Hey everyone, quick pre-episode update here. Sam and I recorded the episode that you're about to hear on Thursday morning.

When there had still been no major updates on the situation with the Astros and their assistant GM Brandon Taubman,

later on Thursday the team put out another statement in which they announced that they had fired Taubman following an investigation over the past two days in conjunction with Major League Baseball,

they interviewed Astros employees and reporters, and evidently concluded that Taubman was lying all along about his comments in the clubhouse after ALCS Games 6 being intended to support Roberto Asuna and not target any specific reporters in the vicinity.

Astros say our initial investigation led us to believe that Brandon Taubman's inappropriate comments were not directed toward any reporter. We were wrong.

We sincerely apologize to Stephanie Appstein, Sports Illustrated, and to all individuals who witnessed this incident or were offended by the inappropriate conduct.

The Astros in no way intended to minimize the issues related to domestic violence. Our initial belief was based on witness statements about the incident,

subsequent interviews have revealed that Taubman's inappropriate comments were in fact directed toward one or more reporters.

Now it's obviously a good thing that Taubman was held accountable here, even though the Astros description of what they did as proactively assisting Major League Baseball,

strains credibility. Given their actions leading up to this point, it's good that they apologized to Stephanie Appstein and the other reporters who witnessed this.

I would not say it's a sufficient response in that they do not apologize in this statement for releasing their own first statement in which they supported Taubman and accused Appstein in Sports Illustrated of fabricating their report,

which has been proved completely accurate and was very soon corroborated by other reporters, as we said in our initial episode.

They made what could have been a career ending accusation by suggesting that that report was fabricated, so there really should be some sort of reckoning for that.

And Luno admitted on Thursday that before the team issued that original statement, only Taubman and another Astros employee were spoken to,

so they didn't even talk to the reporters about what they said they saw happen.

And yet Luno also said this is not endemic, this is not a cultural issue, which is very hard to believe.

Given how unseriously they appeared to take this, Luno claimed that, quote,

the belief was that it was one colleague talking to another colleague and having been overheard and it was not intended to be overheard,

which again, pretty hard to believe, clearly contradicted by the reports that were out there.

This also doesn't explain why they allowed Taubman to make a false statement in a press release on Tuesday,

nor does it explain why Luno went on the radio and did an interview on Wednesday in which he said,

we may never know Taubman's intent.

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