The Athletic: The Astros stole signs electronically in 2017 part of a much broader issue for Major League Baseball
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Starting pitchers with nothing to do while they are on the bench could have been very involved in the transmission of the signals. Morton could have been stationed at the garbage can, we don't really know.
Granted immunity.
This seems like a less that optimal approach by MLB. At the very least, I'd think you would've wanted all investigations complete and punishments ready to go, at once. Bit by bit... dribble, dribble... doesn't seem like it's going to be very good for the game.
Players would have the right to appeal. And the MLBPA would fight it.
There is also the chance that a punished player would air allegations against other organizations due his appeal.
Now the clock is ticking on Beltran. I don't expect him to go, but it is in the realm of possibility.
Mets will need to make a statement.
Mets will need to make a statement.
I'd be shocked if Beltran goes. Completely different situation as the Mets weren't going to lose him due to any disciplinary action and with that in mind I would expect a minimal mention of this from the Mets.
Beltran should publicly address this ASAP, otherwise the doubt/shadow will be with him forever. He's basically has to say he screwed up and took legal sign stealing a place too far.
The Mets can say they knew nothing, and have history on their side.
The Mets can say they knew nothing, and have history on their side.
Let’s face it, the Mets probably cheated too but they suck so bad they couldn’t even do that right.
I read somewhere that Hinch and BVW were friends/teamates at Stanford. You think BVW asked Hinch about Beltran and his strengths and weaknesses as part of his due dligence?
Yes, they are even closer than that, college roommates and BVW was Hinch's agent.
Without casting aspersions, I would think as friends, and given what we are told was Hinch's deep aversion to the dark conspiracy, he may have confided certain secrets with BVW.
This video is circulating all over now and WFAN has been talking about it non-stop today.
Andy Martino from SNY asked MLB if they are thinking about asking the Yankees questions as a result of this video and the 2019 Yankees and they said no.
Why not just ask questions (wishful thinking)?
Bottom line is MLB let all the players use the video rooms to look at their swings and just hoped that no one would look at the catchers signs while they were looking at their swings. And then finally come playoff time they worry people are using this for signals and start manning the rooms? How naive.
The whole thing is ridiculous and such a huge overreaction.
Andy Martino from SNY asked MLB if they are thinking about asking the Yankees questions as a result of this video and the 2019 Yankees and they said no.
Why not just ask questions (wishful thinking)?
Bottom line is MLB let all the players use the video rooms to look at their swings and just hoped that no one would look at the catchers signs while they were looking at their swings. And then finally come playoff time they worry people are using this for signals and start manning the rooms? How naive.
The whole thing is ridiculous and such a huge overreaction.
Because Beltran got named in the report and he was hired by the Yankees a year later. Seems like a lot of Yankee fans(not you or anyone on the board but my friends and co-workers) and former players like CC are sticking their chest out like they are clean in this. All it takes is a couple of disgruntled former players/staff members to go talk to a reporter and the Yankees or any other club is in the same boat.
I wouldn't be surprised to see MLB ban those video rooms entirely. Make managers choose to challenge based on what they see with their (and their team's) eyes. Make players wait until after the game to review their ABs.
Yep, we have been seeing it for awhile.
That video looks more damning for Cora than anything.
CC Sabathia keeps running his mouth, conveniently forgetting the role A-Rod played in his only championship.
Seems perfectly reasonable.
Also - I don't know if something like this exists already... but you could implement a rule where a manager needs to issue a challenge within 10 seconds after a call is made (might be a good idea for the NFL, while we're at it).
Challenges should be made as reactions to those situations (back in the day) when the ump/ref would make a call and the entire dugout/sideline would explode cursing him and yelling about what a bad call it was... not after 30 intense seconds or more of replay scrutinizing and hoping to get the flag out before the next pitch/snap.
Because MLB doesn't want to open the can of worms that would lead to. If they ask Beltran if he helped the Yankees steal signs in 2019, his answer might very well be "yes, but by the way I know for a fact that [Team X] was also stealing our signs when we played them." Then MLB goes and asks the manager or bench coach of Team X the same question, which leads them to Team Y, Team Z, etc. and all of a sudden MLB is faced with neverending investigations and the prospect of having to suspend a majority of the managers or bench coaches in the league.
Or, they ask the question and Beltran says "nope, Cora was just joking around or thought we were doing something we weren't." But before asking the question at all MLB has to be prepared for if the answer is the former, not the latter, and I don't think that's a road they want to go down.
Bottom line - I would be pretty surprised if MLB issues any more retroactive discipline for sign-stealing, or even investigates any other teams, after they issue whatever punishment they are going to issue against the Sox.
Holy Shit. Marwin Gonzalez. Look at his 2017 vs the rest of his career:
https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/g/gonzama01.shtml
Cora outlasted him. He just kept replacing the broken monitors until Hinch gave in.
I think what it would take for MLB to investigate another team like the Yankees would be specific allegations by former players or coaches, much like the ones that appeared in the Athletic article about the Red Sox. In that case, Manfred would be forced to investigate and impose discipline.
I'm still shocked that other owners (or at least some of them) thought the Astros got off lightly. It's concerning simply because a league cannot survive if it's going to implement death penalty style penalties for every single infraction. I am glad that Manfred made it clear to the owners that they keep their opinions to themselves.
I thought about this and almost posted myself but the truth is that the cheating went so deep, I wouldn't doubt for half a second that they had a road strategy as well.
Don't you think that would have come up in the report though? They seemed to give the players complete immunity to talk about anything
Jessica Mendoza is taking serious heat for the following quote.
View: https://twitter.com/GolicAndWingo/status/1217790957091000321?s=19
View: https://twitter.com/GolicAndWingo/status/1217790957091000321?s=19
Re: Marwin Gonzalez, I'm curious what people here think about the impact of sign stealing on player performance. Given that the other team would usually figure out their signs are being stolen and switch them up, and testimony from some players that they prefer not to know what is coming, I tend to think it's not as impactful as some in the media are suggesting.
I would think that steroids, HGH and possibly even altered equipment like corked bats would probably be more performance enhancing than sign stealing would be.
I would think that steroids, HGH and possibly even altered equipment like corked bats would probably be more performance enhancing than sign stealing would be.
Yes, the real problem here is that we know about this! We should have just allowed it to metastasize instead.
Good to see that even she can be One Of The Guys and circle the wagons. Says good things about her career, even if it says bad things about her professional cohort.
There is an article by Will Leitch, the founder of Deadspin, in today's WAPO, in which he says, "Suspending individual, active players for cheating almost certainly would have opened a fight with the union, stirring questions about whether executives or players are more responsible for cheating scandals such as this one (particularly because it appears Manfred went light on the Astros’ owner, Jim Crane).
I get that the union fights suspensions all the time. But if it can be shown beyond any doubt that player X was heavily involved in a flat-out cheating scandal, on what grounds would the MLBPA have to fight?
I think the key issue here is that management had to support and allow this to happen. It brings up a hypothetical for me that I'm not sure of the answer to. If 20 years ago, managers and GMs created a performance cocktail of steroids and gave it to their players along with their training routines, would any players have been suspended? Or would the managers have been? Assume they didn't bring any outside steroids in the dugout, just team sponsored.
Well the correct response to this current situation is that both management AND players involve should be suspended. I mean if my immediate supervisor allowed me to embezzle money and the Feds and my company's ownership found out about it, both my immediate supervisor AND I should both be fired and/or prosecuted. Your immediate supervisor letting you cheat doesn't mean you shouldn't still get punished. The players KNEW this was wrong.
One is a crime though and one is cheating to hit a baseball. Though, I guess, so is doing steroids.
My feeling here is that hitting the easy button for the players is the right decision. It would be too messy to figure out which players participated, where to draw the lines, and how to decide punishment. Plus, with the CBA negotiations coming up, I can't imagine this would do anything except fracture the sport.
Management should be held to higher standards than the players. There is also a culture in baseball that if the coaches are doing something, you follow along.
Figuring which players were more deeply involved than others could easily open up a can of worms. Are you going to suspend the guy who was at the plate when the trash cans were banged? Appeals would drag out and the possibility of suspended players airing dirty laundry on other teams would be high. Manfred wants this to go away now that the message has been sent.
Figuring which players were more deeply involved than others could easily open up a can of worms. Are you going to suspend the guy who was at the plate when the trash cans were banged? Appeals would drag out and the possibility of suspended players airing dirty laundry on other teams would be high. Manfred wants this to go away now that the message has been sent.
Totally agree that it's WAY messier to go after players - I mean, how do you separate the cheaters from the really bad cheaters?
But the point remains, the MLBPA...if they know that player X has actually cheated, on what grounds would they fight a suspension? Hey their boss allowed it to happen so even though you're suspending the boss for it you can't suspend the player?
Makes no sense.
The bolded is 100% the key, in my mind. We've already seen some players noting that this stuff happened on virtually every team - just imagine how much more widespread those accusations would get if players were actually litigating suspensions. As @lexrageorge says, Manfred's goal here is NOT to provide a full, comprehensive analysis of the scope and extent of the issue over the past 3 or so years (even though I actually think that would be the best for the game of baseball) - it's to levy heavy punishment on teams that have been specifically raised in news reports as a sign to all teams that he's not fucking around on this issue going forward.
There weren't any players suspended for doing steroids 20 years ago. MLB essentially gave a pardon to all of it's players and created a ridiculous "from here forward" policy. Who's to same some level of management (whether coaches, trainers, etc.) went beyond a level of complacency to endorsing or introducing players to connections? We've seen it in many others sports: Salazar with The Oregon Project, Johan Bruyneel with the US Postal cycling team, Dennis Mitchell and Justin Gatlin.
Here's the basic problem with all of this:
MLB (and every other league) knows that each and every one of their teams does something that goes beyond the grey area in order to gain an edge. (Oops, sorry, meant to say that each and every one of their teams -- except the sainted Yankees.) The spot hopes that by doing this perp walk f the Astros, and the residual fallout, they'll get the other franchises (except the sainted Yankees) to stop on their volition, and avoid blowing this apart even further.
Because, if they were truly serious about erasing this stain on the game, they'd be investigating every team (except the sainted Yankees) and acting on each and every offense, and to make those punishments public. But MLB has a strong incentive for not wanting to do that, obviously, so make the Astros the sole bad guys in this to focus public opinion only on one franchise -- much the way the NFL has convinced a large segment of fans that only the Patriots cheat.
It's a con game to avoid letting business and consumer customers see how the sausage is made across the sport.
Except for the sainted Yankees.
MLB (and every other league) knows that each and every one of their teams does something that goes beyond the grey area in order to gain an edge. (Oops, sorry, meant to say that each and every one of their teams -- except the sainted Yankees.) The spot hopes that by doing this perp walk f the Astros, and the residual fallout, they'll get the other franchises (except the sainted Yankees) to stop on their volition, and avoid blowing this apart even further.
Because, if they were truly serious about erasing this stain on the game, they'd be investigating every team (except the sainted Yankees) and acting on each and every offense, and to make those punishments public. But MLB has a strong incentive for not wanting to do that, obviously, so make the Astros the sole bad guys in this to focus public opinion only on one franchise -- much the way the NFL has convinced a large segment of fans that only the Patriots cheat.
It's a con game to avoid letting business and consumer customers see how the sausage is made across the sport.
Except for the sainted Yankees.
I know the Sox are in trouble here too, and I hate that this is a thing in MLB, but come on....isn't this unbelievably interesting now that we're...here?
This is all just so stupid. Congrats to MLB for finally making it into the headlines in the offseason!
And everyone knew Chapman was throwing another one of his shitty sliders to Altuve.
And everyone knew Chapman was throwing another one of his shitty sliders to Altuve.
Pretty sure Jomboy had something like this months ago (maybe pics that looked like some contraption on their arms/legs?). If this person has proof (she says in another tweet she has pics), ooooh boy. This is something else. Also the clip of Altuve yelling "don't rip off my jersey" after the 2019 ALCS maybe makes a little more sense (he initially said that his wife told him not to have it ripped off)?
I posted this in the sign stealing thread on the main board.
Before we all get too far ahead of ourselves here:
Marly Rivera @MarlyRiveraESPN
13m
The Beltrán family told me that this individual, who claims to be Carlos Beltrán's "niece", is not related to the family in any way. This person may or may not have additional information about the Houston Astros’ sign-stealing scandal, but they are not related to the Beltráns.
Marly Rivera from ESPN tweeted:
The Beltrán family told me that this individual, who claims to be Carlos Beltrán's "niece", is not related to the family in any way. This person may or may not have additional information about the Houston Astros’ sign-stealing scandal, but they are not related to the Beltráns.
Before we all get too far ahead of ourselves here:
Marly Rivera @MarlyRiveraESPN
13m
The Beltrán family told me that this individual, who claims to be Carlos Beltrán's "niece", is not related to the family in any way. This person may or may not have additional information about the Houston Astros’ sign-stealing scandal, but they are not related to the Beltráns.
Marly Rivera from ESPN tweeted:
The Beltrán family told me that this individual, who claims to be Carlos Beltrán's "niece", is not related to the family in any way. This person may or may not have additional information about the Houston Astros’ sign-stealing scandal, but they are not related to the Beltráns.