Ranking Cheating in Baseball

[OCD SS]

How about more recent studies that say corking bats does not help hitters?

The Astros record/ run differential with their sign stealing system in place points to the system being ineffective, but it doesn’t make it not cheating.

 

[reggiecleveland]

The only reason to take steroids is to heal more quickly. You take them so you can workout harder, more often, and still recover and rebuild your muscles between workouts. So where is the line that you draw between healing and enhancing?

This is just wrong.
Recovering more quickly allows the athlete to make unnatural gains. Barry Bond's was not seething about being ignored because Sosa and BigMac were healing so fast. He wanted to get bigger and correctly predicted if he juiced he would break the Hr record. Steroids are taken to make you bigger and stronger. The recovery reason is often used by juicers as an excuse. The recovery angle is massive though,allowing guys to pitch more often, bounce back from a road trip, etc.

 

[OCD SS]

Slightly off-topic, but I once read what a sports official said about "cheating" and he had a very unpopular, but interesting, opinion. He basically said that anything that is covered in the official rule book and has a prescribed penalty is - by his definition -not cheating. So according to this, from the above list, the pinetar / foreign substance stuff wouldn't be cheating, but everything else would be.

His argument was something like this: Rule books say things like if you balk, the runners get to advance a base. Or if you hold a defensive lineman you get moved back 10 yards. Or if you trip a skater you spend 2 minute in the penalty box. Or if you bump a shooter he gets to take some free throws. Nobody thinks that balking or being offside is "cheating". They're something you "shouldn't" do, and there are defined consequences for doing it.

Now, the baseball rulebook also says you're not supposed to use pinetar or corked bats and defines the penalty for doing so (automatic out or ejection or whatever). Why do people feel that these type of infractions are cheating but the other ones aren't? One could make an argument that a batter who uses a corked bat is trying to gain an unfair advantage without getting caught. One could also argue the exact same thing for a pitcher who uses a balk-like move and hopes to get away with it without getting caught (I'm looking at you Andy Pettitte!). What about a batter who pretends to be hit by a pitch and starts walking to 1st base? (Jeter). Or who drops a foul ball in the stands but pretends to catch it?

Just some food for thought.....

I think this just points to there not being a distinct line between "gamesmanship" and cheating. Technically the former is just euphemism for cheating, and it's used to mitigate the connotations of the harsher term.

This gets into "I know it when I see it" territory; I think there is a distinction between actions on the field and things that happen off the field (for instance, no player is drilling out and corking their bat in the on deck circle) and things the player tries to get away with between the lines. This can be a close distinction (pine tar, cutting the ball, etc), but I think it goes to how much harder it is to catch someone cheating outside the lines.

I am not looking forward to a season of moralizing and holier than thou opinions about past actions in the game. Every player and team tries to gain a competitive edge, and we've been willing to let history soften the edges on actions that we would villify the Astros for today (such as Bobby Thompson's Giants). I'm even less interested in having the 2020 season turn into puritan congregation.

 

[Captaincoop]

I doubt it would be difficult for a player to find people to place a bets.

Vegas and the pro sports leagues track the data so carefully that any pattern like that would be caught within a couple of games.

 

[shaggydog2000]

This is just wrong.
Recovering more quickly allows the athlete to make unnatural gains. Barry Bond's was not seething about being ignored because Sosa and BigMac were healing so fast. He wanted to get bigger and correctly predicted if he juiced he would break the Hr record. Steroids are taken to make you bigger and stronger. The recovery reason is often used by juicers as an excuse. The recovery angle is massive though,allowing guys to pitch more often, bounce back from a road trip, etc.

We're saying the same thing. I was just saying where is the line between "unnatural gains" and natural ones? For a relief pitching being able to recover in between appearances and still do your workouts and stay strong all season is a big deal. It's also not natural.

 

[PedroKsBambino]

Just to emphasize it. Rose didn’t bet every game...only a few of them. And there’s reason to believe he was emphasizing winning games he bet on vs those he didn’t. That’s not betting against his team, but what he did is a lot more insidious than simply betting on his team to win

 

[HowBoutDemSox]

Vegas and the pro sports leagues track the data so carefully that any pattern like that would be caught within a couple of games.

 

[reggiecleveland]

We're saying the same thing. I was just saying where is the line between "unnatural gains" and natural ones? For a relief pitching being able to recover in between appearances and still do your workouts and stay strong all season is a big deal. It's also not natural.

Okay.

In 1986 I wrote a paper about steroids and said it would help baseball pitching. I was ridiculed by my professor. I see him often and even offered to go back and raise my overall mark 5%.

 

[Captaincoop]

That was 15 years ago.

 

[Fred not Lynn]

Steroids.

And it’s not even close in my opinion.

Steroids are a health hazard. Players who made steroids the price of admission in the 1990s were forcing other players to put their long-term health at risk.

None of the other cheating incidents gives people brain cancer.

Full agreement here. My only quibble is that the poll said “Steroids” when the evil of doping reaches far beyond one category of substance. Abuse of stimulants has an equally ugly track record - as do other types of doping.

Eastern Europe is littered with aging (and some who never got the chance) athletes with health problems dating back to the “golden era” of the USSR and GDR sports machines. Doping makes people die. Pine tar and sign stealing don’t.

The Betting stuff? That’s not cheating at baseball, it’s using baseball as a tool to cheat at gambling...

 

[Plympton91]

People who learn enough math to do basic stats, but not enough to know about uncertainty and sample size are pretty dangerous.

Well, yeah. You’re talking about trying to find the marginal contribution to the incidence of an extremely rare disease using a small, highly selected and truncated (biasing your answer toward no connection) sample with a mismeasured risk driver (also biasing your answer toward no connection).

If you’re waiting for statistical proof, you’ll be waiting a long time. Of course, when the utility of death by brain cancer is minus infinity, I’m not sure why you’d wait for statistical proof.

 

[BigJimEd]

That was 15 years ago.

Doesn't mean it still isn't happening.

 

[shaggydog2000]

Well, yeah. You’re talking about trying to find the marginal contribution to the incidence of an extremely rare disease using a small, highly selected and truncated (biasing your answer toward no connection) sample with a mismeasured risk driver (also biasing your answer toward no connection).

If you’re waiting for statistical proof, you’ll be waiting a long time. Of course, when the utility of death by brain cancer is minus infinity, I’m not sure why you’d wait for statistical proof.

So you believe any wild ass claim, as long as it's about something serious? Is that what you're saying? Because that's what you just wrote, and is how quackery gets sold.

 

[Plympton91]

So you believe any wild ass claim, as long as it's about something serious? Is that what you're saying? Because that's what you just wrote, and is how quackery gets sold.

I believe in God, everything else I run through a probabilistic expected utility calculation.

 

[Fred not Lynn]

I believe in God, everything else I run through a probabilistic expected utility calculation.

I don’t think that’s gonna fit on a license plate...

 

[stepson_and_toe]

You're talking about cheating the gamblers out of money, not cheating an opponent out of a win. The home-run championship hypothetical you're bringing up is an example of a completely unintended consequence of gambling-motivated decisions, not of an intended victory achieved by cheating.

Article in yesterday's online Globe (Jan 27), "Did alleged sign stealing affect your DraftKings results? This Mass. lawyer is suing MLB over it." It's in today's print edition under "Suit targets MLB scandal."

 

[Lose Remerswaal]

Lawyer making a name for himself but not any money

 

[lexrageorge]

Yeah, the welfare of Draft King's suckers should be way at the bottom of everyone's list of priorities when it comes to MLB and sign stealing.

 

[Trlicek's Whip]

A month later and the (dismissively-worded) poll option "banging on a drum" and the subsequent fallout has become a far more serious issue with many non-Astros players.

Trevor Bauer in The Athletic went candidly long about the Astros sign-signaling scandal. He must feel somewhat vindicated; he was someone in 2017 that was criticized and sniped at by Astros players (including Alex Bregman) for bringing up the possibility they might be cheating.

He states the obvious (and isn't alone among the players) as to why knowing batters that know what pitch is coming affected so many players:

Whit Merrifield was not an All-Star because José Altuve was (in 2017). Aaron Judge did not win the MVP because José Altuve did and things like this. So now Whit Merrifield, when he goes to sign his long-term extension, doesn’t have “All-Star” next to his name. “All-Star” probably makes him a lot more valuable in arbitration, which perhaps makes him not sign that deal or maybe sign the deal for that many more million dollars. Aaron Judge doesn’t have “MVP” next to his name. What is he worth in his first year of arbitration? That’s millions of dollars. The trajectory of the career, too. It’s not the first time where it’s a million or two, but then the next year it’s two or three and the next year after that, it’s four or five

What about the people that lose out on millions of dollars and their whole career trajectory has changed? What about the people who don’t get signed at a certain position because someone who knew what pitches were coming took that position? What if someone gets DFA’d because there is just no more room for them?

Someone *did* get DFA'd and is no longer in MLB. There's a lawsuit filed by Mike Bolsinger, former TOR relief pitcher whose last appearance in baseball was in Minute Maid Park against the Astros, and who gave up 4 hits, 4 ER and a HR in one-third of an inning. He was a journeyman trying to hang on as a reliever, was DFA'd after the game, and is no longer playing baseball.

 

[jacklamabe65]

Rob Manfred is the Susan Collins of baseball commissioners.

 

[teddywingman]

Many people here saying they don't consider steroids such an issue because "everyone was on them". You know who else was on them? High school athletes emulating their heroes. As someone who went to HS in the mid 90's, I can confirm first hand that this damaged some kids I knew well.

 

[Rovin Romine]

Many people here saying they don't consider steroids such an issue because "everyone was on them". You know who else was on them? High school athletes emulating their heroes. As someone who went to HS in the mid 90's, I can confirm first hand that this damaged some kids I knew well.

It was happening before that.

 

[teddywingman]

It was happening before that.

Well I'm sure it was, I can only speak from my experience. I'm not sure when it started or when it peaked.

 

[Earthbound64]

A month later and the (dismissively-worded) poll option "banging on a drum" and the subsequent fallout has become a far more serious issue with many non-Astros players.

If this leads to all drums being removed from Baseball stadia (i.e. in Oakland and Cleveland), this will have all been worthwhile.
Can we ban cowbells (St. Petersburg) while we're at it?