Chicago Cubs: Baseball has to move on from Rob Manfred as commissioner

If past actions weren’t enough, Rob Manfred’s handling of the Houston Astros sign-stealing scandal should have fans everywhere calling for his head.

By and large, I’m pretty easy-going when it comes to baseball. I’m open to change, not particularly bothered by new ideas or concepts and try to keep an open mind. The renovation of Wrigley Field? Fine by me. Even the idea of implementing things like a pitch clock make a good degree of sense to me.

But when I look at the three-batter minimum, Major League Baseball’s all-out assault on Minor League Baseball and the league’s handling of the Houston Astros’ sign-stealing scandal, I arrive at one conclusion: Rob Manfred has to go.

When asked why the league didn’t strip the Astros of their 2017 World Series title, this is what Manfred had to say.

“The idea of an asterisk or asking for a piece of metal back seems like a futile act. People will always know that something was different about the 2017 season, and whether we made that decision right or wrong, we undertook a thorough investigation, and had the intestinal fortitude to share the results of that investigation, even when those results were not very pretty.”

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A piece of metal? A PIECE OF METAL? The fact that Manfred seems more protective of Houston than the sport he presides over speaks volumes to the person who has the fate of our beloved game in his hands right now. That fact has not gone unnoticed around the game, either, as players, including Chicago Cubs standout Kris Bryant, continue to lay siege to the Astros in the press.

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“What a disgrace that was,” Bryant said via The Athletic (subscription required). “Watching their apology … there’s no sincerity, there’s no genuineness when it comes to it. I certainly know that if I messed up big in that way, I’d be the first one to let you know just how big of a mess-up it was. It’s just hard to believe.”

At the end of the day, we don’t know how the investigation was handled or what information MLB does or does not have at its disposal. But giving the Houston players a free pass on anything that happened is a farce, plain and simple.

Manfred went so far as to warn opposing teams that retaliation against Astros hitters in the form of hit by pitch won’t be tolerated. That’s right. You can’t get back at the guys who cheated their way to the top. Oh, and they’re not being punished in any way, shape or form in the meantime.