioner has ever won anything in his life,” said Justin Turner of the Dodgers, who lost that 2017 World Series to the Astros. “Maybe he hasn’t. But the reason every guy’s in this room, the reason every guy is working out all offseason, and showing up to camp early and putting in all the time and effort is specifically for that trophy, which, by the way, is called the commissioner’s trophy.
“So for him to devalue it the way he did just tells me how out of touch he is with the players in this game. At this point, the only thing devaluing that trophy is that it says ‘commissioner’ on it.”
Now imagine the Dodgers winning the 2021 World Series, and Manfred in the lockerroom presenting it. Priceless, huh?
So let’s go back to the Black Sox scandal of 1919, which threatened to bring down professional baseball. That’s when the owners created the office of the commissioner to protect the integrity of the game, and named Kenesaw Mountain Landis to the post and gave him ultimate authority to protect the best interests of the game.
A scowling, humorless sort, Landis ruled with an iron hand, unencumbered with the facade of protecting his job over the game itself. Baseball prospered.
How will history remember Rob Manfred?
