Over the last week Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred has received his fair share of criticism from people within the MLB community for how he has handled the Houston Astros sign stealing scandal. Now one of the top faces in the National Basketball Association is voicing an opinion.
Los Angeles Lakers superstar LeBron James believes that Manfred did not realize enough how the players on opposing teams would feel about the punishments (or lack there of) toward the Astros according to Gabriel Fernandez of CBS Sports.
Among the most notable Major League Baseball players who have been the most critical of a lack of punishments are Cody Bellinger and Justin Turner of the Los Angeles Dodgers as well as Mike Trout of the Los Angeles Angels. The Dodgers lost to the Astros in the 2017 World Series and Trout finished fourth in American League most valuable player voting in 2017 behind winner Jose Altuve of the Astros and runner-ups Aaron Judge of the New York Yankees and Jose Ramirez of the Cleveland Indians.
Basically, the majority of players involved (except Carlos Beltran) have been extremely lucky so far. Due to the fact that they received immunity, they would not be individually penalized, even though many of the Astros player personnel played a significant role in the scandal.
It will be interesting to see how seriously Manfred will analyze James’s comments. Manfred, who has also received recent criticism for calling the World Series trophy “a piece of metal,” needs to seriously figure out how to solve this catastrophic problem connected to Major League Baseball at the moment. Some are calling for the Astros to even be stripped of their 2017 World Series.
