Almost as soon as Ken Rosenthal and Evan Drellich of the Athletic exposed the Astros’ cheating on Nov. 12, the sport’s sabermetricians went to work on the team’s record. In the aggregate, when converted into potential runs or wins, the evidence doesn’t show that the 2017 Astros ended the season ahead of where they might have been anyway. The what-ifs will place an asterisk on the Astros’ 2017 and 2018 seasons where it belongs — in the individual memories and judgments of fans and historians. Manfred’s investigation and other evidence indicates that other teams were wise to the Astros’ cheating even in 2017, and some were taking counter-measures that made the scheme less effective. For the 2017 Astros, that halo is gone forever.

Source: Los Angeles Times February 27, 2020 19:40 UTC