The Athletic: The Astros stole signs electronically in 2017 part of a much broader issue for Major League Baseball

HowBoutDemSox

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I think players trying to decipher and relay signs among themselves while also trying to focus on playing a difficult game somewhat minimizes the impact of sign stealing, unless the pitcher/catcher combo really isn't trying very hard to counter it. That's a bit of a game-within-a-game between players already competing on the field.

To me, using additional personnel supported by technical means changes things well beyond that simple dynamic and invites an additional sophistication that tilts the balance of competition to more fully favor the hitter and puts the pitcher/catcher at more of a competitive disadvantage.
I’d also add that when the technology employed is part of the ballpark’s infrastructure (i.e., cameras hooked up to a tv feed) it gives the home team an advantage over the road team, which seems inherently more unfair than when the sign stealing method could be employed by either team equally.
 

Marciano490

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I think the latter but if you read the Athletic piece, this seems to have leaked because Mike Fiers was released and told his new teams (quite understandably) about it.
It’s fascinating, right? You cut guys or trade them or lowball them then expect them to keep your secrets. Even if there’s no hard feelings, your former players are directly competing against you fairly often.
 

Murderer's Crow

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It’s fascinating, right? You cut guys or trade them or lowball them then expect them to keep your secrets. Even if there’s no hard feelings, your former players are directly competing against you fairly often.
Which also calls into the question the Astros' judgment. Why do this in the regular season against the frikkin White Sox when the Astros are pretty heavy division favorites. Wait for the playoffs at least.
 

EvilEmpire

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I’d also add that when the technology employed is part of the ballpark’s infrastructure (i.e., cameras hooked up to a tv feed) it gives the home team an advantage over the road team, which seems inherently more unfair than when the sign stealing method could be employed by either team equally.
That is a really good point.
 

Marciano490

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Which also calls into the question the Astros' judgment. Why do this in the regular season against the frikkin White Sox when the Astros are pretty heavy division favorites. Wait for the playoffs at least.
I'd think practice and refinement, but arrogance and shittiness seem to be organizational hallmarks, so probably more the latter two.
 

Savin Hillbilly

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The wrong side of the bridge....
Which also calls into the question the Astros' judgment. Why do this in the regular season against the frikkin White Sox when the Astros are pretty heavy division favorites. Wait for the playoffs at least.
Perhaps you do it in the regular season to work out the kinks and get everybody comfortable and smooth with it, so that by the time the playoffs roll around it's second nature for all concerned. You wouldn't want to roll something like that out in the highest-stakes games of the year, when there are a million eyes on you.
 

shawnrbu

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Everyone here saying that sign stealing is fine as long as technology isn't involved...how did/do you all feel about Spygate?
“Look, that’s a whole ‘nother discussion. The guy is giving signals in front of 80,000 other people, okay. So, we filmed him taking signals in front of 80,000 people like there were a lot of other teams doing at that time, too, okay.”
 

Time to Mo Vaughn

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Which also calls into the question the Astros' judgment. Why do this in the regular season against the frikkin White Sox when the Astros are pretty heavy division favorites. Wait for the playoffs at least.
Because without cheating they'd be worse than the White Sox.
 

Harry Hooper

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Not the best example by Bauer as that was not a quality breaking pitch.
 

Red Averages

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The point was about the use of technology to aid in the stealing/deciphering of signs.
So we’re going to ignore all of the actual specifics, which is the entire point there, to generalize a camera = a camera? It would be helpful to know how lazy we’re going to be in this comparison to determine how much we should push back on it.

for someone that is generally overly thorough in their posts, this line of stance seems particularly strange.
 

jon abbey

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Some home/road splits for HOU in the 2017 postseason, obviously all SSS as they only played 18 games:

Correa:

Home: .371 BA/.421 OBP/.743 SLG/1.164 OPS, 13 H, 3 HR & 10 RBI
Away: .211 BA/.231 OBP/.395 SLG/.626 OPS, 8 H, 2 HR & 4 RBI.

Gattis:

Home: .300 BA/.464 OBP/.550 SLG/1.014 OPS, 6 H, 1 HR & 3 RBI
Away: .200 BA/.333 OBP/.200 SLG/.533 OPS, 2 H, 0 HR & 0 RBI

Altuve:

Home: .472 BA/.513 OBP/1.028 SLG/1.541 OPS, 17 H, 6 HR & 12 RBI
Away: .143 BA, .268 OBP, .229 SLG, .497 OPS, 5 H, 1 HR & 2 RBI

McCann:

Home: .300 BA/.382 OBP/.467 SLG/.849 OPS, 9 H, 1 HR & 7 RBI
Away: .037 BA/.161 OBP/.037 SLG/.198 OPS, 1 H, 0 HR & 0 RBI

Bregman:

Home: .273 BA/.342 OBP/.515 SLG/.857 OPS, 9 H, 2 HR & 6 RBI
Away: .154 BA/.175 OBP/.333 SLG/.508 OPS, 6 H, 2 HR & 4 RBI
 

singaporesoxfan

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The point was about the use of technology to aid in the stealing/deciphering of signs.
I have no problem with the Astros reviewing video of pitchers and catchers and deciphering the signs after the game, which is the closest analogy to what Spygate was. I’d expect that to be part of what every team does, similar to watching tape of pitchers. But in-game tech-aided sign stealing is qualitatively a different thing. Whether you feel what the Astros did is fine or not, the analogy to the Patriots and Spygate is lazy
 

jon abbey

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One of the guys on MLBN (maybe Ken Rosenthal?) said that MLB has already instituted a 8 second delay to TVs in the ballpark. He made it sound like they instituted this before 2019 if not 2018, and so my guess is that MLB knew about this already and tried to fix it behind the scenes.
 

deythur

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One of the guys on MLBN (maybe Ken Rosenthal?) said that MLB has already instituted a 8 second delay to TVs in the ballpark. He made it sound like they instituted this before 2019 if not 2018, and so my guess is that MLB knew about this already and tried to fix it behind the scenes.
I was under the impression this was their own camera and monitor not the regular TV feed. Could be wrong.
 

InsideTheParker

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I'm confused about the punishment issue. Weren't the Sox assessed a fine by mlb for the Apple watch business? (I believe the amount was undisclosed and turned over to charity.)
 

Tyrone Biggums

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What a shock...I'm stunned that the scumbag organization that touted being able to get a Domestic Abuser like Osuna on the cheap and employed a repugnant human being like Taubman would be caught blatantly cheating. Shocked I tell you...
 

richgedman'sghost

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The Today Show did a story about the Astor’s cheating this morning and used “Spygate” and “Deflategate” as reference points.

Fuck you Today Show.
Never watching Today Show ever again. What a prime example of lazy journalism. I expect nothing less from the network that employed Matt Lauer and tried to kill Ronan Farrell's story but that's off tangent.
 

steveluck7

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The Today Show did a story about the Astor’s cheating this morning and used “Spygate” and “Deflategate” as reference points.

Fuck you Today Show.
The flipside is that if other outlets conflate this with the Patriots issues, and if MLB is even remotely like the NFL in succumbing to public sentiment on these types of issues, then maybe Houston will actually get punished for this
 

SouthernBoSox

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These videos are so unbelievably damning. It's just so obvious when you know what to listen for.
 

jon abbey

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There was a April 2019 one against the Yankees on Twitter this AM, I can't find it now but just mentioning it as this doesn't seem like it was confined to 2017. NY complained about whistling during game 1 of the ALCS too.
 

YTF

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I'm confused about the punishment issue. Weren't the Sox assessed a fine by mlb for the Apple watch business? (I believe the amount was undisclosed and turned over to charity.)
I think/hope the punishment is going to be significant, but will probably take a bit of time to sort out. I'm guessing the current Taubman investigation might expand to include this and would think that MLB would want to speak to a mix of players and administration about this to get a proper feel for the exact scope of this. It's going to be pretty damn hard for any hitter to deny knowledge of this given the scheme was designed to enhance their at bats.
 

E5 Yaz

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While we wait for the punishment for the Astros, I'm still curious about the statement in the article that electronic stealing is not a one-team issue, and the manager who says such things are rampant across baseball.

Will any/every other team doing similar things get a pass while Houston takes one for the team?
 

axx

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The thing about Spygate is that it's unclear how much the Patriots benefited by the taping, and probably will never know. This seems a lot more blatant/obvious. So if MLB wants to put the hammer down on the Astros, it would be an easier sell. I think MLB might wait a bit to see if they can gather evidence of other teams doing this.
 

Smiling Joe Hesketh

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While we wait for the punishment for the Astros, I'm still curious about the statement in the article that electronic stealing is not a one-team issue, and the manager who says such things are rampant across baseball.

Will any/every other team doing similar things get a pass while Houston takes one for the team?
I'll have to find it, but I read that the other teams rumored to have done similar things are the Brewers and the Rangers.
 

YTF

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While we wait for the punishment for the Astros, I'm still curious about the statement in the article that electronic stealing is not a one-team issue, and the manager who says such things are rampant across baseball.

Will any/every other team doing similar things get a pass while Houston takes one for the team?
Another reason why this is probably going to take a bit of time to sort out.
 

BigJimEd

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While we wait for the punishment for the Astros, I'm still curious about the statement in the article that electronic stealing is not a one-team issue, and the manager who says such things are rampant across baseball.

Will any/every other team doing similar things get a pass while Houston takes one for the team?
I don't have a subscription so didn't read the full article. Is there proof about other teams? Other than an anonymous manager, which could be Hinch or someone with connections to the org, making a pretty broad general statement.

We'll see what MLB turns up. I expect they'll look at other teams but if evidence points to Houston then so be it.

Pointing fingers without proof just serves to conflate the issue.
 

Van Everyman

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The thing about Spygate
... is that it was completely misreported and misrepresented by the media and the league and more about understanding play-calling trends as opposed to in-game adjustments. It was against the rules as defined by a memo sent out by a league executive. Someone here should just link that article that explains all this better than I could so we can stop with this.

Where there may be parallels is how the league handles it. As I've said a gazillion times on this board, part of the problem with Spygate was that Goodell wanted to make a show as the new commissioner with how he handled cheating -- without regard for the precedent he was setting. Cheating--and spying in particular--has been a part of football culture for decades and had generally been handled behind closed doors when it got out of hand. By punishing the Patriots publicly and grossly out of proportion to their rules violation, he put himself in the position of policing behavior today the league has no business of being involved with. Put another way, Manfred should be very careful how he addresses this.

Sidenote: I'm aggravated this piece is behind a paywall. All the summaries of this piece online are terrible, but I'm not risking getting charged $60 because I forget to cancel something so I could read a single article. The Athletic should unlock this piece -- content is the best advertisement.
 

YTF

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The thing about Spygate is that it's unclear how much the Patriots benefited by the taping, and probably will never know. This seems a lot more blatant/obvious. So if MLB wants to put the hammer down on the Astros, it would be an easier sell. I think MLB might wait a bit to see if they can gather evidence of other teams doing this.
Another thing to remember about the Spygate incident (as I understand it) is that the taping in itself wasn't the issue but rather the vantage point from where the taping took place. It was a practice widely used within the league and according to the NFL the Patriots/BB employed it in an area that was off limits. You're right we'll never know what impact it may or may not have had on the Superbowl but seeing this electronic sign stealing going down in real time is a horse of a different color which I think a lot of people (not you axx) fail to recognize when comparing the two.
 

BaseballJones

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Another thing to remember about the Spygate incident (as I understand it) is that the taping in itself wasn't the issue but rather the vantage point from where the taping took place. It was a practice widely used within the league and according to the NFL the Patriots/BB employed it in an area that was off limits. You're right we'll never know what impact it may or may not have had on the Superbowl but seeing this electronic sign stealing going down in real time is a horse of a different color which I think a lot of people (not you axx) fail to recognize when comparing the two.
Well you are technically correct with respect to Spygate, but the reality is that the Patriots were punished as if TAPING AT ALL was against the rules. Remember, the fury over it, from all the pundits to league officials, wasn't about "Well, sure, they were allowed to tape, they just did it from a wrong location in the building." You don't dock a team a 1st round draft pick and fine them like a million dollars total for putting the camera in the wrong place. BB was correct in that the rules did not strictly forbid the Pats from taping defensive signals, but the league sure treated the team (with the ensuing punishment, that frankly led to the Deflategate punishment as well) as if it was taping, period, that was illegal.

It's not just that the media portrayed it incorrectly; it's that the league itself punished the Pats this way. And we all know it.
 

Murderer's Crow

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Every offensive player on the Astros has egg on their face. This looks absolutely terrible for them with the sheer amount of proof coming out.