Have you guys been following this? They’ve been accused of stealing signs using a camera. I remember how the Astros won two at home against the Yankees in 1 run games and the Yankees blew them out in their next 3 home games only to lose 2 more when going to Houston.
https://www.si.com/mlb/2019/11/22/astros-sign-stealing-2017-playoffs
whoa.
MLB better get this right and if so, it’d be nice to see it be designated the Astros Sign Scandal or better yet Astros-logical Sign Scandal.
I mean this is going to be increasingly difficult to catch. This time they used a noticeable banging noise, in the future they can get more sophisticated with how they relay messages about stolen signs.
If they really want to end sign stealing, the practical solution is to give teams more secure channels to relay messages.
Catchers already have gadgets on their forearms to receive pitches from coaches. Give one to the pitcher.
What a weak punishment from MLB. This calls the integrity of the game into question far more than roids and it’s a light punishment at best. Players are banned for life for far less.
As an LA native and big dodgers fan - those mother fuckers deserve to burn.
They need to keep cheating entertaining via steroids if they’re gonna cheat at all. /s
FUCK YOU ASTROS.
What was the punishment?
Eh. Cheating has a long and storied history in baseball and in MLB.
Ty Cobb stole signs a hundred years ago. Sign stealing has been with the game as long as catchers have used them and runners on 2b could take a lead. Infielders hooked the belt loops of guys tagging up at 3rd a hundred years ago, infielders tripped runners (including Cobb), spitballs/gunkballs/mudballs. Whitey Ford cut baseballs with his wedding ring. Joe Niekro. Players in the 1970s used amphetamines. Then it was anabolic steroids. Cheating has been a feature of MLB since forever.
If MLB wants to end sign stealing (which has gone on forever), then the battery should be smart enough to change signs often (esp when the other dugout bangs on something just before something offspeed is hammered), managers should be smart enough to recognize signs of it, and hey: maybe pitchers should be smart enough not to need them. They get paid a shitload of money, after all. Earn it.
Or MLB can outsource player IQ and secure the communication with tech. Given how little invested in the game most modern players are these days (it’s just a paycheck to them, many didn’t grow up playing for luv), I’m betting on this option because it’s the least amount of work for the league.
I hope Pete Rose gets into the HOF now then. Raines too.
Wearing a wire is next level. Cant wait to see how Altuve and Correa hit this year when they don’t know what pitch is coming.
Esp with the insane prices mlb charges its not cool
Betting on games def has a negative impact on the game’s integrity. All sports have entertainment value only as long as the outcome isn’t influenced by sports betting. If the outcome is fixed before the first pitch then MLB is no better than WWE. Betting can be cyanide to pro sports, no question.
You can make an argument that sign stealing likewise affects the integrity of the game because not honest. My point is that sign stealing has gone on forever, and MLB did just fine.
There will always be cheating in sports, it’s normal human behavior. What almost killed MLB in 1919 was the only sure poison of live sports entertainment : sports betting influencing the final score.
Sign stealing just as bad IMO. How many points does a hitters avg jump when they can sit on pitches. Yankees and Dodgers fans got hosed big time. The Dodgers twice arguably, although bad managing and over reliance on analytics cost them in both cases.
The 2019 Astros couldn’t even win a WS while cheating. Their whole run seems like a fraud now.
Yeah. We disagree.
If sign stealing is used to lose games, then it could be argued that it’s as cancerous as score fixing. If sign stealing is always used to win games, though, then we’ll just have to disagree since, imo, it’s been a part of the game for 150 years or so - and the game’s done just fine thank you very much.
Is it doing fine? Baseball is losing popularity rapidly.
I’ve been wondering about this a bit lately. I’ve always heard about sign stealing. What I don’t get is this. Once they’ve stolen the signs, how can the stealer use that information? Before this, was it ever possible to get the information to the batter in real time somehow?
I also don’t get at all how no one picked up on all this banging going on.
Yes, before this the baserunner and the batter had their own set of signs as well.
They relay it to the hitter, whose chances of getting a hit double because they can guess the pitch correctly
So the baserunner would steal the signs and flash them back to the batter?
How?
Yes.