{"id":28075,"date":"2020-01-13T17:29:50","date_gmt":"2020-01-13T22:29:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonbaseball.com\/?p=28075"},"modified":"2020-01-13T20:28:08","modified_gmt":"2020-01-14T01:28:08","slug":"alex-cora-expected-to-receive-harsh-punishment-for-role-in-sign-stealing-scandal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2020\/01\/13\/alex-cora-expected-to-receive-harsh-punishment-for-role-in-sign-stealing-scandal\/","title":{"rendered":"Alex Cora Expected to Receive &#8216;Harsh&#8217; Punishment for Role in Sign-Stealing Scandal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>After Major League Baseball <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonbaseball.com\/2020\/01\/13\/mlb-hands-down-penalties-for-houston-astros\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">suspended<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonbaseball.com\/mlb-teams\/houston-astros\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"> Houston Astros<\/a> general manager <strong>Jeff Luhnow<\/strong> and manager <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/h\/hincha.01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">AJ Hinch<\/a><\/strong> for the 2020 season, Astros owner Jim Crane announced their dismissal from the team. But now that Luhnow and Hinch have received their punishment for the electronic sign-stealing scandal, the focus now turns to <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/c\/coraal01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Alex Cora<\/a><\/strong>. Cora, who currently manages the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonbaseball.com\/mlb-teams\/boston-red-sox\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Boston Red Sox<\/a>, was the Astros bench coach in the 2017 season. And <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/JeffPassan\/status\/1216796975464624128?s=20\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">according<\/a> to ESPN Insider Jeff Passan, the discipline for Cora&#8217;s involvement in the scandal is going to be &#8220;harsh.&#8221;<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">No players disciplined by Major League Baseball in the Astros&#8217; investigation.<\/p>\n<p>Discipline for Red Sox manager Alex Cora is coming. It is going to be harsh, per sources.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/JeffPassan\/status\/1216796975464624128?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">January 13, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<h2><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>Alex Cora Expected to Receive &#8216;Harsh&#8217; Punishment for Role in Sign-Stealing Scandal<\/h2>\n<p>According to the nine-page report <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mlb.com\/news\/astros-sign-stealing-penalty\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">released<\/a> by MLB earlier today, Cora was the mastermind involved in setting up the sign-stealing operation.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Cora was involved in developing both the banging scheme and utilizing the replay review room to decode and transmit signs,&#8221; MLB commissioner<strong> Rob Manfred<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mlb.com\/news\/astros-sign-stealing-penalty\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">wrote<\/a>. &#8220;Cora participated in both schemes, and through his active participation, implicitly condoned the players\u2019 conduct.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>To make matters worse, he took the tactics from Houston to Boston and won another World Series. As a result, the Red Sox are being investigated by MLB for illegal sign-stealing during their World Series-winning 2018 season.<\/p>\n<h3>Potential Punishment for Cora<\/h3>\n<p>It seems that Cora&#8217;s punishment will be far worse than Hinch&#8217;s. After all, Manfred noted that Hinch did not approve of or participate in the sign-stealing scheme. Manfred also wrote that he damaged the monitor on two occasions and &#8220;expressed much contrition&#8221; that he allowed the conduct to continue. Even still, Manfred hit him with a one-year suspension.<\/p>\n<p>Considering Hinch&#8217;s suspension, it appears that the minimum punishment for Cora would be a one-year suspension. It&#8217;s also entirely possible that he receives a lifetime ban. But, he may lose his job before he receives that punishment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After Major League Baseball suspended Houston Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow and manager AJ Hinch for the 2020 season, Astros owner Jim Crane announced their dismissal from the team. But now that Luhnow and Hinch have received their punishment for the electronic sign-stealing scandal, the focus now turns to Alex Cora. Cora, who currently manages [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2924,"featured_media":28077,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4,14,35],"tags":[1734,240,246,3289,2186,3288],"class_list":["post-28075","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-redsox","category-astros","category-news","tag-alex-cora","tag-boston-red-sox","tag-houston-astros","tag-jeff-luhnow","tag-mlb-history","tag-sign-stealing-scandal"],"modified_by":"Aaron Cornett","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28075","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2924"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28075"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28075\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}