Thank Heavens Rob Manfred Grew Some Balls And Punished That Maniac J.T. Watkins For All His Crimes In Boston

Finally, after months and months of waiting, Major League Baseball released their findings and punishments against the 2018 Boston Red Sox. Carrabis wrote about it all earlier which you can read here. If you actually expected Manfred to do a single thing of significance here then boy do I have some bad news for you. If the commissioner of baseball didn't actually penalize the Astros for the biggest cheating scandal in baseball history, then he wasn't going to do diddly squat for what happened in Boston. As I've said multiple times, what Boston was doing was no different than what I assume every other team was doing in some fashion around the league.

There's a wild difference between this stuff (decoding signs) and what Houston was doing (blatantly stealing signs). It's basically the difference between punching someone in the arm and shooting them in the face with a gun. What I found hilariously entertaining was how long this investigation took. I mean it's April 22nd and Cora was fired in January. That's just preposterous, but making the wait was fun. 

Rob Manfred had to do something though. He couldn't spend all this time and say they didn't find a single thing. So what did he do? He took down the Mastermind of Evil in Major League Baseball. A man so ruthless and drunk with power he simply could not be stopped in 2018. That would be none other than....*checks notes.....*double checks notes....J.T. Watkins!

J.T. Watkins. The man we've begged Manfred to take down for years. We've all known about this criminal and his evil ways. It was insane he was allowed to just carry on without a care in the world from MLB executives. How was he able to get away with it all this time? Well, no more! Watkins is gone. Banished to the shadow realm never to be seen again. Ridden from our lives for hopefully enternity. Manfred the hero sums it up here. 

I do not find that then-Manager Alex Cora, the Red Sox coaching staff, the Red Sox front office, or most of the players on the 2018 Red Sox knew or should have known that Watkins was utilizing in-game video to update the information that he had learned from his pregame analysis. Communication of these violations was episodic and isolated to Watkins and a limited number of Red Sox players only.

Of course J.T. Watkins, some random 30 year old dude in the video department, was the man behind all of this. Only him. Cora, Mookie Betts, J.D. Martinez, Benintendi, Steve Pearce, Xander, nope they had no part in any of this tomfoolery. It was that maniac J.T. Watkins! THANK GOD Rob Manfred got to the bottom of this. Can always count on him to do what is right and sensible. Now with the bad man out of the picture we can go on and play some clean ball! Today, justice won. I can picture Manfred in his house fist pumping all over the place thinking he nailed this one. 

Gimme a fucking break, Rob. I actually feel bad for this dude. J.T. not Manfred.  

Can we just please start the season soon. 

P.S. If you think this exonerates Cora at all you're out of your mind. He ran the whole scheme in Houston. No one wanted him suspended/banned for his Red Sox actions although it's certainly just one big coincidence I guess that he went from one cheating organization to the next and was squeaky clean the 2nd time. I'm sure.