Bill O’Buttchin Plays Subterfuge
Feb17
on February 17, 2020
at 12:01 am
Even as a football it feels necessary to laugh at the Astros and preserve that laughter in my archive so here we go. Baseball safe space post. Talk about the baseballs!
Most of the XFL has been horrible but the Roughnecks and Battlehawks were enjoyable as well as the forth quarter of the earlier game on Sunday. The NFL may get a kicker, punter, wide receiver and a couple qbs from the league. Also some defensive players will get looks. I love football
I could see Cardale Jones getting another look somewhere. Maybe the Titans pick up Rivers and park Jones behind him for a year or two of seasoning?
I don’t see the Titans taking Rivers, A Tannehill Franchise Tag is more likely, but I could see Tennessee taking a look at Jones.
I’ve adopted the Battlehawks as my new team, so dang that was a disappointing loss. It seems like the first half of XFL games are trash and you can skip to the second half for decent football.
Aw. I was hoping you’d do something about Dwyane Wade rigging the Dunk Contest for the Heat player, fucking over Aaron Gordon again despite him jumping over a human Sequoia.
a cool experiment would be to look at the ratio of “aw I wish youd done a comic on x” to total comments as a function of time
guess which direction they prob go
Oooooooh daaaaave.. OOOOOOH YOU MUST POST XFL CONTENT, DAVE… it’s not too late..
Yes. 3 of the 4 games had exciting finishes this weekend. And the other one was the game where Matt McGloin had an epic meltdown that was entertaining in a different way and might be worthy of a comic
If you don’t, Kurt Warner’s NFL Ring will change his name to Tommy Maddox’s XFL Ring and start posting reports…
I love Dodger Stadium, even a drawing triggers that yearn to go see a game… SOON!
Okay. A place to talk about baseball that doesn’t already have 2,000 comments on it where no one sees this. Sweet.
What I think should have happened to the Astros:
No, I don’t think we should strip titles. That’s NCAA bullshit and should stay there – rather it should go away from there entirely. But the punishment should have been far more heavy-handed than it was, enough to make it so the team (A) can’t put a competitive product on the field for some time, and (B) takes enough of a financial blow that no other team would ever dare to try this. $5 million is not enough.
Here’s how I would have done this:
*Draft picks – forfeit the first 5 rounds of draft picks in year 1, first 4 rounds of draft picks in year 2, first 3 rounds year 3, first 2 rounds year 4, and first rounder in year 5. It’s not all the picks, but enough of them to put them at a disadvantage on par with the advantage gained from cheating.
*No home games for two years. The next two years of schedules would be reworked that every game they would have played at home is now away, or if that’s not possible, at a neutral site far enough away from their stadium that the fans would not reasonably make the trek. Can’t get home field advantage of a camera being set up if they never play at home! The team must still pay every employee that was with them at the stadium as if they were working full time, but not be allowed to use their services at the stadium. This way innocent people don’t lose their jobs because the Astros cheated.
*Years 3 through 6 sliding scale punishment: The Astros would be allowed to return home and have a normal home schedule as of year 3. However, all gross profits would be garnished by the League – and that includes profit made both in and out of the stadium. After looking at all expenses paid out and all money brought in, whatever gross profit is left, year 3 80% of that is taken from them and redistributed to other teams. Year 4, it’s 60%, year 5 it’s 40%, and year 6 is 20%. They come fully off of any and all punishments heading into year 7.
*Free Agency restriction – just so they can’t go buy good players to make up for the loss of draft picks, for the first 2 seasons of punishment, they are blocked from signing any free agent for anything above the league minimum, so that quality players will go to any other team first.
Do all this, and this would be the last cheating scandal you’d hear about in the major league.
I’d go further. No draft picks for 2 years. 3 year postseason ban. Strip both the 2017 and the 2019 World Series titles.
Forgot Washington won last year, lol
Moment when you realize that they tried to cheat against the Nationals and still takes the L.
I’d still strip of them of the Pennants for both years too. They were compromised as well, and IMHO, I’m more pissed about them.
The thing is you’re not really able to take away the memories of winning, so stripping the titles just seems pointless to me. I don’t like when the NCAA does that, I don’t like them stripping wins from coaches either.
I wouldn’t object to a postseason ban though, but with the other penalties would you really NEED one?
the no home games is fucking brutal but i like it
That’s how you really drive the point in there. Wanna try cheat at home? Poof! No home
So you won’t do the NCAA style title vacation but you will give them an NCAA style death penalty. OK.
Better to just pull the franchise. As in, kick the Astros out of the major leagues. They can go join the Texas League, if they can get a MLB club to take the PR hit. Maybe they’ll beg the Dodgers to be their AA affiliate.
My penalty still wouldn’t technically bar them from the playoffs, it would just make it really unlikely they get back there.
Baseball is far more dependent on ticket revenue than football. Losing home games for two years would bankrupt the team.
Instead of dicking around with that stuff, force the owner to sell the team or disband and reform it.
And still none of that stuff punishes the players who actually did the cheating.
>Baseball is far more dependent on ticket revenue than football. Losing home games for two years would bankrupt the team.
That’s the point.
>Instead of dicking around with that stuff, force the owner to sell the team or disband and reform it.
…I’d be for this if they were forced to sell the team for $1.00.
I’d rather the organization suffers than the fans. I always had the impression that in all sports Houston fans were considered the more likeable Texas fans (could be I don’t know what I’m talking about there I’ll admit).
I would however be in favor of forcing Jim Crane to sell out for a song, and better still as a true punishment forcing him to sell cheap to the Wilpons just to get them to finally sell the Mets (that’s admittedly a selfish wish).
Also removing Astros’ home field advantage benefits other teams unevenly among each other (the other four AL West teams get a massive advantage over the AL Central and East teams, who in turn get a big advantage over whichever NL division Houston would have played in those two years, and the other two NL divisions get no benefit at all). This all matters for playoff seeding (especially if they go to that dumb four wild card format)
The problem is that none of that really punishes the guys most responsible: the players. The players got their WS ring. Unless you strip it, no amt of draft picks or other things that affect the franchise will hurt the players. They got what they wanted, they can just say **** you, got mine.
I know it’s weak but at least you can always say “by being a fucking cheater”
As hilarious as it sounds to take away all home games for a team I would never support that because in that scenario the home Fans suffer the most, and they didn’t do anything.
The thing is that would make them have to work to get their fans back. The Astros kinda deserve to have games less attended than Chargers games (fuck you Spanos!) and they’d have to do a lot of groveling to the fans to come back after the two years.
I live in Louisville and we had a championship revoked – and not a single person here cares. They still wear Championship gear. And draft picks don’t hurt like they would in the NFL or NBA. This was done by the players with the help of Management, everyone is at fault. I think the only reasonable solution is to dissolve the team and reform it with a new identity and ownership group, and the players have to fend for themselves. All contracts null. See how the other owners/players actually feel.
Regular season baseball doesn’t belong in Florida. Spring Training only belongs in Florida.
Enjoy a 2030s dynasty Montreal
How long have you been a football, Dave?
More like asstros
I can’t tell you how much I love that the Astros pissed the bed over the Cardinals’ cheating off of them (in this case, “hacking” was one guy not changing his password), and then turning around and winning a title off of something significantly more involved and grand in scale.
Fuck Houston. Deshaun Watson is going to get wasted even more than Indy wasted Luck.
Living in Houston and not being an Astros fans I can at least respect that the general air of the fans turned into “shit, we cheated our way to a championship” pretty quickly. More than Boston can say.
I feel bad for the fans. They had nothing for so long, then the championship came and cheered them up only to find out it was tainted.
Time to come to the dark side and watch the XFL then. The Houston Roughnecks may be their most exciting team and a serious contender for the title
Yeah, the only people to be involved in the Astros and actually be completely ignorant of the cheating is the fans. Now they have to choose between supporting a team that was caught cheating or abandoning the team they love. Rock meet Hard Place
Personally, my honor is more than any fandom. If the Giants or the Yankees were caught cheating I’d let them go in a heartbeat. I did when A-Rod was playing for the Yanks because I felt he was a cheater.
Give up 2009 then
Big time.
I gotta admit, as an only-occasional baseball fan, I didn’t get up in arms about the sign stealing at first. My original thoughts were along the lines of “everybody is trying to steal signals… the other teams should get better at disguising them”.
Then a couple of football analogies popped to mind to drive home how shitty using electronics to do this actually is:
(1) Suppose ‘Team A’ were hacking into the headsets of their opponents to listen to their play calls prior to the snap. That’d rightfully would piss everyone off. Especially if the opponents have been complaining for years about the problems with the headsets whenever they play in Team A’s stadium.
(2) Or how about if ‘Team B’ snuck film crews into stadiums under the guise of filming a documentary about an advance scout. (Don’t laugh! In this analogy there is somehow an audience just begging to watch film of a guy in a press box looking through binoculars. Hear me out.) Team B films enough of their opponents’ calls and signals over the years that it allows them to, say, jump a goal-line pass to win a championship or something.
So yeah, screw ’em. Vacate the title and make the owner sell the team. All players involved ineligible for the Hall of Fame.
Goodell must appreciate Manfred right now, there’s a commissioner even worse than him.
Both rest easy so long as Bettman wastes oxygen.