AJ Hinch, Jeff Luhnow suspensions fulfilled in 2020 even if MLB season canceled

Former Houston Astros manager AJ Hinch and ex-Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow will fulfill their one-season suspensions for the team’s sign-stealing scandal even if no baseball is played in 2020, sources told ESPN’s Buster Olney on Thursday.

Hinch and Luhnow were given the one-year bans and subsequently fired in January following an investigation by Major League Baseball that confirmed the Astros had cheated by using a camera-based sign-stealing system during the regular season and playoffs of their World Series-winning 2017 season and during part of the 2018 regular season.

According to the wording from commissioner Rob Manfred’s decision, both punishments end “following the completion of the 2020 World Series.”

Sources told Olney that, because the suspensions are tied to the end of the 2020 postseason rather than a specific number of games, MLB will view Luhnow and Hinch as having served their discipline this year.

This isn’t going to backfire in the slightest at all…..

A.J. Hinch ‘not aware’ of any Astros buzzers - HoustonChronicle.com

I look forward to the death of this topic.

Hinch: ‘Fair question’ if Astros’ title tainted by scandal

Former Astros manager AJ Hinch isn’t dismissing the idea that Houston’s 2017 World Series championship has been tainted by the sign-stealing scandal that cost him his job.

“It’s a fair question,” Hinch said in an interview with MLB Network. “And I think everyone’s going to have to draw their own conclusion.”

Hinch and general manager Jeff Luhnow were suspended for one season by Commissioner Rob Manfred, who found Houston illicitly used electronics to steal signs during their title run. Team owner Jim Crane then fired both Hinch and Luhnow.

In an excerpt from an interview set to air Friday night, Hinch defended his players’ talents but said the clubhouse put itself in a position where its achievements may be blemished.

Is it just me, or does it seem to anyone else that the more and more A.J. Hinch talks the less-qualified he seems to hold any sort of a leadership position?

Astros stars letting others take blame for player-driven sign-stealing scheme

When A.J. Hinch took a baseball bat to at least one of those television monitors, as one source said he did, maybe this was the day he had in mind.

This was the day he stood alone.

He’d been in the end overrun by his players and members of his own coaching staff and who knows who else, along with his own ambitiousness. That is his to bear.

The Houston Astros went dark one day. Hinch was the man on the top step. He stuck to the shadows like the rest of them, celebrated its bounty like the rest of them, surrendered when the lights came up and was punished for it.

So, what do we make of this line of analysis?

Astros’ Jeff Luhnow, AJ Hinch suspended for 2020 | MLB.com

Wow1

Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow and manager AJ Hinch have each been suspended without pay for the 2020 season by Major League Baseball, which on Monday released the findings from its investigation into Houston’s sign-stealing allegations.

Houston also forfeits its first- and second-round picks in the 2020 and 2021 MLB Drafts as part of the penalties. In addition, the Astros were fined $5 million, which is the highest allowable fine under the Major League Constitution.

In addition, former Astros assistant GM Brandon Taubman, who was dismissed by the club in October after he made offensive and insensitive comments directed at a group of female reporters at the conclusion of the American League Championship Series, has been suspended for one year. Taubman, who is currently not employed by a Major League club, will not be able to work in baseball during that time.

The suspensions of Luhnow, Hinch and Taubman are to begin immediately, ending on the day following the completion of the 2020 World Series.