After months worth of investigating, the Boston Red Sox punishments for the sign-stealing allegations have been handed down by Major League Baseball.
BREAKING: #RedSox penalties:
*Loss of 2020 2nd-round pick.
*Ban of replay operator J.T. Watkins through 2020 playoffs and from doing same job in ‘21.
*Ban of Alex Cora through ‘20 playoffs, but only for conduct with #Astros.
Story with @EvanDrellich: https://t.co/6Ysn9hsRFa
— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) April 22, 2020
From the article:
“But with the Red Sox, the league essentially determined that Watkins acted as a rogue employee. Manfred absolved Cora and his coaches from responsibility and found the team’s front office effectively communicated baseball’s sign-stealing rules to non-player staff.”
And this:
“I do not find that then-Manager Alex Cora, the Red Sox coaching staff, the Red Sox front office, or most of the players on the 2018 Red Sox knew or should have known that Watkins was utilizing in-game video to update the information that he had learned from his pregame analysis,” Manfred wrote in Wednesday’s report. “Communication of these violations was episodic and isolated to Watkins and a limited number of Red Sox players only.”
We’ll have more on ‘The Huddle’ from 3-6 PM.
