Why no mention of batting titles for altuve and Betts? If they knew not to swing at a breaking ball in dirt, their power numbers increased, strikeouts declined, walks increased, hard hit balls increased...even if they didn't do it every game, I wonder if other hitters would have won them, made bonuses, etc.

Someone said it: "The Houston Asterisks."

Yankees Series: Altuve hit .533 at home (8-for-15)and was hitless on the road (0-for-10), Yankees lost all 4 games on road and won all 3 at home. They got hosed. Altuve needs to come clean.

The MLB just sold a WS for 5 Mil.

And Pete Rose was banned for life?

Bob is the man!! He's been great for baseball, he has a great mind and he was exactly on point in this interview. Baseball is not very popular and if we feel everyone's cheating, who wants to watch that!?!?

What a fantastic summary and analysis! Thank you, Bob Costas and Rich Eisen. As Costas said, Commissioner Rob Manfred sent a signal that couldn't have been any clearer. Great decision.

Lance Armstrong was stripped of 7 TDF Titles......and 2nd place finisher was named winner.

Those of you arguing 5M isn't a good enough fine, keep in mind it is the maximum fine allowable by the agreements between owners and MLB.

Pitcher has an ear piece, catcher has an ear piece, Someone calls the pitches from the dugout. Problem solved

To me this cheating scandal is unlike anything baseball has seen since the 1919 Black Sox Scandal.

Costas is right, the Astros are a taint. An unwashed one

I'm sorry, the players were involved and they purely benefitted from everything something should be done. As for the team it is a slap on the wrist. Let's be real a team would spend $50 million on a title.

As a Red Sox fan I am devastated, I really can't believe it... and can believe it.

Obviously the Astros didn’t believe they could beat the Dodgers’ pitching staff fair and square. Altuve hit .473 at home and .143 on the road.

Can we please find a way to have Costas replace Joe Buck on all MLB games?

Why isn't Costas the Commissioner of MLB? The man is way a head on this! Bob knows the game of Baseball!

Take away every player's World Series Ring.

Can’t wait for the season to start Let’s see how far those cheaters make it this year

Go ahead and cheat. 2 people might get actual penalties but players and everybody else, no problem! Just a slap on the wrist. I'm not paying for cheating playoff games again, especially if mlb is not going to protect baseball. It sucks bcz I love baseball. Go ahead and put up the banner, World Series Champions! The arms race of cheating in baseball has begun. If not for jomboy media, pretty much a random fan, it never would've been caught! If not4 him, the red Sox would be doing it (agn? Possibly) and the Astros would definitely be doing it again. After all it worked out perfectly. Beltran managing the mets...probably going to be doing the same thing. Y not? How did MLB and the Dodgers and Yankees not catch on?

The only solution to this mess is to reinstate Pete Rose.

I’m glad he cleared this up for me. The difference between stealing signs as gamesmanship and using technology

Strip titles , World Series,

They’re gonna hear the boos everywhere they go until they break the team up.

All we know for sure is the Mariners didn't steal signs or else they wouldn't suck every year

This penalty is a goddam joke!

Costas is an employee of MLB He is biased. He agrees with who was punished as the commissioner is an employee of MLB owners too

If MLB wants to recover their integrity, they would vacate the 2017 and 2018 World Series championship.

I got to meet Bob Costas one time and watched him speak at an award show. He’s a pretty cool dude.

mlb at least has the balls to take action after a thorough investigation. the nfl needs to learn from this.

Speaking of NASA, Costas sounds like he's talking on a cell phone aboard the International Space Station.

Everyone is getting this wrong. The World Series should have been vacated. As long as you allow gamesmanship, there will be cheating. To stop gamesmanship, you need to make the punishment so severe that no one will do it again. Pete Rose is the only time baseball got it's punishment right.

The one thing I disagree with Bob Costas on is that both the 2017 and 2018 World Series should be vacated. To me he minimized and rationalized to an extent the weight and significance of the cheating, several times over. Just because something hasn't been done in the past, vacating titles, does not mean it shouldn't be re-examined and looked at and changed. Having an imaginary asterisk is not good enough. If the title is meaningless and has no value, why have it in the first place?

The reasoning for not suspending players, although I can understand why they wouldn’t suspend them it is just plain wrong. They cheated. Big big names, ones who have won silver sluggers and even an MVP. They need to be held accountable and at this moment right now they are not.

ALTUVE HR against CHAPMAN was unbelievable. Now I know why I was so shocked.

(singing) Signs, signs Astros stealing signs Banging on the trash can, reading my mind Do this, don't do that, can't you steal the sign ...

Manfred drew a perfect line. He a salesman. He just announced the sale! 5 mill, 2 draft picks and sacrifice your GM+manager will buy you a world championship!!! That's the price!!! Analytics started digging the grave for managers' job. Manfred just buried them. Players and owners will conspire, pay the price and try to cheat their way to the championship!!! What an idiot!!!

Rich and Bob are awesome sports guys! Smart guys

Love Bob C.

⚾️😎⌨️⚾️🏆😎🛑📸🔚the Astro reaction➡️😨😰😱👹💀💀💀💀

Simple man Costas talking baseball I stop everything to listen

ban AJ for life from MLB..where was this man's integrity!

I'm very surprised at Costa's "They were good enough without this" statement. Going down to game 7 against the Yankees and KNOWING the pitches that were coming? That's good enough? This wasn't the Globetrotters vs The Generals.

As a Yankee fan I couldn’t wrap my mind around the difference between home and away games during the series with Houston. I was dumbfounded. Now that this has come out, it really pisses me off. I get that cheating has always been a part of baseball. If a pitcher is tipping pitches, hey take advantage. What the Astros did was way over the line.

How many times is Altuve gonna get beaned this season?

The Astros should be beaned at every at bat for the entire 2020 season. (just a thought)

There is a center field camera being used for the TV broadcast at all games. This is in the locker room so that batters can check there previous at bats. These are the only two teams that have used this to read signs and get this is formation to the batter. Sure.....

If the Astros win a championship in the next 3 seasons all this will be erased from everyone’s memory because the media will pump into the minds of the fans this teams greatness. The commissioner should stipulate the next team to cheat in this fashion is banned from the sport for life. That would mean if you see teammates cheating you let the league know or you lose your job. I will never understand the teams that cheat in ways that actually leads to wins and handicaps the balance of the playing field are the ones who get the weakest punishment. If their pitching coach was paying pitchers to throw at players you would never hear the end of it, but this type of cheating they lose a couple picks a tip money.

This is the same thing the New England Patriots are doing recording coach’s on the side line of the opposite teams sideline. It’s the same thing.

Could MLB set up a buzzer/bandaid communication for pitchers and catchers to totally cut out signs?

If this was so bad MLB is suspending managers and GM's for a year then its ABSOLUTE BS no players are suspended or fined.

well u can always put a BLACK spot over the spot on the video where the hand signals would be shown by the catcher.. just a thought.. Thank u for the upload.. be winner not the dinner.. /

I don’t understand how he can say that they didn’t need this. This was the only way they beat the Yankees. (I’m a dodgers fan).

As a baseball fan, I can honestly say I am no longer willing to pay for the price of a MLB admission. I’m terribly disappointed with MLB, and the slap-on -the- wrist the Houston Astros received. My question is this, how can a PROFESSIONAL BASEBALL PLAYER be happy with a win, when they cheated? I’ve lost all respect for the Louston Hackstros!!!

MLB could probably easily rid the game of cheating in this manner by just hiring neutral people to attend all the games and scope out any and all foul play. But MLB isn't about solutions.

What I dont understand is why does the replay booth need to even be on grounds? They have this new technology called a PHONE. You can talk to anyone anywhere in the world that also has a PHONE.

You can tell Bob truly loves baseball

you absolutely can vacate the titles from those years. just because it has never been done before does not mean you cannot set a precedent. you want to totally get rid of team wide cheating in baseball? there is no bigger penalty than that.

You could certainly still have replay/review, just don't give the team a review room. Let the manager decide whether to ask for a review or not, without looking at a review. That would definitely speed up the game, as well as stopping this form of cheating. Maybe also there should be a rule that players don't get off scott-frfee when their whole team is caught cheating!

So it’s time the fans and dodgers just start beaning Astro batters

I'll be glad to rid hitters of looking at previous abs between plate appearances

Just allow more tech. Allow pitchers and catchers and coaches to communicate electronically. Problem solved. Baseball desperately needs to be modernized.

Bob Costas is working for MLB. What did it actually cost the Astros. They still get to keep a World Series at the cost of a GM and manager. Any team would take that any day of the week.

That system bob is talking about is in place already, Why do these guys act talk like they don’t know it’s already in place, haven’t they read the articles where it clearly says that prior to the 2019 season they had MLB video monitors in each clubhouse and there was an 8 second video delay on the feeds!

Did he say “taint”??

Just give a closed circuit device to the pitcher and catcher where the catcher presses a button to indicate the pitch, and the pitcher feels it on their skin, or hears it in their ear.

Just an idea that you'd think teams would have thought of. Give the pitcher and catchers devices and transmit signs like morse code. Even could have throw fake signs down to really screw with them.

Damn it!!!!!!!! I liked those Astros' and I'm a diehard Giants fan

You could also go the other way and try out ear pieces to see if they hinder performance. End the hand signals. The AI software that cam decode them is WAY too poweful now and really hard to police. Mark Rober did a demonstration of that.

Why didn't AJ say "Stop this"? Because it was working! How much of hitting is confidence and how much more confidence can you instill than knowing what pitches are coming. IMO, the Astros and Red Sox titles should be stripped.

You knew BONDS was coming.

As long as owners are the bosses of the commissioner, I don't see any titles being vacated.

Punishment should be no home games for one year they should play on the road for a year.

and now Cora's gone too

the 2017 World Series Champions...YOUR Los Angeles Dodgers!!!!!

Every player that enters a game must take a lie detector test after each inning....

They didn't void the 1919 series because the Reds didn't cheat. The White Sox threw the games. It would be unfair to them to lose their title because a better team cheated to make them win. It wasn't their fault. This is different.

Come on Rich. Game 7 may have happened in LA, but that series doesn't even make it to a game 7 if the Astros couldn't miraculously continue to come back in game 5.

Just wait til self aiming contact lenses

Who are the other 8 teams that the Astros said were cheating? What about the coaches on the Astros staff that had to know there was sign-stealing going on? Astros need to clean house.

Many Pats fans still deny they ever cheated.

The commission did absolutely nothing for this heinous incident. Suspending coaches doesnt matter one bit. Everyone knows professional sports is player driven. Why not ban the entire Astros roster from 2017 for one year?

MLB could come up with a solution, using either a haptic wristband or an earpiece for the pitcher.

Astros will be losers in the eyes of just about everyone unless and until there are lifetime banishments and the 2017 World Series title is vacated. We don’t need a commissioner like Rob Manfred. He has stained the game just like Altuve and Hinch and others.

Punishment is not a deterrent. Shaddapp Costas. No one is losing their rings. No one is losing any $. 5 million is nothing to the Astros. Sure Hinch, Cora, Beltran and the Stros GM lost their jobs. But all 4 will be back in baseball at some point. The 2017 and 2018 world series should be vacated. Cora should get a lifetime ban. Astro and Red Sox players should be suspended for 1 season minimum. That would be an actual deterrent Bob Costas.

The fact that the MLB Network is pushing this "this punishment is soooo tough," is a bunch of BS. This punishment doesn't hurt anyone except Luhnow, Hinch, and Cora who can still recover from this. Crane is being lauded as a great guy for firing these POS when he still banked millions off that WS win. Should have been lifetime bans for Crane, Luhnow, Hinch, Cora, and Beltran. I'll never watch MLB Network again after watching them defend some of these guys. They are pushing this "it was all the players" narrative which, after someone else pointed this out, is awfully convenient when a CBA negotiation is coming up. This whole Hinch was against it is a huge lie btw lmao. Smug bastard lied in press conferences when accused and is still lying.

Shut your front door BOB. Question BOB ? when the MLB decided They wanted video in the dugouts so that MLB can get close to the player and Every Manger said NO.. MLB said if you don't do this they would fine the team..... Question is where is the culpability with this ? Bang !

Winners never cheat, and cheaters never win!

What about the players?

They obviously needed to do it if they only won their home games against the Yankees and the Rays in the playoffs.

bob costas loves mentioning bonds

stop the tech once first pitch is thrown ? I guess that throws out computers ever calling balls and strikes.

2017 WS GM 5

Alex Cora = Josh McDaniels

The Commissioner knew about this exact scandal long before Mike Fiers spilled the beans. The Commissioner knew that this would hurt the brand of MLB and kept it hush hush. It wasn't until Fiers made it public and everyone watched the 2017 games on KZfaq to verify it that the Commissioner decided to do anything serious about it.

Probably explains why pitchers can't go 5 innings anymore

I yield the floor to Bob Costas.

Vacate the 2017-2018 WS titles. Move on. Baseball will be fine.

Yet Pete Rose is still banned

so the logic of not suspending players is its too hard im kinda shocked they let people that took peds are getting in trouble blame the coachs insted of the players same deal