Hinch's interview (text/transcript form) https://www.si.com/mlb/2020/02/07/aj-hinch-houston-astros-sign-stealing
I only skimmed through the transcript but he seems pretty adamant there was no cheating in 2019. Am I missing something or is Buster just trying to stir bullshit up?
Slimeballs. All of 'em. Good riddance. Forever stained...with all that slime draped over them. Sorry Jim. You were right. I was wrong.
So when are we gonna hear from any of the players, specifically Altuve and Springer because they seem like the most honest out of all them? I need answers damnit bc this whole cheating thing pisses me off.
All that interview did was give fuel to the buzzer conspiracist. If someone asks if I did something that I know I didn't do I'm going to say "f**k no I didn't do that", not that "no investigation found proof." I think I get why Hinch went that way. I don't think the Astros used buzzing devices and as far as Hinch knows, they weren't used but he could have a sliver of a doubt that some players could have done something without his knowledge so he doesn't want to go on record.
If Hinch continues to answer questions I’ll respect what he did today, but it’s looking more and more like he did the interview to control the narrative before the codebreaking article. Same thing Lance Armstrong did with Oprah to beat the investigative report to press. It’s looking more like that now. If he goes on the I’m done talking now rant think that’s why he talked to Verducci. If he responds to WSJ article I’ll give him kudos for at least being willing to deal openly with everything as it leaks and gets worse. Public now knows more details. Code breaker. Home and road. But it didn’t come from Hinch or the Astros. And there is still more to come. We have 2019 to spill and then we move to the pitchers. This is far from over. Still Breaking Bad. I don’t like it, but it’s going to get worse.
Ya know, honestly, I read this, and I've read about the whole situation in bits and pieces, and I'm still thinking "What exactly is so wrong about any of this?" A rule says it's not allowed. Don't use technology in probably the most technologically-packed place in any city at the moment that a game is going on. It's like the teacher stupidly leaving the questions to tomorrow's test on his desk in the classroom as he rushes to leave for the day, but with a sticky note attached saying "If found, don't read these." And then accusing a handful students of cheating when they do surprisingly well on the test. And getting their classmates who were were also cheating to testify against them, so nobody starts pointing out how incredibly stupid the teacher was. At a certain point, you've got to start saying, "Well, technically, yes, incredibly-low-effort successful cheating took place here, but maybe that's not the biggest problem we've got on our hands." A specific camera (of the tens of thousands of cameras in a ballpark) was used to gather information. Everything beyond that is just breaking a simple form of encryption, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. Only how the information was obtained is the issue, and to me that seems like a minor nitpick in the grand scheme of things. Thank God the people who make the actual encryption algorithms that suffuse all the technology of today's world don't say "Well, eh, this is good enough, and if it gets cracked, we'll just get the law involved, and that'll put a stop to all this."
I think it depends on how you view things. Is stealing signs part of the game? Should each player basically be able to encrypt/decrypt signs without getting things confused or crossed up? I personally don't consider this level of codebreaking to be part of the game, since it'll get to the point that everyone has a bunch of nerds staring at the monitor to decrypt the signs. Or alternately the catcher will walk to the pitcher for each individual pitch to communicate, at which point probably someone will have some kind of super special directional microphone to pick up what they are saying. Ideally MLB should probably come up with a plan to enable catcher/pitcher communication. Overall I thought Hinch did a good job of taking responsibility for things, without trying to blame someone else. His answer to the buzzer question was surprisingly poor though. Really would have been better if he could have straight up said it wasn't true, and that the investigations backed that up. The way he answered it definitely would make someone biased against the Astros to question it. I watched the condensed 18min version instead of the full 25 min version, so not sure if it was discussed, but it would have been interesting to ask why they stopped using the sign stealing system. The two obvious possibilities are #1 they found a better version than the trash can banging, or #2 they started believing it didn't help. Short of evidence to the contrary, I'm willing to hope the answer is #2, but if this whole thing was happening to the Yankees, I'd probably believe it was #1 by default
https://www.tampabay.com/sports/ray...-cheating-i-regret-not-doing-more-to-stop-it/ ST. PETERSBURG - Rays pitcher Charlie Morton was aware of the illegal sign-stealing by his then Astros teammates and said Saturday "I regret not doing more to stop it.'' Talking with Tampa Bay media about the scandal for the first time, Morton said the championship the Astros won in 2017 has been impacted. "I think the perception of that World Series was negatively affected, at minimum,'' Morton said. Morton was new to the Astros in 2017, and not the established star he is now which may have impacted what he could do or say about the scheme. ''I was aware of the banging. You could hear the banging. being in the dugout you could hear it. I don’t know when it dawned on me but you knew it was going on,'' Morton said. "Personally, I regret not doing more to stop it. I don’t know what that would have entailed. I think the actions would have been somewhat extreme to stop it. That’s a hypothetical.'' Morton also said: "I certainly have thought about it a lot because it negatively impacted the game, and people’s perception of the game, the fans, opposing players. And that doesn’t sit well with me. ... Where I was at the time, I don’t know where I was, because what’s wrong is wrong. And I’ll never be absolved of that.'' Morton said he couldn’t say if players should have been punished because there were different levels of involvement. He said the commissioner’s office did a “thorough” investigation and that he was not interviewed. He acknowledged there was something of a clubhouse code but didn’t want to talk much about why former Astro Mike Fiers came out publicly divulging details. Morton was with the Astros in 2018 and said that by the time he returned to Houston as a visitor for the first time with the Rays in August of 2019 he was confident the cheating had stopped. As to how he will view his former Astros teammates knowing they were caught cheating, Morton sounded forgiving. "From a personal standpoint, good people make mistakes. It’s as simple as that,'' he said. "I really don’t have anything else to say about it. I think mistakes were made and everybody is just trying to move on. I think it is one of those things where I know those guys, I went through a lot with those guys, so I feel like I have a little different perspective on who they are as opposed to someone that is just reading that the Astros cheated in 2017.”
Suspect that drip by drip more players will speak about what happened. Its going to be a long, painful season...
