Houston Astros: LeBron James weighs in on the sign-stealing scandal

The Houston Astros are getting pummeled in the world of public opinion and NBA star LeBron James weighs in on the sign-stealing scandal. What’s going on?

The Houston Astros have less than three days to go before their first Spring Training game, scheduled for this Saturday, Feb. 22.  As with tradition, it will be against the Washington Nationals, whom they share their facilities with at West Palm Beach, Fla.

Normally we’d be talking about the position battles, the outlook for the season, the weaknesses of the roster that need to be addressed but the Houston Astros are in a state of crisis right at the moment.

The bombshell of a story that rocked the world of baseball late last year and with the MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred’s report being released last month, this team is in the middle of explaining themselves for their role in a carefully orchestrated sign-stealing scandal.

When the news of such a thing had broken and the report validated those claims made by players such as Trevor Bauer, it disappointed me to no end.  Cheating is not something I condone and nowhere near the tenets of how I conduct myself in any manner.

So for a team that represents so much in terms setting the bar of how to be a champion, their reputation has been taking down not only peg but has gone into a free fall outside of the boundaries of Houston city limits.

Now, sign-stealing has been around more than a century since the inception of the game but it’s the way the Houston Astros put this scheme together is what has many talking heads outraged in regard to how they carried it out.

This has even prompted NBA star LeBron James to weigh in on the situation as here’s what he had to say:

He also added this:

It’s understandable that LeBron has these concerns.  I’m quite frankly shocked that the players weren’t penalized for their role in the scandal back in 2017-18.  But Manfred’s premise is apparent that he’d be facing a long hard battle with the MLB Player’s Association and that’s not one he’s positive that he could win.

The team not only fired Jeff Luhnow and AJ Hinch but they paid the maximum allowable fine of $5 million, and have lost their early-round draft picks for this season and the next.

Some would say that the Houston Astros have been penalized enough but they’d probably prefer to have

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Jose Altuve, Alex Bregman, Carlos Correa — and many others — head on a platter and that starts with a suspension.

Will the Commish decide to backtrack on his decision?  I’m not sure about that but he’s getting a ton of criticism coming his way for his role in the scandal.  The pressure is mounting and I honestly could see him walk his stance back, considering we’ve heard from just about every star in the MLB we could think of.

We’ve heard from Mike Trout, Aaron Judge, Cody Bellinger as well as Mike Clevinger and the list continues to increase as we get closer to season’s start.

Let’s keep an eye on this because this is bad stuff for the Houston Astros, especially if emotions start to get into these games and pitchers start plunking these players in games.

But if anybody can keep things in order, it’s Dusty Baker, who has dealt with adversity before when he was in a scandal himself for drug use during his playing career.

So LeBron brings up a great point — should the players be punished?  Feel free to sound off in the comments section below.