Washington Nationals fans: Was the Houston Astros’ punishment for cheating enough?

Welcome to SB Nation FanPulse, a survey of fans across MLB. Each week, we send 30 polls to plugged in fans from each team. Nationals fans, sign up HERE to join FanPulse.

If there’s one takeaway from the last week of revelations about cheating and sign stealing by the Houston Astros, it’s that we’re even happier the Washington Nationals beat the AL champions in the World Series this past October now so that we don’t have to wonder if it was a tainted Fall Classic if they’d lost. There’s likely more to come from this scandal with the report on the Boston Red Sox still in progress, and there have been firings across the game as a result of what happened, but was the punishment enough? WAS IT????

MLB’s idea of discipline for the Astros’ nefarious activities, as reported by The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal and Evan Drellich last week:

• A one-year suspension for general manager Jeff Luhnow.

• A one-year suspension for manager A.J. Hinch.

• The forfeitures of first- and second-round draft picks in both 2020 and ’21.

• A fine of $5 million, the maximum allowed under MLB’s constitution.

• The placement of former Astros’ assistant GM Brandon Taubman on baseball’s ineligible list.

Luhnow and Hinch were subsequently fired by the Astros, then the Red Sox fired skipper Alex Cora for his role in the ‘Stros’ sign-stealing, and the New York Mets fired newly-hired manager Carlos Beltrán (we’re saying “fired” regardless of how it was spun by the team) for his participation in the activities when he was still playing for Houston.

You’ll notice that thus far there has been no discipline for active players who participated in the sign-stealing, trash-can-banging non-sense, and there’s nothing pitchers who were hurt by the cheating can do retroactively ... sorry, Yu Darvish.

Was the discipline handed down by MLB and the teams in question enough? The SB Nation bigwigs broke out the FanPulse machine to get an idea of what baseball fans think about it all.

The first question voters were asked was if the punishment fit the crimes against baseball:

Question No. 1 - Was the Astros’ Punishment For Cheating Harsh Enough? - Results - Yes - 33%; No - 67%.

Question No. 2?: Where does the latest scandal rank in the history of baseball scandals?

What’s the Worst MLB Cheating Scandal Ever? [ed. note - “Free Shoeless Joe Jackson.”] Results - Black Sox - 43%, Steroids - 28%, Astros’ sign-stealing - 25%, Pete Rose - 4%

Voting members of the FanPulse community were also asked if the Astros’ World Series win in 2017 should be vacated since the MLB investigation determined that their activities went throughout the season and postseason that year. Results: Yes - 49%, No - 51%

Question No. 4 in this week’s polling?: Should Those Involved in the Cheating Scandal Be Allowed to Work in MLB again? Results - Yes - 38%, No - 62%

If you didn’t vote (or even if you did) what’s your take on the poll questions? Feel free to, you know, like, comment below or something, or just shout your answers out the window...

Where are you on these questions? If you didn’t participate in the FanPulse survey the first three weeks, you can still sign up above or HERE.