If commissioner Rob Manfred has one regret about baseball’s sign-stealing scandal, it’s that the sport did not recognize quickly enough how teams would take advantage of expanding video technology to decode signs during games.



“I think we were slow to appreciate the risk on this topic,” Manfred acknowledged on Sunday.



Hindsight is 20-20. Unintended consequences, almost by definition, are difficult to forecast. But if baseball had better anticipated the problem, it could have introduced stricter rules earlier to discourage teams from illegally stealing signs. And Manfred would not be saying, with regard to this particular subject, “I hate where we are.”



A swifter reaction from MLB might have deterred the Astros from cheating in 2017 and ’18, and spared Manfred from his controversial decision last month not to include players in the discipline he administered to the Houston club — a decision, it turns out, that...