Before I start...This is a great discussion, and I thank you for the time and effort you're putting into it. I didn't think when I first replied to your post that it would go this far, but here we are.
So again, why do you think he deserves a longer ban than other who do hit batters and are ejected?
Because it's dangerous. Your argument, like others who agree with you that the penalty was too harsh, is based on precedent. "It's always been done this way." I think that's a poor basis for making a decision. What the pitcher is doing would be called, off the field, deadly assault. I think it deserves a stiff penalty.
Just because baseball has always done something in a certain way doesn't mean they have to continue doing it that way. Baseball used to ban blacks. Baseball used to accept chewing tobacco. Baseball used to turn a blind eye to domestic violence. Eventually, times changed, and baseball changed, too. I think times have changed, too, regarding throwing at hitters. It shouldn't be tolerated.
I understand that it's a fuzzy line, because pitchers have to be allowed to intimidate batters to some extent, to own the plate. But when you throw right at or behind the batter, the only excuse is that the pitch got away, which sometimes happens, but it's pretty clear that wasn't the case here.
I don't like analogies because they are almost always imperfect, so I just shouldn't have engaged it and for that I'm sorry.
I shouldn't have brought up the analogy, it wasn't necessary, and just got us side-tracked. There are plenty of interesting issues here without talking about OJ.
The use of video replays to decode signs after a game has finished/before a game has started is completely fine and done by every single team.
Yes, I'm aware of that.
What they cannot do is use video technology during the game to work out what systems are being used and then communicate it to the players.
Yes, I thought I made it clear that that was my main point. The statement I made that you interpreted as though it were an aside was meant to emphasize the importance of decoding signals
during the game, as opposed to just analyzing previous games. I further made the point that the players themselves could hardly be unaware of this, and that seems to have been the case:
a smaller number of players said that on at least some occasions, they suspected or had indications that Watkins may have revised the sign sequence information that he had provided to players prior to the game through his review of the game feed in the replay room. They largely based their belief on the fact that Watkins on occasion provided different sign sequence information during the game than he had offered prior to the game...
One player described that he observed Watkins write down sign sequence information during the game while he appeared to be watching the game feed in the replay room, circling the correct sign in the sequence after the pitch was thrown
https://www.usatoday.com/story/spor...es-boston-red-sox-2018-violations/3005921001/
This is exactly what I would expect. Players were given a set of signals before the game, which were then changed during the game. Why would they be changed unless Watkins was decoding them during the game itself? They had to know what was going on. I'm not going to argue they were as complicit as the Astros players were, and maybe the system wasn't used enough for most players to be aware of it, but some clearly must have been.
It still requires the runner to see the sign and communicate it with the batter.
Yes, I pointed that out. Maybe that makes it a little harder, and it can't be done all the time, but again, the illegal part is the decoding of the signals, and for good reason. Once you have that information, you can tell batters what pitch is coming, at least, in the RS case, when a runner is on second. That information is every bit as useful to the batter as it would be if a trash can were banged.
Not all cheating is the same, even when related, and not all cheating is punished in the same way.
Granted, but the behavior that was illegal--decoding during the game--was the same. While you accurately reflect Manfred's view, I disagree with it. I'm not going to insist that the RS should have been punished as much as the Astros--again, we've sort of gotten off the central point here, and maybe that's my fault. That was not my original point. My point was only that Kelly was being hypocritical. To conclude that doesn't mean what the RS did was every bit as bad as what the Astros did. It just means that it was illegal, and for the same basic reason. The only thing different is that the RS didn't cheat as much.
To use a doping analogy you would probably prefer, though i wouldn't, it's like a rider who used amphetamines in his time criticizing one who took EPO. Yes, the latter is worse, but the rider still appears hypocritical. I don't think that's an accurate analogy here, but if you want to go that way, it still doesn't make Kelly look very good. I suppose by using this, I'm changing the goal posts, but again, I'm just pointing out that even using this more modest comparison of the two teams, Kelly is still somewhat dirty here.
The Astros cheated in both the regular and the post season. They cheated at both away and home games. The red sox cheated in home games in the regular season.
Again, I don't buy that the difference matters, or matters that much. It's like saying one rider transfused for MSR, while another transfused for multiple monuments or classics. Or one rider did it on one stage of the TDF, while another did it on multiple stages. Maybe the second rider also took EPO to counteract the suppression of retics, or transfused saline to lower the HT. Or one rider used a centrifuge to separate red cells and freeze them for months, while another had to use the low tech system of withdrawing/transfusing every few weeks. What difference does it make? To WADA, none at all. Your reasoning--and again, I concede this is Manfred's view-- is that the second rider got more of an advantage, and more often, and should be punished more severely. This is not the way doping penalties work. If you want to argue that the two forms of cheating are significantly different, fine, but again, I see enough similarity that Kelly is is a bad position acting self-righteously.
Femke Van den Driessche says hello.
I don't believe that her case is relevant. It's very different from a doping case. She didn't dope more often or more effectively. She did something else entirely. You can't say that what. the Astros did was entirely different from what the Red Sox did. If the Astros had a bike motor, maybe the RS had a smaller motor running on a much smaller battery.
There's plenty of precedent in a myriad of sports for different punishments for related offences (including baseball).
Agreed. But generally, the differences are clear. E.g., a supplement that might have been taken inadvertently, instead of intentionally. A threshold drug that has a legitimate use, like salbutamol (though even in these cases, riders frequently get penalized just as much as those guilty of a more obvious and flagrant violation). What the RS did was just as intentional as what the Astros did.
That's wrong because the Red Sox didn't use their system in the post-season
They might not have gotten to the postseason without that system. Yes, they won the division by a huge margin, but again, it's supposed to be the intention that matters.
Suppose Contador's CB positive had not come out till years later. Using the RS didn't cheat in the WS logic, you could say that he won the 2011 Giro fairly, because he was clean (we will stipulate) then. The point is if, as was actually the case, he had been caught in 2010, he either wouldn't have been allowed to ride the 2011 Giro, or as actually happened, he was stripped of his results. The "but I didn't cheat then" excuse wouldn't be allowed.
It doesn't work that way in baseball. But again, to judge Kelly, we can surely point out that he was helped in getting to the WS by cheating.
There are different levels of cheating within all sports, it's not all the same and casting it as such is pretty disingenuous.
I don't think I'm claiming it's all the same. There are lots of other ways to cheat besides sign stealing--doctoring the ball, e.g., corking the bat, interference of various kinds, as well as doping. I'm not saying the penalties for all of these should be the same.