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Well, MLB wanted the Yankee $$$$$...We were in the way.

Discussion in 'Houston Astros' started by Plowman, Jan 14, 2020.

  1. justtxyank

    justtxyank Contributing Member

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    Yes, why aren't sports commentators talking about issues more important than whether people in a sports league cheated.
     
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  2. justtxyank

    justtxyank Contributing Member

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    This is preposterous.

    The Red Sox are going to get hit as well and Manfred has a great relationship with the Red Sox owner. Manfred also has a personal relationship with Jim Crane.

    The idea they wanted to do this is simply ridiculous. Manfred tried to sweep this under the rug the last time it came up.
     
  3. JayGoogle

    JayGoogle Member

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    I think your argument is different from what is being argued.

    Whether the players thought it helped is different from whether it did help.

    Unless there is proof of them doing it on the road...the numbers are clear. It didn't help.
     
  4. justtxyank

    justtxyank Contributing Member

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    The numbers aren't clear because there's too much variance still in the sample.

    Was it harder to get the signs against certain pitchers? Did they use it in every at bat? How many at bats before they started it at home? Were there stretches in the season where they couldn't use it? Did they get more comfortable with it as the season went on? Was it more effective against guys with breaking balls than guys with changeups?

    There's no way to break it down into simply home/road splits because of the already high level of variance in baseball numbers.
     
  5. mikol13

    mikol13 Protector of the Realm
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    The home/road splits clearly show that the team was hitting much better on the road in 2017. I’m not saying it never helped at home, but maybe it didn’t help like they thought it should have.

    By no means am I saying it was ok with what they were doing, but I think there is something to the “it didn’t help all that much” overall.

    That said, home/road splits in the playoffs were clearly different. So it’s hard to say whether or not the benefit was from the cheating or just being at home. Further, too many people forgetting that the team won the WS on the road, so...
     
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  6. mikol13

    mikol13 Protector of the Realm
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    You’re a smart guy and I agree with a lot of what you say, but the variance argument doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. The splits absolutely matter if they were not cheating on the road.
     
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  7. JayGoogle

    JayGoogle Member

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    That's fair, but I still think it is a different conversation. It's clear the players liked doing it and Hinch thought it didn't help them anyway. I know for hitters there are some that simply do not want to be told, they go through their routine on the plate and having to worry about what the sign is simply isn't part of that routine. I think Major is wrong that it's just some fan thing, Hinch isn't a fan, I know I've seen hitters talk about it in regards to regular sign stealing too that it can be more of a distraction...this isn't even getting into the team distraction that the team had to go through to hide it.

    With the home/road thing though we are assuming they simply didn't have it at all on the road. Unless there is more evidence out there I think its a safe assumption. They played better on the road for a duration of the season and that's a large sample size. Sure it could be a number of other factors but these other factors are also at play at home games. The only difference is being at home or on the road. Maybe they've run into worse pitchers on the road, that could be a thing.

    One thing I can say is that people are going overboard with this. I'm not saying you are but the general response seems to be that this made the Astros what they are. That Altuve wouldn't be an MVP player with this or Springer wouldn't or Correa or Bregman...as if these aren't all terrific players. It's at the point where people suspect Altuve cheated on a walk-off homerun that everyone agreed (even Yankee fans at the time) that Chapman hung a bad pitch.

    If this made the Astros better I guess we'll find out this year. Their pitching is not going to be as great since they've lost Cole but they still should have the offense to compete with anyone.
     
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  8. justtxyank

    justtxyank Contributing Member

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    The variance thing means the splits aren't definitive.

    There are other factors that I can't deduce from splits. Did they face better pitching on the road or at home? Did they use it for entire games?
     
  9. JayGoogle

    JayGoogle Member

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    People are forgetting a lot of things. Yankees fans think they win in 2017...but they seem to forget their offense didn't travel at ALL that series.

    They scored 3...3 runs in MMP that series. THREE. 0 in game 7. THREE RUNS. There is no argument for the Yankees there. If they had stolen a game at MMP then sure, but they didn't, Stros had HFA and only had to win their home games...and they did. Yankees couldn't get runs in that park, unless they can find that our pitchers were cheating too, they have no real argument.
     
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  10. mikol13

    mikol13 Protector of the Realm
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    Yeah but we are talking about 81 games home and road each. Variance is all over the place on both sides. It’s pretty safe to say they faced pretty much the same types of things home and road. I almost feel like you’re helping my thoughts on this.
     
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  11. intergalactic

    intergalactic Contributing Member

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    Lots of teams could do that analysis if the stats were available. But they will never be publicized because the reporters are doing their darnedest to keep this as a morality tale. The more this becomes a story about numbers, the less relevant reporters' hot takes about good and evil become. There is an element in this about old-fashioned sportswriters' hate of analytics. Analytics interfere with their freedom to write narratives, so the Astros are their enemy number one. You can see this hate from the off-topic potshots we keep getting about Taubman, Osuna, and other hearsay.
     
  12. justtxyank

    justtxyank Contributing Member

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    I don't think the Astros were "made" by this. I'll specifically look at the 2017 postseason here.

    1) The Astros were better than the Yankees. Their sign stealing may have helped in an at bat or two, but really the Yankees simply couldn't hit the Astros pitching
    2) The Dodgers I think have an interesting case. Kershaw was lights out in game 1, comes back in game 5 at Minute Maid and the Astros are laying off his pitches and he gets rocked. Yu Darvish starts Game 3 in Minute Maid, after pitching well against the Astros that year as a Ranger and thus far in the postseason. He gets ROCKED. The Astros say he was tipping pitches, but the Dodgers hired an outside consulting firm that couldn't find any pitch tipping. This got in his head (by his own admission) and he lost his mechanics.

    I am not definitively saying the Astros cheated to win that WS but I think it's plausible.
     
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  13. seemoreroyals

    seemoreroyals Member

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    One of my best friends is a huge Angels fans. He has been texting me as of late sarcastically in regards to the Astros situation. As if the Angels don't have their own problems to deal with. I texted him this morning when I read the article on Yahoo in regards to the rumor that Trout has been doing HGH. I also reminded him about Tyler Skaggs. At some point the MLB is going to come down on his team. There is not a team out there that is pristine and without some sort of skeleton in their closet. It just seems that it is okay right now to beat up on the Astros. At some point the sanctimonious media will move on to another bigger story but in the meantime they are going to beat the hell out of this horse as long as they can.
     
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  14. justtxyank

    justtxyank Contributing Member

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    Except there are extreme variances in home/road splits every year that don't make sense. So you are starting from a point with high variance. Maybe the splits would have been even worse without the cheating.
     
  15. justtxyank

    justtxyank Contributing Member

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    No team is "pristine" because teams are just a collection of human beings.

    With that said, the Skaggs situation is a worse "life" situation than anything going on with the Astros. No question. From a sports perspective though the Astros situation is worse.
     
  16. RiceRocket1

    RiceRocket1 Member

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    I doubt they do anything to the Red Sox. They will be satisfied that Cora got fired and let it go.

    If they wanted to sweep the whole thing under the rug, they could have. If they wanted a reckoning, they should have done a league wide investigation and then come out with results/punishments. The fact that they came down on the Astros without investigating other teams is a clear case of singling out one organization.
     
  17. JayGoogle

    JayGoogle Member

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    The Yankees case annoys me and it's all I've been hearing about because Yankees fans have been so loud about it but...

    I actually agree with the Dodgers case, it is extremely plausible. Because yeah, the Astros hit two really good pitchers...destroyed really good pitching at home and didn't on the road and the Dodgers can say that yeah, maybe Kershaw wins that game, the Stros had an advantage, that much can be sure. No one should say they did not. While not every Astro player used the signs+camera...the option was there for them to do so. Having the information is better than not having it.

    While Astro fans can say "Still beat you on the road in game 7." I think Dodgers fans are right to reply that maybe there isn't even a game 7 and we'll really never know how much it helped or didn't...but there was certainly a benefit because the Astros had the option of using it in the first place.
     
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  18. seemoreroyals

    seemoreroyals Member

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    In addition to winning game 7 in LA, didn't Marwin Gonzales series changing home run against their closer come in LA as well?
     
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  19. justtxyank

    justtxyank Contributing Member

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    Yes it did.

    Nobody is denying that the Astros were a good team. They could/can beat anyone on any given day on a level playing field.
     
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  20. JayGoogle

    JayGoogle Member

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    Yeah, but still, we'll never know. I'm not saying that the Dodgers win if there is no cheating...but I think Dodger fans have a case for it.

    I think the Astros could have won fair and square but they did not...and yes, the Dodger's pitchers have a history outside of that series of basically folding up or 'choking' in big moments...still though the option was there for the Astros to know the signs and if it helped on even one pitch (in a series that was extremely close) then Dodgers and their fans are right to say they should have won it.

    I'm not for taking rings away or anything though. I think it is pointless to do so and then you'd also have to go back in time and take things away from PED users too.
     

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