Dead And Buried

Shank takes note of Major League Baseball's punishment of the Red Sox in l'affaire sign-stealing from 2018:

As cheating scandals go, it’s nothing like the 2017 Houston Astros watching video in real time and banging on a trash can to tell their hitters what pitch was coming. It’s probably not even up there with letting a little air out of footballs, or videotaping NFL coaches’ sideline signals during games.

In other words, there's not much of a story here, unless you just want to pile on.

But despite what rose-colored Red Sox apologists might insist, it wasn’t nothing. And if you think a second-round draft pick is nothing, tell that to Fred Lynn, Jon Lester, and Dustin Pedroia, all Sox second-rounders.

After more than 100 days, 65 witness interviews, and a review of cellphones and in-house e-mails, Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred released his findings into cheating allegations against the 2018 world champion Red Sox in a perfectly timed (the NFL Draft begins Thursday night) news dump Wednesday afternoon.

Actually, it's the classic Friday afternoon news dump. Must be a short work week this week!

Concluding that an MLB video replay rule was broken and “potentially benefited" the 2018 Sox, Manfred took away Boston’s 2020 second-round draft pick and suspended Sox video replay system operator J.T. Watkins without pay for a year.

OK, the draft pick's gonna hurt and aside from former Red Sox manager Alex Cora serving a one-year ban for his part in a bigger sign-stealing scam the year earlier with the Astros, one other guy gets two in the hat, metaphorically speaking.

Bonus - Nathan Jessup reference!

Manfred stated that Watkins “did not provide a persuasive explanation” for why he sometimes altered his information to Sox hitters during games.

Not much, right? Reminded me of the scene from “A Few Good Men” when Colonel Nathan Jessup tells the young attorney, "These two Marines are on trial for their lives. Please tell me their lawyer hasn’t pinned their hopes to a phone bill.''