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

This is my favorite of the arguments - random fans deciding it didn't help in order to justify their beliefs. If it was not helpful, why on earth did the players go through so much trouble to do it? Why did they keep doing it after being warned? Why did they keep doing it into 2018? Are they just a bunch of ****ing idiots?

 

TIL Hinch is a random fan.

 

The numbers that year too...they were better on the road. Even at plate discipline.

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/how-much-did-the-astros-really-benefit-from-sign-stealing/

Maybe they had some way of doing this on the road though.

 

Is Elias clean? You know he’s gotta be sweating at least a little. He was here when this was happening. Wonder if the Orioles fire him.

 

Agree...to a point. The same arguments were made for what the Patriots were doing, and, to your point, if it isn't helpful at all...why do it.

So, clearly it's helpful somewhat, or at least perceived to be (and, in baseball, just thinking you have an edge actually gives you one): the question is HOW helpful. I suspect only a little (or how did the Rockets not win nearly every home game?). Does that mean its not cheating? Not at all. Again, every little edge is probably important. Did it add...1 hit a game? That would actually be a pretty big difference (10% increase in hits or so). How many WINS? A handful? A couple? Again...not huge, but a handful of wins get you the division. Gets you home field advantage. etc etc.

 

Didn't the report say the players simply stopped on their own in 2018 when they finally decided it wasn't helpful? Their 2017 and first half of 2018 home stats were worse than the road. Whether its a false narrative or not, their home stats greatly improved when the sign stealing stopped.

 

... and everybody was quick to blame the new distracting CF!

 

This all deflects attention away from the MLB and its incompetent understanding of technology as well. Technology in a baseball park is EVERYWHERE...except in so many places where it could really help make more accurate calls in a baseball game. The "human element" strikezone is such a joke it was consistently being talked about on the national playoff broadcasts. There's no definitive way to determine HR boundary calls because of poor camera angles for replay. Safe/out calls at bases have improved, but mistakes are still made. So many easily-reviewed things are bizarrely not reviewable.

Meanwhile, in a stadium where 50,000 attendees, staff, and media people have high powered cameras and 4G smartphones, teams decided to not pretend like technology doesn't exist. Nobody gets anything for second place, so eventually that's going to be used to gain an advantage. MLB thinks a rule in a book solves it all. They should have seen this coming years ago and implemented a simple communications system between catcher, pitcher, and manager. The NFL has had this for years.

Don't get me wrong. While I don't know or care to know every single detail of what the Astros did, I'm annoyed that they felt they needed to do it and get so into it. It feels like a crutch, and I'd rather see them improve their batting technique and determination (and many of them certainly have ample room to do so) than rely on crutches. But the term "cheating" in this situation is such an amorphous mess that it probably means something different to every single person out there. Therefore, I won't use that term, because it essentially means nothing.

Curbstomping the Astros is the League's way of using an easy sacrificial lamb to make all this go away easily, both by making a statement to other teams and deflecting attention from bigger problems including its own.

 

This would be the ultimate measure of effectiveness. Did the Astros do better at home (where they have other advantages as well)? No, they didn't.

Given that, it would be easy to argue that not only was it not effective, but it was a distraction.

 

Based on the report, I actually believe that Hinch/Luhnow are far from the most culpable parties. That being said, of course they were going to be suspended and I would have been shocked if they weren't fired. We need to move past this - neither of them are irreplaceable, and they clearly knew what was going on.

 

This doesn't make it much better to me. If they're willing to do go to this level to do something that is arguably distracting, that is just embarrassing. It honestly makes me wonder what other ways we were possibly cheating.

 

The fact that the massive Yankees and Dodger fanbases were "wronged" is certainly playing into the volume of the outrage nationally, but people need to get past this victim complex that the league is out to get the Astros.

Despite all the rumors, whining and conjecture beforehand, Manfred had absolutely no desire to make an investigation.The narc creating a huge national story forced his hand. Now that the Astros have been punished, he again wants this to go away as quickly as possible. Had somebody on another team had a narc come forward he would have been forced to investigate them. But they didn't, we had the narc and we got caught cheating, whether we benefited from it or not is inconsequential.

 

I agree in general but it does feel like this goes beyond the Astros and Red Sox’s when you consider how easy it is to use cameras starting with the 2014 rule change.

 

Of course, folks are highlighting the small sample size of the playoff splits instead...

 

Is anyone else besides me getting tired of all the self righteousness from all of these MLB and ESPN talking heads? As if nobody else is doing something else similar to this. In the meantime we have baseball players killing themselves by overdosing on opioids or others gaining an advantage using HGH and other PED's. These two issues are far more important to the future integrity of baseball than whether somebody is banging on a trashcan to tell a batter that a breaking ball may or may not be heading his way.

 

Anybody with any common sense knows the sign stealing using cameras is everywhere, we certainly didn't start it. We only did once we realized we were behind the curve, which was simply not acceptable in the Luhnow regime. Was anybody else actively relaying info to hitters, possibly, but I can't can't say for sure.

But again, Manfred wanted this to stay as quiet as possible. He didn't selectively single out the Astros because they were beating the Yankees, he did it because of Fiers. Unless some giant story comes out, he's gonna avoid going after anybody else once the Cora issue is settled. Not because he's protecting individual teams, but because that's what he's always wanted to do.

I think he done an absolute dog s**t job all around dealing with this issue, but there's no bias.

 

It fuels the victim complex when they were so reluctant to investigate on top of wanting to keep it to so few teams.

 

Major, I can't compliment you enough.

I much prefer the "yeah my team/favorite player cheated, so what? It's sports and I don't give a damn about ethics and fairplay" argument to the "Yeah they went to great lengths to cheat but it didn't help!"

Hate the "didn't help" arguments about steroids, hate them about this.

The Astros players admitted to panicking when Danny Farquhar basically caught them in a game. This was 6 months into the program. They had to hide the monitor because they were scared they were going to get caught right there. So after that game they decided they needed to change. Did they just stop doing it all together? No, they got a portable monitor that they could hide more easily if someone else caught them in game and an investigator went into the tunnel. (This was their fear)

Is that the action of people who think it isn't helping?

Their manager broke the monitors twice because he was outraged they would cheat like this. The players replaced them both times.

Is that the action of people who think it isn't helping?

When the playoffs came around they made sure to use those portable monitors for each home game, even though scrutiny would be at the highest levels.

Is that the action of people who think it isn't helping?

They didn't stop until the next season, in season, when they decided it was "no longer helpful." Most likely because teams were catching on.

 

The report said they stopped in 2018 when they decided it was "no longer" helpful. They did it into the 2018 season and then decided to stop.

What is more plausible?
A) They did it for 9 months or so, including playoffs where they won a WS with it not helping
OR
B) It was helpful until that point in 2018 when teams may have been on to the scheme

 

Agree that Manfred has done a terrible job of handling this, but it was always about singling out the Astros. MLB saw this as an opportunity to get rid of Luhnow. The fact that they inject the Taubman BS into the report is very telling. They wanted Jeff out and thought they could do it with the sign stealing. I think they grossly miscalculated that people would except it stopped with the Astros.