Former Astros GM Jeff Luhnow granted an interview on the Astros cheating scandal. He went through the text that MLB used to expose the sign stealing, and notes those intimately involved did not face punishment.
“The people who were involved that didn’t leave naturally to go to other teams are all still employed by the Astros,” Luhnow told KPRC 2’s Vanessa Richardson in a 37-minute interview scheduled to air at 6:30 p.m. Monday. “In fact, one of the people who was intimately involved, I had demoted from a position in the clubhouse to a position somewhere else, and after I was fired he was promoted back into the clubhouse. So none of those people faced any repercussions. They weren’t discussed in the report, but the evidence is all there that they were involved.”
Chron.com
Luhnow believes the texts clear him, but admits it’s tough to prove a negative.
He details part of the code breaking scheme:
Luhnow said the text messages show people involved in the Astros’ sign-stealing first discussed it near the end of the 2016 season, in which they failed to make the playoffs, and started executing the plan in “about May of 2017.” He detailed the system that multiple reports show the team called “Codebreaker” where an algorithm was used to decode opponents’ signals with the help of video. Whoever was on “Codebreaker duty” would crack the signs, then text them to a coach in the dugout, who would relay those signs to the the runner on second base. The excerpt of the interview released by KPRC 2 is Luhnow talking about the video-decoding scheme and not the trash can-banging scheme, which he says were separate.
“It went on for all of 2017, and it went on for a portion of 2018,” Luhnow said. “I argued for and voted for enforcement by MLB so there was a security agent in the dugout and in the clubhouse in 2018, but they weren’t there full time, so it was a little bit more hit and miss in terms of when you would see evidence of it in ’18, but it did happen in ’18. It probably stopped around mid-summer ’18, and then there’s absolutely no evidence of it going on after that.”
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