Manfred had to strip the Astros title and if the Sox did similar things, needs to strip that one as well. You can't have teams sitting there with a title that was earned in a season that they knowingly and blatantly cheated especially in the post season. Just not a good look.
Also, not a great look dropping the penalty the morning of the College Football National Championship game. Trying to bury the story never goes well.
Do we strip the titles of all teams with players who used steroids?
No. Not anywhere near the same thing.
'89 A's win the World Series without steroids?
Steroids weren't actually banned in 1989 by the MLB. They didn't hit the banned substance list until 1991, but weren't actually tested until 2003 and weren't actually a suspendable offense until 2005 after the 2003 and 2004 testing showed greater than a certain level of players were using them. So even assuming that the A's were the only team using steroids in 1989 (which is an absolutely ridiculous assumption), the answer to your question is who cares, they weren't banned.
That's wonderful. Now do the '09 Yankees.
Kidding aside, the larger point of the matter is the absolute silliness of trying to "strip" team titles after the fact by coming up with some arbitrary line of what constitutes serious enough cheating to strip.
Punish the team in the present. "Stripping" titles doesn't do anything. Is the team going to have to give back all the "economic benefit" they received from the title run? Are we going to have to retroactively remember what happened in a different way? Of course not, its a absolute joke.
MLB though this was a serious enough offense to suspend the GM and Manager for a year, strip 1st and 2nd round draft picks in consecutive years, and fine them 5 million dollars. That isn't just a slap on the wrist. It isn't the death penalty, but it is serious. They should have stripped the title as well. Still happened, but no banners, can't refer to themselves as champs, etc. They didn't suspend the players involved at all, which to me says because it was team sponsored it was thought of as a much bigger deal. If a team was running a team sponsored steroid program, I'd put that on a similar level, though I do think that "cheating" is less because I do think it has much less correlation to actual on field results. I guarantee you that a player would get far more benefit out of knowing what pitch was coming then taking steroids. And to be clear I'm not suggesting that steroids don't help, they do, but their help is much more off the field than on (in both recovery and strength training). Now that gets a player on the field faster, longer, and with more power, but they still have to put in the work. Knowing what pitch is coming has way more on field benefit than being a bit stronger/faster or recovering from an injury quicker.
And why keep mentioning teams like the A's or Yankees and not the Red Sox. I mean David Ortiz tested positive in 2003. Why not rule out every Red Sox championship team he was on? Or are those exceptions because it was Boston? So between Ortiz (and I'm sure others on those teams) and Cora's sign stealing, Boston still hasn't won a WS title since 1918 by those requirements.
As with all things the level and degree matter. I just don't see steroids as anywhere near the same level of benefit as illegal sign stealing. You can feel free to disagree, I just don't think they are similar at all.
