Thoughts on Braves Punishment

Happy Thanksgiving everybody!

I've seen a whole lot of comments on other sites about how harsh MLB's penalties are against the Braves in which they were stripped of multiple prospects and essentially banned from future International signings for a period of time.  In addition, their GM John Copollela was banned from working in the game for life and their assistant GM for 1 year.  With the possible exception of Coppy being banned for life, the evidence MLB lays out in their statement shows the infractions were egregious and the penalties were not too severe.  Of course, severity of penalties is always subjective and this is just my opinion, but allow me to explain.

First of all, each and every one of the prospects who MLB declared FA's likely would not have been the Braves property in the first place had it not been for the rule infractions.  What the Braves did was to sign older "prospects" who were not subject to their bonus pool cap to much higher than market value.  In return, those players agents or "buscones" promised to sign several other, younger prospects for less than market rate to keep the Braves under the bonus pool cap.  The buscones would then pass on the extra money from he older prospect to the younger ones.  All of the prospects MLB took away from the Braves were involved in those shenanigans.  When you realize the Braves never should have been able to sign them in the first place, the penalty doesn't really seem that harsh, at least to me.

As for Coppy, I don't think his lifetime ban is as harsh as it seems when you understand how dishonest his dealings apparently were.  It's one thing to cheat the system to gain a competitive advantage over other teams, which should be intolerable to MLB as an organization.  It's quite another to lie, cheat and steal from 16-18 year old starry eyed kids.  Among the MLB findings in their investigation, the Braves illegally made promises of future non-monetary compensation to multiple prospects in return for them signing for a lower amount of money.  They then allegedly reneged on those promises and never delivered the non-monetary goods.  In the case of Drew Waters, a 3'rd round draft pick, he was promised a car in return for a lower monetary signing bonus.  The car apparently never materialized.

Another complaint I've seen about the penalties is that everyone is doing it and the Braves biggest offense was getting caught.  While I am sure other organizations have been involved in similar shenanigans, it's not that hard to see patterns that suggest such activity.  I mean, are we really surprised teams like the Braves and Red Sox and GM's like the guy who moved from the Rangers to the Padres are the ones getting caught?  They are getting caught because they are doing it!  While I have no illusions that Giants management would be entirely above such behavior, if you look at the patterns of their international signings and their draft bonuses, there is nothing to suggest similar activity on their part as they have played the process very straight, much to the sometimes disgust of their fans who saw other teams signing shiploads of international prospects and wondering why the Giants weren't doing it.  So no, I don't accept the "everybody" else is doing it argument because I don't believe everybody else is doing it.