This video interview doesnt look the same as the quotes read on paper. On paper, they read very straight, pointed, and matter of fact. Video looks like some nervousness coming from him imo. **disclaimer - Am I grasping at straws? Sure, but I'm a fan. What left do we have to do here. Also, just an opinion, not stating as a fact.
I don’t know, I think if a player from any other team came out and layed out the exact method used, those teams would get just as much media blasting. NY and Boston maybe even worse than what the Astros are getting. The reason the Boston and Yankee incidents in 2017 got less attention is because it was caught in the regular season and neither of them won anything. Nobody cares about the runners up after the fact. If the Red Sox won in 2017 and David Price came out Mike Fiers style we’d be hearing about it. I don’t think any of these teams are clean but unfortunately the snitch came from our camp. Not surprised that the media is jumping on it. That’s what they do.
Is it just me, or is this taking a bit longer than it should? I feel like by now someone would have talked or something would have been found. Good sign that nothing conclusive has been found (yet)?
Don't have a subscription for the full article but glad to see they aren't giving Manfred a pass on his statement yesterday.
I’m curious about what brought on the witch hunt and the timing of all this? Is it just Success? I mean we didn’t three-peat
No ****- it's not like we're the Patriots. At this rate, we're going to be the Royals if they take away our GM. ****ing sucks, I'm so pissed about it.
Combination of success, disgruntled former employees (Drelich, Fiers), and a newish-news outlet who wanted to publicize a sexy story and gain more subscribers. Can't say they were off-base that this wouldn't catch on as a major story...
Form the Athletic, Rosenthal without Drellich... The league realistically cannot uncover every sign-stealing infraction by every club, but the notion that the Astros were the sole offender is difficult to believe. Is it possible the Astros were the most flagrant violators? Of course. But the risk in making an example of the Astros is that other franchises almost certainly stole signs illegally. Baseball potentially would face accusations of selective punishment. Evan and I reported on the Astros because the information we had was on the Astros. We also heard — and continue to hear — about possible violations by a number of other clubs. But hearing is one thing; confirming is another. Not a fan of everything Rosenthal writes (too romantic about how things use to be done for my taste), but he's usually fair. Not a fan of Drellich as he was too negative about Astros tanking operation.
It wasn't a witch hunt. The Astros cheated. Other teams cheated. Astros were likely the best or one of the best, and were pretty blatant about it. They were able to get sources with inside information on Astros (Fiers, and people who corroborated story) to snitch. Other teams haven't had snitches. The question shouldn't be why the Athletic went after the Astros, they are a news organization and this is news...it should be why sources with inside information snitched on the Astros while potential sources from other teams didn't snitch on them. My suspicion is Drellich went to Fiers and likely other people he knew that were upset with the Astros to get information. Regarding timing, there has been a lot of rumors about Astros among other teams for a while. 2017 playoffs were riddled with paranoia about sign stealing such that the mound visit rule was added the following season as games were getting annoyingly long due to among other things all the mound visits to change signs.
Color me shocked that THIS is the time Drellich decides not to add his name to a Rosenthal piece. Bet your bottom dollar that he'll be back for the next article that implicates the Astros solely.
This is what I find most perplexing about the Astros' cheating. It's not that surprising that the org broke the rules with the intent of achieving a competitive advantage. However, it appears that whatever advantage the Astros obtained was so minimal that it's practically imperceptible when digging into the stats. Why open yourself up to getting hammered by the MLB for such apparently small upside? Were the Astros somehow also stealing signs on the road and that's why it's so hard to find the benefit in these stats? https://blogs.fangraphs.com/how-much-did-the-astros-really-benefit-from-sign-stealing/
Think the advantage was huge and translates. The fact that nobody blew them in until the media discovered it tells you that nobody in the league really cared. There were more than enough potential whistleblowers out there. But it doesn't make it right. Steroids flew under the radar as well and everyone knew what was going on. Knowing the pitch is a big deal. It explains why we were so good. And to think they didn't do something similar on the road would be naïve. They were doing it so well they took counter measures to make sure the other teams weren't doing it to them. That's Macbeth. Tragic flaw. Ambition. The key to any crime is not to tell anyone, and therein lies the big mistake here, the crime involved communication with everyone on the team to work. Epic fail. Classic case of thinking if everyone is doing it then it must be ok for me to do it. Nobody learned anything from the steroid era.
LOL the poster above you literally just said the advantage was minimal. High risk low reward. Astros were already a really talented team and didn't really need the whole sign stealing thing as shown by their road dominance.
[538] If The Astros Stole Signs, How Much Did It Help Them? [...] In almost every respect, the Astros performed better on the road than at home in 2017. The only aspects where they saw better results at home were when taking breaking balls and taking pitches out of the zone. They were around 20 runs better at home than on the road when they spit on a breaking ball or if the pitch was out of the zone. Considering all the data we’ve seen so far, that might be the one area where the Astros truly benefited from their sign-stealing system, and it earned them maybe a couple of extra wins in 2017. There are so many factors at play, it’s nearly impossible to isolate the effects the Astros’ sign-stealing had on their performance. The fact that they continued to use this scheme throughout the year tells me they found some benefit, even if it’s hard to determine exactly what it was from the data. In the end, the Astros improved across the board in 2017, leading to their first World Series in franchise history. That championship was fueled by new talent, player development, and possibly cheating. It’s likely some combination of the three, and the data is murky enough to leave it at that for now.