"SAN DIEGO — Major League Baseball’s investigation into the Astros likely will not be completed until after the new year, sources with knowledge of the investigation told
The Athletic.
The league’s department of investigations has 76,000 emails to examine and has already conducted 60 interviews, commissioner Rob Manfred said Wednesday, as the league tries to understand the scope of the Astros’ electronic sign-stealing efforts. The league also has a store of instant messages to sift through as well, Manfred said. That includes messages from the Slack communications platform, a source said.
“I think that this is probably the most thorough investigation that the commissioner’s office has ever undertaken,” Manfred said in a news conference at the Winter Meetings. “That review has caused us to conclude that we have to do some follow-up interviewing. It is my hope to conclude the investigation just as promptly as possible, but it’s really hard to predict how long something like that is going to take.
“At this point in the investigation it would be wholly inappropriate for me to speculate about what types of discipline might be in play. I’m going to get all the facts in front of me and make a decision as promptly as possible on discipline, and obviously you all will know about it as soon as it happens.”
A report shown to be incomplete after the fact would be a wart on the league’s credibility, particularly after Manfred’s public commitment to thoroughness — a point that may underscore Manfred’s deliberate approach.
The Athletic reported in November that the 2017 Astros stole signs electronically with the aid of a center-field camera fixed on the catcher’s signs. More difficult for the league than vetting the depths of the 2017 scheme is its determination of what happened in 2018 and 2019, if anything. MLB has leads it is pursuing relating to the 2018 Astros, sources said. The violations suggested by those leads were not nearly at the same level of those that took place in ’17, and any wrongdoing, if it occurred, may have been more sporadic in nature."
More at the link:
https://theathletic.com/1452572/2019/12/11/astros-investigation-likely-will-not-be-concluded-before-new-year-sources-say/