Read the ESPN story on the reaction of the other teams. They asked one team President, anonymously of course, how many teams would be willing to give up what the Astros did in order to win a championship. His answer was "25? 28? 30?"
Here's how you know that MLB knows this punishment was a joke. In the conference call where they told the teams what the punishment was going to be Manfred told the teams he didn't want to hear any discussion about it, and implied that if any teams spoke on the sanctions publicly that their punishment would be worse than what the Astros got. Because he knew that if people could say what they wanted publicly MLB would be getting trashed by it's own teams over this. The fact that the players who did this and the owner where the buck is supposed to stop got off with no punishment, other than the owner having to pay some cash, is a joke.