Rob Manfred Says He Regrets Giving Astros Players Immunity in Sign-Stealing Scandal | News, Scores, Highlights, Stats, and Rumors

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If Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred could do things over, he might look to punish some of the individual players from the Houston Astros’ sign-stealing scandal.

During a wide-ranging discussion with Sean Gregory of Time, Manfred admitted he regrets granting players immunity as the league investigated the situation.

“I’m not sure that I would have approached it with giving players immunity,” he said. “Once we gave players immunity, it puts you in a box as to what exactly you were going to do in terms of punishment. I might have gone about the investigative process without that grant of immunity and see where it takes us. Starting with, I’m not going to punish anybody, maybe not my best decision ever.”

There is something to be said about the decision to grant players immunity perhaps leading to some being more forthright with their answers when they were asked about the scandal, but players such as José Altuve, Carlos Correa and others escaped punishment as the team kept its 2017 World Series title.

MLB ended up fining the Astros $5 million, stripping them of their first- and second-round draft picks in 2020 and 2021, and suspending then-general manager Jeff Luhnow and then-manager AJ Hinch for one year.

Houston eventually fired both Luhnow and Hinch after the punishments were issued.

While the Astros became the faces of the sign-stealing scandal, they weren’t the only team punished.

MLB fined the New York Yankees $100,000 after an investigation found “the team’s players watched the monitors in 2015 and 2016 to discern pitch-sequence information that was then relayed to baserunners in the hope that they could communicate this to the batter,” per Buster Olney of ESPN.

The league also punished the Boston Red Sox for stealing signs in 2018 by suspending a video replay monitor and stripping the team of a 2020 second-round draft pick.

Yet it is Houston that is most connected to the concept of sign stealing even if its players escaped formal punishments.

Fans at opposing ballparks consistently booed the likes of Altuve and others after the investigation was completed, but Manfred clearly feels that some players might have deserved stricter rulings that he decided not to issue at the time.