“What a week I’m having!”

— Walter Kornbluth, “Splash”

Goodness gracious. Are you still standing after the most insane four-day period in baseball history?

We’ll be discussing the Astros’ electronic sign-stealing scandal and its many reverberations for years to come. What an amazing, fun story. For now, as we prepare to mark its one-week anniversary on Monday, some random thoughts on it:

— What’s next? Besides the Astros, Red Sox and Mets hiring new managers and Houston adding a general manager as well, the greatest certainty might be MLB adding staff to its Department of Investigations. Looking into alleged baseball crimes represents a growth industry!

What’s definitely coming is a report by commissioner Rob Manfred on allegations that the 2018 Red Sox illegally stole signs, albeit in a less sophisticated and egregious manner than the 2017 and 2018 Astros.

With that resolution will come a suspension for ’17 Astros bench coach and ’18 Red Sox manager Alex Cora, which common sense says — given Cora’s leadership role in what went down — will at least match and quite possibly exceed the one-year sentence Houston’s A.J. Hinch received. Dave Dombrowski, the ’18 Red Sox’s president of baseball operations whom the club has since dismissed, is vulnerable, too. However, keep in mind the investigators jumped off to quite a head start with the Astros case thanks to Mike Fiers’ and Danny Farquhar’s comments to The Athletic, the latter of which quickly produced substantiating video by social-media detective Jomboy. The Bosox probe features no such public breadcrumbs.

The commissioner’s office and the Players Association, meanwhile, must and surely will discuss what to do about future investigations (you know they’re coming) and penalties. Much outrage remains that the Astros players received immunity for their testimony when they and Cora orchestrated the scheme. Just like the evolution of the penalties for illegal performance-enhancing drugs, these efforts will be driven by the players themselves. If they’re angry enough about this and want the high-tech chicanery to stop, then the players will order their union to sign off on harsh penalties for offenders.

Social media, meanwhile, figures to spit out plenty more conspiracy theories like Jose Altuve’s refusal to take off his shirt after his pennant-winning homer, or Mike Trout’s industry-approved usage of HGH. Baseball just will have to address those one outbreak at a time (it quickly refuted both of these). They aren’t going away, and some of them might turn out to be true.

— On the morning of Nov. 12, at the general managers’ meetings in Arizona, I interviewed Brian Cashman for a feature story I was writing on new Mets manager Carlos Beltran.

“First and foremost, he’s a really humble human being,” Cashman said of Beltran, whom he employed as a Yankees special adviser in 2019. “He sees things play out on the field that I’d say most people do not. … He was all-in trying to engage the player, decipher the player and unlock the keys to the kingdom for the individual player, and doing it in such an easy, communicative way that gets lost on most.”

Later that day, The Athletic broke its story on Beltran’s 2017 Astros stealing of signs. We put this story on hold and now, for obvious reasons, it will never run. However, Cashman’s quotes, while shedding light on why Beltran was such an effective ringleader for the operation, also underline why he should return to the game before long.

Yes, after his dismissal by the Mets, Beltran needs to go on an apology tour, answer some questions and perhaps look some former opponents in the eye and express contrition. He can handle that. It would make sense for Beltran to resume an advising role somewhere, go back to the shallow end of the pool and work his way to the top again. If he hangs in there and is determined enough, given his exemplary record in the game before last week, he would deserve another chance to manage.

— Let’s take a break in the action for some scandal-inspired trivia:

1. Name the best player, as per baseball-reference.com’s WAR, who has played for the Astros, Red Sox and Mets.

2. Name the only active player who has played for the Astros, Red Sox and Mets.

3. Name the two players who played only for the Astros, Red Sox and Mets.

Answers down below.

— A friend of Astros owner Jim Crane, opining on the condition of anonymity, believes Crane and his managerial candidate Buck Showalter would work well together, based on Showalter’s long-celebrated love of information. The deposed Jeff Luhnow and Hinch also shared that curiosity and became Crane favorites until the scandal hit. Astros bench coach Joe Espada has a chance at the job, as do former managers Dusty Baker and John Gibbons and Cubs third-base coach Will Venable.

— One reason why Manfred and company must work as hard as possible to eradicate illegal sign-stealing: gambling. Specifically, micro-bets. If they want to sell the gambling community on the lure of betting on every at-bat, or even on every pitch, then those matchups need to be as pure as possible.

— New Red Sox chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom never could have known he’d be hiring a manager before overseeing a day of spring training. Bloom appeared from afar to handle his team’s Cora crisis quite smoothly and admirably. I admittedly wondered last year whether Bloom, having worked only in the tranquility and competence of the Rays organization, was ready to run the Mets when they interviewed him to be their general manager. The Mets, of course, hired Brodie Van Wagenen instead. Those doubts have alleviated considerably after watching Bloom manage the crisis up at Fenway Park.

— While Mets adviser Jessica Mendoza did her employer no favors when she criticized Fiers as she worked her other job as ESPN commentator, her opinion doesn’t rank as unique. Fiers has one more year in his contract with the A’s, with whom he put together a strong 2019 season. As long as he stays healthy and performs adequately in 2020, the right-hander’s free agency will be highly intriguing. If front-office executives don’t necessarily like cheaters whose offenses can flow upward, as we saw with Luhnow, nor do they love guys who make headlines with their words. No matter if those words bring about positive change.

l Your scandal trivia answers:

1. Billy Wagner (27.7 WAR)

2. Jed Lowrie

3. Bob Gallagher and Joe Sambito

If you got all three right, you win a trash can autographed by all the members of the 2017 Astros.