Dusty Baker Suggesting MLB Needs to Stop Premeditated Targeting of Astros Hitters is Outlandish

Dusty Baker has been thrown into the fire as the new manager of the Houston Astros. By all accounts, he's a nice guy, but has been forced to deal with the fallout of an ugly and consequential sign-stealing scandal he had nothing to do with.

Baker has now come out and said he wants Major League Baseball to step in to protect his players from any potential retaliation from opposing teams in 2020. To get a sense of how Baker's proposition was received, ESPN's Jeff Passan even mentioning it in a story resulted in an unfortunate Twitter ratio.

Baker's intentions are good here, but is totally failing to realize the extent of Houston's past wrongdoing if he thinks opponents are simply going to move on like nothing happened. And further, what does he really thinkg the MLB is going to be able to do to prevent such ill acts in 2020?

Players and fans all around the league are still livid with the Astros for such shameless cheating, as well as with the MLB for not handing out suspensions to individual players involved in the scheme. A dearth of proper apologies has only made things worse for players who now have to face the consequences for a mess they started all by themselves.

Cheating is the ultimate sin in sports, and the Astros can't just expect to be forgiven straight away. Nothing has been done to warrant absolution yet, and Baker should have realized this when he took the managerial gig.

MLB is already protecting the Astros by not handing out any suspensions to their players. To ask them to do anything more at this point with no actual retaliation having taken place is a serious reach.