Baltimore Orioles: Houston’s embarrassing themselves

Along with the rest of the fans around the league, I have to imagine that Baltimore Orioles’ fans were appalled earlier this week when the Houston Astros offered their apologies for the cheating scandal. Various players spoke from the team’s spring training facility in West Palm Beach. As did ownership and manager Dusty Baker.

Baker came off as genuine. And why not? He’s the one guy who legitimately had nothing to do with this. All he can do is talk about the future, and how the organization’s going to move on.

But players and ownership sounded like they were reading from prepared texts. Odds are they were. I’ve said since the beginning that I thought the penalties were appropriate. However the situation’s only gotten worse since the news broke. More people were involved and knew about it. There was obviously an attempt to hoodwink every other team in the league. And they did, because they won the World Series.

Am I saying that the lack of remorse should make MLB dish out more discipline? No, I’m not a fan of doing that either. I firmly believe that you shouldn’t “re-discipline” people if it was unpopular the first time. But Houston’s really testing the limits of that point.

Another sentiment that’s circulating is that teams are going to target the Astros this year. And it wouldn’t shock me to see their players plunked more than often. And ultimately a guy could face more discipline for that than the Houston players did for the cheating to begin with. Where’s the justice there?