Bye bye Beltran

That Boston manager Alex Cora would not survive the damning report on sign-stealing in Houston was patently obvious. I did not foresee that Carlos Beltran would never get a game as Mets manager.

So now, with pitchers and catchers due to report in less than a month, three teams, all with postseasons ambitions if not expectations, need managers, and one needs a general manager. Astounding.

The Mets, unlike the Red Sox and Astros, can probably promote a manager from within the organization. Boston and Houston pretty clearly need somebody unconnected to the sign-stealing schemers, and that rules out their current coaching staffs. Any thought of an insider taking over for AJ Hinch or Cora had to be dashed Thursday afternoon when Twitter erupted with a claim that Jose Altuve and Alex Bregman specifically had been wearing patches that could be buzzed to notify them of specific pitches.

True or not, that's the kind of thing the Astros and Red Sox are going to face all season. No accomplishment will be above suspicion. (For what it's worth, Joel Sherman of the New York Post said on Twitter that the Astros investigation looked specifically at those rumors but turned up nothing.)

So Houston and Boston need managers from the outside. Which shouldn't be that difficult if they want to do a short-term hire. The names of Dusty Baker and Buck Showalter came up immediately -- two veteran managers of accomplishment and authority. Showalter has, apparently, already been interviewed in Houston. If the patches allegations have any validity, the new manager will require a taste for confrontation.

Meanwhile, I have no appetite for self-congratulatory "we did it the right way" commentary from anybody on any other team. It smacks too much of the anti-steroid boasts of the past, which too often proved phony. We have no idea how widespread this kind of chicanery was. I cannot believe the Astros and the Red Sox were alone (and yes, I am presuming the Red Sox had an active sign-steal technology system in place under Cora). Thursday afternoon on MLB Radio, former player Ryan Spilsborghs said something like: If you want to unwind this ball of thread further to the beginning, you know where it leads, and the others on the broadcast immediately responded: The 2016 Yankees.

But that's not likely to be dug into. The commissioner has implied that his "Apple Watch" line in the sand is as far back as he intends to dig, because that's where he specifically notified everybody that (a) penalties for electronic surveillance would be far harsher in the future and (b) that he would hold team management responsible for violations. And that's fine -- but it took a player (Mike Fiers) puttig his name on the allegations to get anywhere in the constant swirl of Houston rumors. And it may take another tattletale to get anywhere on other teams as well.