HBT Playoff Weekend Wrap-UP - HardballTalk

I know a lot of you are at-work-only readers and actually try to have lives and/or watch football on the weekend. Whatever, I can’t stop you from doing silly things.

If you are one of those people with bad priorities, however, we would like you to know that there was all kinds of fun playoff activity over the weekend, we were writing about it, and here is a little rundown of what you missed:

The Rangers and Braves are gone thanks to the wild card game, the A’s and Giants are down 0-2 to the Tigers and Reds, respectively, the Yankees hold a 1-0 lead on the Orioles and the Nats have the same on the Cards.
There was an awful infield fly rule call in Atlanta on Friday which, for some reason, Braves fans are starting to believe was the reason they lost that game as opposed to Braves players throwing the ball all over the infield and leaving runners in scoring position. Whatever. That call was bad, but it didn’t cost the Braves the game. The Braves cost the Braves the game.
That awful call caused Braves fans, for the first time in living memory, to display passion. So I guess something good came out of it all! Actually, no: that was just pathetic, Braves fans. Just uncalled for bull, and I was rather embarrassed to count myself in your number on Friday night. There is never an excuse to throw stuff on the field. I doubt baseball would do it in a playoff game, but that’s the kind of thing that could have caused a forfeit. Go back to watching Georgia football, you jerks, and let us few dozen real Braves fans continue to root for our team in a quiet, but far more dignified manner.
Despite last night’s ninth inning implosion against the Yankees, the O’s have had something to celebrate in the playoffs for the first time in 15 years.
In contrast, the Rangers skipper and star player caught some heat. And the star suggests that he’s played his last game for the Boys from Arlington.
And in contrast to that, Dusty Baker hinted that he will be back with his team next year.
The Atheltics are wearing a logo in memory of Pat Neshek’s son. Pat Neshek showed heart supreme by taking the ball and pitching. The A’s bats were silenced by Justin Verlander.
The Reds’ ace? Not as good. Johnny Cueto threw eight pitches and left with back spasms in Game 1 of the NLDS. No worries, though, the Reds had it all along.
In Game 2, the A’s pen shows that all the work its been getting of late may be taking its toll. Don Kelly, meanwhile, plays hero.
Oh, and the A’s are not a big fan of Al Albuquerque, who planted a wet one on a baseball before making a putout. Hey man, let no one judge someone else’s love.
The Nats — despite Gio Gonzalez acting like he was the singer in a Rick Ankiel cover band — beat the Cardinals.
Bronson Arroyo stymied the Giants in Game 2. People still say “stymied,” right?
CC Sabathia shows us all the value of an ace. The Orioles’ bullpen shows us that the post season is a whole new ballgame.
The San Francisco Giants’ offense is on the side of milk cartons, asking “have you seen me?”

And we keep on going today: the Nats and Cardinals play in St. Louis at 4:37 PM Eastern time. The Orioles and Yankees play in Baltimore at 8:07 PM.

Yesterday morning, in Ken Rosenthal’s article, Rob Manfred made it pretty clear what his aim is at the moment: throw blame on the union for the sign stealing scandal getting to the place it is. It was clear in both his words and Rosenthal’s words, actually:

In fairness, Manfred was not alone in failing to see the future clearly. As far back as 2015, the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA) expressed concerns to MLB about the rise of technology in the sport. The union, however, did not directly focus on the threat to the game’s integrity.

Then, in his press conference yesterday, he went farther, saying that the union refused to allow a situation in which punishment might happen, going so far as to claim that the union refused to make Astros players available for interviews without blanket immunity.

The union, both in its official statement last night and in Tony Clark’s words to Yahoo’s Hannah Keyser earlier this afternoon, is basically saying Manfred is full of it:

“We were approached with respect to their intentions to not discipline players. Our legal role and responsibility is inherent in accepting that consideration, which is what we did.”

Which is to say, it was Rob Manfred, and not the union, which started from the presumption that there was immunity for Astros players. Manfred is the one who settled on that at the outset, and he’s now trying to make it look like the union was the side that insisted on it so that people who are mad will get mad at Tony Clark for defending the indefensible as opposed to getting mad at him for creating a situation in which there was no legal way to punish Astros players.

And, as we have noted many times already, he did create that situation.

It’s undisputed that Manfred never attempted to make rules or set forth discipline for players stealing signs. Indeed, he did the opposite of that, saying over two years ago that GMs and managers, not players, would be held responsible. If he wanted to discipline players now, he’d have a big problem because he specifically excluded them from discipline then. I’d argue it was a mistake for him to do that — he should’ve said, three years ago, that everyone’s butt would be on the line if the cheating continued — but he didn’t.

Some people I’ve spoken to are taking the position that the union is still to blame here. I’m sort of at a loss as to how that could be.

It is the union’s job to protect its members from arbitrary punishment by management. It is not the union’s job to say “hey, I know our workers were off the hook here based on the specific thing you said, but maybe we should give them some retroactive punishment anyway?” If someone in charge of a union proposed that, they’d be in dereliction of their duties and could be fired and/or sued. Probably should be, actually. A lot of people might be mad about that, and I know fully well that unions aren’t popular. But then again, neither are criminal defense attorneys, and they don’t go up to prosecutors and say “well, there isn’t a law against what my client did — in fact, the governor issued an order a couple of years ago saying that what he did wasn’t prohibited — but we’re all kind of mad about it, so why don’t we work together to find a way to put him in jail, eh?” It’d be insane.

That doesn’t make anyone feel better now. The players are certainly mad, with new ones every day finding a camera to yell at over all of this. I get it. What has happened is upsetting. It’s a situation in which some members of the union are at odds with other members. It’s not an easy situation to navigate.

They should take that anger, however, and channel it into telling their leader, Tony Clark, that they don’t want this to happen again. That, to the extent Rob Manfred now, belatedly, proposes new rules and new punishments for sign-stealing or other things, he should get on board with that. They should also — after the yelling dies down — maybe think a little bit about how, if the facts were slightly different here, they would never argue that Rob Manfred should have the power to impose retroactive or other non-previously-negotiated punishment on players.

Either way, neither they nor any of the rest of us should take Manfred’s bait and try to claim that what’s happening now is the union’s fault. If, for no other reason, than because he doesn’t have much credibility when it comes to this whole scandal. Remember, he’s the guy who issued a report saying that, except for Alex Cora, it was only players involved despite knowing at the time he said it that the front office had hatched the scheme in the first place. Which, by the way, similarly sought to make the players out to be the only ones to blame while protecting people on management’s side. He’s not someone who can be trusted in any of this, frankly.

At the end of the day, this was a scheme perpetrated by both front office and uniformed personnel of the Houston Astros. To the extent nothing more can be done about that than already has been done, blame it on Rob Manfred’s failure of leadership. Not on the MLB Players Association.

Follow @craigcalcaterra