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Astros stole signs electronically in 2017

Banedon

By Banedon,
in General Baseball Talk

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Sammy Sofa GOAT

Sammy Sofa

Old-Timey Member
Posted
Posted

it would be so categorically boneheaded to exploit such a clear advantage to that degree, it'd be unquestionably solved in short order

 

i mean common sense would be just utilizing it in leverage situations...or who knows, maybe they were like the Price is Right Perfect Bid guy just doing it every pitch and 200 loud trash can bangs every home game went largely unnoticed to all and it actually had no tangible benefit anyway

 

Literally nobody here is denying they cheated.

 

The point that in a game rife with cheating at all times, especially this specific cheat, they just got busted on their particular method of cheating. It's faulty, IMO, to assume that their brand of stealing signal cheating was significantly more effective than other teams' brands of stealing signal cheating, and it's especially faulty to think this is some exceptional case, and that MLB will do much of anything about it.

I disagree with this. Do teams try and pick up signs/pitch tipping, sure. But they’re doing it when a guy gets on 2B or in pre-game video hoping to find something or a guy on the bench in game. I don’t think many, if any, teams have a camera fixed on a catcher’s signs with a closed circuit TV in the dugout to relay the info to the hitter every game. That’s just brazen and on another level and is somewhat backed by the stories we hear about people and players being shocked at the lengths they Astros have gone to cheat. All teams attempt to steal signs/signals (mostly “the right way”), I doubt many teams actually accomplish this more than a few times over the course of a year. The Astros presumably had the ability to do it for every home game at a level nobody does it at.

 

But that's the thing with baseball: cheating scandals always end up being exposed by the team and/or players out of SO DAMN MANY who were ultimately doing it best or the most. Like, it's NEVER an isolated trend or incident. I honestly look at players griping as being a tomayto/tomahto situation of some people looking it as guys genuinely outraged over the sanctity of their sport or whatever, and people like me who look at them as more being pissed that the Astros got away with doing an "accepted" form of cheating so well and to that scope. Like, "horsefeathers, my team(s) didn't try half as hard to give us the grey area (at best) advantage that pretty much all of us want and would accept at any time." I don't believe for a second that there's not another team out there who wouldn't do the same thing if they could, or have attempted it in the past along these lines or, hell, were doing it through last year and just weren't as good a team and didn't get caught. I genuinely feel like nobody in pro baseball can take some kind of high ground on this, and I think a lot of the fans doing the same are doing with some serious willful blinders on.

 

I don’t think they should be given some huge punishment. Take some picks away, fine the team and players who were doing it (if that can be proven), fire and/or potentially ban the team coaches/employees who carried it out and put in better protocols to make sure this level of cheating can’t happen again.

 

I'd be stunned if it hits the levels of how the Cards were punished for their hacking escapades, much less exceeds it.

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entbird79 College Ball

entbird79

Old-Timey Member
Posted
Posted

 

Literally nobody here is denying they cheated.

 

The point that in a game rife with cheating at all times, especially this specific cheat, they just got busted on their particular method of cheating. It's faulty, IMO, to assume that their brand of stealing signal cheating was significantly more effective than other teams' brands of stealing signal cheating, and it's especially faulty to think this is some exceptional case, and that MLB will do much of anything about it.

 

We do that all the time...get over it!

 

RTS2RLEG_xiox8n

JudasIscariotTheBird Myrtle Beach Pelicans

JudasIscariotTheBird

Old-Timey Member
Posted
Posted

 

Right, but this kind of epitomizes why this won't really be a thing. Besides that it's something pretty much everyone is doing or trying to do in one way or another, and how the numbers don't really play out to this being this amazing advantage for the Astros, that so much of it will come down to things like "LOOK AT THIS REALLY GOOD HITTER CRUSH A TERRIBLE PITCH...also there's the bang" isn't going to give it a whole lot of traction. Like, it would be far more effective to show normally mediocre or lousy hitters having spikes and doing unusual amounts of damage, which we won't get a lot of because it's the Astros and they're mostly really good with or without the "cheating." I guess it would be a Bonds-type of situation in terms of trying to find a line where they went from "just" a great team to freakishly great.

 

Plus MLB has no real motivation to do much of anything about it, and the other teams don't have any real motivation, or a leg to stand on, to make it a big deal.

..are you trying to reenact the Chapelle Show jury selection sketch here

 

http://giphygifs.s3.amazonaws.com/media/ERtBRlvXktZwk/giphy.gif

Sammy Sofa GOAT

Sammy Sofa

Old-Timey Member
Posted
Posted
[tweet]
[/tweet]

 

I posted a link earlier in the thread showing how much better the Astros were against sliders than everyone else the last 3 years. Guess who the only other team with a positive run value against sliders was?

 

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Andy GOAT

Andy

Old-Timey Member
Posted
Posted

 

This could be awesome.

It's already been posted to the Dodgers' Reddit page:

 

Lots of interesting thoughts in there.

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