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New yankee sign stealing info?

Discussion in 'Houston Astros' started by Htown Legend, Jun 13, 2020.

  1. DCRocket

    DCRocket Member

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  2. JayGoogle

    JayGoogle Member

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    Yep, we have to play heels for this season.

    Maybe years from now when it is less relevant we'll learn that other teams stole signs as well and the Astros can get a bit of vindication because I don't see the MLB looking too deep into anything else. It would be too much egg on Manfred's face right now to admit to any other team doing it. They want this swept under the rug and besides having a heel this hot is good for business.

    Look what will be the top sports story today leading into a primetime matchup on ESPN.
     
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  3. msn

    msn Member

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    Too bad all our pitchers are hurt, then. Crappy luck. If the Astros have to be villains, I'd prefer they be villains that kick everyone else's asses ruthlessly. Take no prisoners, make no apologies.

    Instead we have to watch a bunch of teenagers get pummeled 5 or 6 innings a night. :-(
     
  4. rocketsjudoka

    rocketsjudoka Contributing Member
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    I'm pretty sure it's going to come out that nearly all of the MLB teams have cheating at some level. This will be like steroids. Because the Stros won and beat media darlings the Yankees, Dodgers and Red Sox they are the sacrificial lamb.

    Note there hasn't been much talk or anger about the 2018 Red Sox.
     
  5. Nick

    Nick Contributing Member

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    Because the Red Sox players refused to say anything... and they were able to pin it all on the video room guy as a unified front.
     
  6. msn

    msn Member

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    Shame on every sheep that fell for that act.
     
  7. Nick

    Nick Contributing Member

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    Well, they did have months of preparation by seeing what the fallout was from the Astros investigation.

    My guess is that Manfred did threaten either to strip the title or force Crane to sell, which led to full cooperation. Once that precedent was set (the the Astros would not be stripped of the title), would be hard to invoke the same potential threat to the Red Sox without looking foolish.

    But in the end Manfred continues to look incompetent regardless.
     
  8. Rock Block

    Rock Block Sorta here sometimes
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    Yea and they had no rat. Who knows maybe they will later but this is most moronic excuse and not for a minute do I think Manfred believes it but he was going to squash this scandal evident by the Friday news dump on NFL draft day. The media not calling Manfred out on this bologna just shows the shills they are.
     
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  9. Nick

    Nick Contributing Member

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    The Astros probably could have denied it and said Fiers is full of ****... and the internet warriors who think they heard something would have the same impact as all these recent Yankee videos coming out that show an illegal camera... and it would have possibly ended up in the Apple Watch category of 'scandal'.

    Of course the risk of not coming clean is the ultimate death penalty (title stripped, team owner banned, etc.) should further evidence be found against the team... thus they came clean (after being granted immunity) and said everything. But in the end, did MLB actually uncover anything that wasn't fed to them in testimony?
     
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  10. rocketsjudoka

    rocketsjudoka Contributing Member
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    That doesn't explain that sports talking heads aren't going as hard at the Red Sox as the Astros. It makes them look even more guilty.
     
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  11. Nick

    Nick Contributing Member

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    Well, Houston is a weak sports market. Its a transplant city with less generational fans. Yes, its a top 10 media market so they can't completely ignore the city altogether... but nobody has any fear of insulting a Houstonian vs. antagonizing Red Sox/Patriots/Yankees diehards.
     
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  12. msn

    msn Member

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    I wish people actually feared not doing the right thing. You know, because it's the right thing.
     
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  13. cmoak1982

    cmoak1982 Member
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    Agreed and we have soft ass media that won’t call anyone out from those markets
     
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  14. conquistador#11

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    when it's mentioned they quickly point out that it was the video guy, like somehow he was doing it all out for his own pleasure.
    Saw a brian mctaggart tweet replying to one of us fans saying if we were expecting for him to put another team on blast, 'look elsewhere' i.e don't bother my tweets. In a way, I've learned to love Adam Clanton's purpose again. Don't get me wrong, I feel Clanton was headed towards that Clay Travis dark path, but being paired up with sexy Wexy has brought him back down to earth. He's just a misunderstood friendly passionate troll.As for mctaggart :
    [​IMG]
     
    #454 conquistador#11, Jul 29, 2020
    Last edited: Jul 29, 2020
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  15. Rock Block

    Rock Block Sorta here sometimes
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    Yep. I posted in the Title Tainted thread to deny it. Screw Fiers, prove it! However on the other hand if they do dig it up you're super f*cked.
     
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  16. marks0223

    marks0223 2017 and 2022 World Series Champions
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  17. JayGoogle

    JayGoogle Member

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    Why in the top of the 9th of this Sea/LAA game they are talking about stripping away the title from the Astros?

    I mean...it's just so random, we really do live rent free in their minds. I'm fine with them stripping away the title actually, ONLY if they also strip away all titles involved with PEDs and Steroids.
     
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  18. PhiSlammaJamma

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    I re-read how the Hinch Stole Christmas, and it turns out, he has a heart of gold.
     
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  19. J.R.

    J.R. Member

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    Now the commissioner can do it himself.

    Major League Baseball and the Players Association have agreed that players who steal signs electronically can be suspended without pay or service time, The Athletic has learned.

    MLB’s rules on the use of electronics and video grew significantly in the wake of penalties for the Astros and Red Sox, according to a review of the document by The Athletic and conversations with officials familiar with it. The league has newly hired an outside security firm to police the video replay room entrance and no later than next year plans to edit out the signs from the footage players look at in-game.

    But no alteration may be as significant as the league’s ability to discipline. Commissioner Rob Manfred has the hammer, although the union can always appeal his decisions.

    MLB’s choice this offseason to grant immunity to Astros and Red Sox players for electronic sign stealing garnered renewed attention Wednesday when Dodgers reliever Joe Kelly was suspended for eight games for throwing at the Astros’ Alex Bregman and taunting Carlos Correa. Kelly was said by some to be delivering the justice to Astros players that MLB did not.

    Whether MLB could have effectively administered that justice previously is a complicated question.

    Technically, Manfred could have attempted to suspend Astros players had he not granted them immunity during his office’s investigations. But the punishments might not have stood up to expected grievances from the MLBPA because the league and union never before agreed how these specific issues would be handled. In fact, Manfred had declared in 2017, well before the Astros and Red Sox investigations, that he would hold club officials, not players, accountable for sign stealing. (If Manfred, in fact, made a mistake in not seeking player punishments, then arguably that mistake was made well before this offseason.)

    Now everyone faces potential suspensions, and the rules continue to put the emphasis on the manager and general manager: “It is the responsibility of the Club’s top baseball operations official and field manager to ensure that all players, baseball operations staff and field staff understand the requirements.”

    There is no preset length of punishment for players who violate the rules. Precedents will develop over time, but this offseason’s happenings are not considered automatic baselines — not for players, at least.

    The fact that MLB did not punish Red Sox or Astros players is inadmissible as a defense for players moving forward. By the same token, the fact that Manfred suspended officials like Jeff Luhnow, A.J. Hinch and Alex Cora for a whole season also cannot influence the length of a player’s punishment.

    Typically, when a player is punished for misconduct such as brawls — or a pitcher throwing at a hitter a la Kelly — the commissioner’s office determines the punishment and hears the appeal. The union believes Kelly’s punishment to be heavy-handed, but his appeal will arrive back at Manfred’s office.

    Sign-stealing investigations won’t be handled the same way. Instead, players have broader protection that they’re afforded in the collective bargaining agreement. They’ll be repped by the union during an investigation and have the right to appeal to a neutral arbitrator.

    The difference between regular on-field conduct and sign stealing also means that, for sign stealing, players can be suspended without pay. Players punished for standard on-field actions, as in Kelly’s case, are paid for the games they miss.

    If three or more individuals on one team are to be punished for sign stealing, MLB and the union will discuss a way to stagger the punishments so that a large swath of one team is not unavailable at the same time. The same provision exists for brawls, for example. In the rare instance that MLB has to suspend, say, 15 guys, it does not want to do so at once for competitive reasons.

    As for preventive measures designed to address rules teams have pushed or exploited, the new rules for 2020 are baseball’s strictest yet:

    • Video replay rooms, where an operator looks at video feeds and communicates with the dugout when a manager is weighing whether to challenge an umpire’s call, are intended to be on lockdown. The video room operator is prohibited from communicating with anyone during the game except for a manager or a coach regarding a challenge. If the video room operator “needs to leave the room during the game, he or she must be chaperoned, and must immediately return to the room for the remainder of the game.”

    • MLB has hired an outside security firm to watch clubhouses and the entrances to video rooms. While players have long been prohibited from checking their cellphones during games, it’s another thing to actually enforce that rule. For now, there’s one new guard per team, but MLB’s hope for next year is to expand to two when it is ideally safer to introduce more people to the clubhouse environment. “These are trained security people,” one person familiar with the policy said. “You tell them what’s allowed, what’s not allowed. They’re just third-party and they do their job: ‘No one’s allowed in or out of this room,’ and that’s it. And they’re also told to write down, and confront if necessary, any violations in the clubhouse themselves.”

    • For now, MLB still has “video room monitors” in place, as it did last year. Those are people who are physically inside the video replay room. Those people are to be supplemented, or perhaps replaced, by a camera inside the rooms. It’s unclear when those cameras will be up and running. Unlike the security personnel MLB just hired to be outside the room, the “video room monitors” in the past were local hires who might not have had a trained background. (And telling members of your favorite team not to do something illegal is probably easier with a trained background.)

    • Clubhouses have always had TVs on during games. This year, by Aug. 1, every TV in the clubhouse can show only an angle of the field that does not show signs. In the early days of this season, if such a feed is not already set up, the game has to be on a 15-second delay.

    • Players do not have communal video terminals to review at-bats or pitches during a game this year. That was established in this year’s operations manual and is largely a COVID-19 measure. Players gathering around and utilizing the same station isn’t particularly hygienic. Instead, players have iPads — which can be loaded with content only before and after games, not during them — provided by and monitored by the commissioner’s office. As soon as possible, MLB is to set up a system where players can access video on those iPads during games but with the signs edited out (i.e., a black box over them). MLB hopes it can get this system up and running for 2020, but it might have to wait until 2021.

    • No club personnel can tape from the stands using a handheld camera, including smartphones. At home ballparks, teams have plenty of stationary cameras installed, but they obviously don’t have the same range of cameras on the road. Some teams took to having a club official in the stands to make up for that fact, which didn’t sit well with every team. Even if the tape was being used for legitimate scouting purposes, as is always possible, the practice is now banned. (The same goes for setting up a stationary camera in another team’s park. MLB will still require every team to provide a list of the cameras it installs in its home park.)

    • Wearable devices such as buzzers are not directly addressed in the regulations. But they’re covered by the general ban on the use of “Electronic Devices or Visual Enhancement Devices during the game to identify, communicate or relay the opposing club’s signs or pitch information.”

    MLB distributed the rules to teams late on the night of the first game of the season, delayed by the many health and logistical questions league and union officials are grappling with. The rules were near completion for a long time, however. Before the U.S. arrival of COVID-19, MLB was hoping it could announce the punishment for the Red Sox at the same time it announced the regulations, a message of what was broken and how it might be fixed in one. Instead, the final haggling had to wait.

    Following suspensions and firings this offseason for electronic sign stealing, the rules reflect a sport playing catch-up.

    The imagination can still drum up ways teams can attempt to cheat. To stop a player from wearing a tiny buzzer on his body would be nearly impossible without a TSA-style scan before every at-bat, for example. But the potential of an egregious, clandestine effort to skirt the rules aside, MLB and the players union appeared to shore up the deficiencies around the place where the disappointing trend of electronic sign stealing took off: the video replay room.

    Ultimately, players now face what should be an added deterrent: They know the commissioner can suspend them.

    Technically, Manfred could still grant players immunity if he believes it would make an investigation most fruitful. But after this offseason, and even the Dodgers-Astros episode to start the 2020 season, he might be keen to wield his hammer.
     
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  20. lnchan

    lnchan Sugar Land Leonard

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    So will repeat offenders like the Yankees and Red Sox actually get punished more next time around?
     

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