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Previous Rob Manfred Comments Prove He Totally Chickened Out of Punishing Red Sox for Reasons Unknown

By Thomas Carannante

MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred let the Boston Red Sox off the hook.
MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred let the Boston Red Sox off the hook. / Billie Weiss/Boston Red Sox/Getty Images

Major League Baseball is busy trying to figure out what's going to happen during or after the COVID-19 pandemic, but that doesn't excuse commissioner Rob Manfred from letting the Boston Red Sox off scot-free in wake of their sign-stealing practices from their 2018 World Series campaign.

Boston's punishment was handed down on Wednesday and the news couldn't have been more underwhelming and shocking. Nobody was disciplined except for a "rogue" replay video operator and the Red Sox lost their 2020 second-round pick. Can we even call that a punishment?

And now, after reading previous comments from Manfred following the 2017 Apple Watch issue the Red Sox were fined for, we now know his latest sanctions are a colossal cop-out.

Forget what the evidence yielded for a moment. The Red Sox were FOUND in SOME WAY to have compromised the game thanks to the actions of his "rogue employee" providing information to unnamed players. Regardless of how widespread or omnipresent it was, that doesn't matter. The Red Sox ASSURED the commissioner violations of that kind wouldn't happen again, and they did. That in itself is a whole separate reason to lay down the hammer.

But Manfred failed to do that. Now, he has two scandals under his watch that feel they were insultingly overlooked. Many feel the Houston Astros didn't get enough of a comeuppance with their blatant and callous cheating practices. The commish had the opportunity to settle the score with the Red Sox and he didn't. Now, as far as baseball fans are concerned, the 2017 and 2018 World Series winners compromised the integrity of the game in some way.

Once again, IT DOESN'T MATTER how much it impacted their performance. A one-time occurrence is all anybody needs as proof.

So go ahead, Astros and Sox fans. You can exist in your little bubbles of what you believe to be true. Consider yourselves lucky that the acting commissioner will go down as one of the most negligible in MLB history.