MARCO'S BASEBALL BLOG-O-ROONIE 2019: THE BIG TECHNO CHEAT!

MARCO’S BASEBALL BLOG-O-ROONIE 2019: THE BIG TECHNO CHEAT!

You’ve heard about it, but you just haven’t heard about it MUCH. The biggest scandal in baseball since the massive steroid abuse era has reared its ugly head and then...has strangely gone silent. What gives?

According to ex-Astros pitcher Mike Fiers, the Houston Astros had a camera in the centerfield bleachers at Minute Maid Park in 2017 (and maybe beyond), picking up the opposing catcher’s signs (at maximum zoom setting, of course!) and hard-wiring the picture into the dugout hallway monitor where sign stealing experts identified the coming pitch and had somebody in the dugout bang on a garbage can to signal “breaking pitch coming.” Remember Dodger starter Yu Darvish getting lit up like a Roman candle in the 2017 series? It looks like some teams started noticing the peculiar garbage can symphony emanating from the Houston dugout and the ‘Stros started using signals from the bullpen in right field at Minute Maid instead. Isn’t that a relief pitcher all by himself on the far side of the the pen, jacket on, jacket off, jacket hanging over arm, standing, sitting every other pitch? Hmmm...curious. Isn’t that George Springer’s eyes darting toward right just before the pitch was delivered? Hey...I thought hitters needed laser-like focus on the pitcher’s delivery to succeed. Not these Astros...they just need to get the signal so they can sit on the fastball.

I like the Astros. When the Red Sox aren’t playing them I root for them. But I can’t ignore the evidence. “Say it ain’t so, ‘Stro!”

In case you forgot, the Astros won the World Series in 2017. Fiers apparently thought the system was still being used against his new teams (He was with the Tigers most recently) and thought it a good idea to blow the whistle on his formers. He said young pitchers were getting blown up against the Astros hitters and hurting their careers because of the cheating. He’s right.

Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow gave a clubhouse impromptu to reporters and said “I’m not dodging the question, I’m just not going to answer it right now” which is of course, a TOTAL DODGE. And of course that set the tone for the response to this revelation throughout the game. Nobody is talking. Not even when other news began to trickle out...Astros execs actually ordered their scouts to come up with a system to steal signs. Bench coach Alex Cora (in 2017) and Astros manager A.J. Hinch are implicated, along with former player and sign stealing expert Carlos Beltran. (Who denies it.) I mean, this is a big time scandal.

You might remember that it took fifty years for the truth to come out about the New York Giants in 1951. They had a coach (Herman Franks) with a telescope and a buzzer stationed in the centerfield clubhouse to pick up the catcher’s signs and relay them to an injured player in the bullpen who would simply stand or sit depending on the pitch to come. This is how they went 23-5 to finish off the season and make up a 13.5 game deficit to the Dodgers. Then they won the 3 game playoff with the Brooklyns when Bobby Thompson hit a walk off homer off pitcher Ralph Branca in the third game...the famous “Shot Heard Round the World” that is one of baseball’s most iconic moments. Thompson always denied he got the sign but why would the Giants have stopped cheating in the Playoffs so close to the climax of their nefarious scheme? Right when they needed it most? Branca had to live with the infamy the rest of his life. He died embittered after a life of wearing the goat horns for that one epic failure. A failure now exposed as a probable BIG CHEAT.

This latest techno outrage just happened, and it’s a hell of a lot more of an issue than just “boys will be boys”.

Silence from Commissioner Manfred. This despite the fact that the Red Sox and Yankees were caught using tech to steal signs in 2017 themselves. On the Red Sox part, they were using Apple watches to communicate the pitch to come. I don’t know what the Yankees were accused of since nobody wants to talk about techno sign stealing in baseball. Manfred issued a warning that if anybody was caught in the future, it could be a big deal...but nothing happened to the Sox or Yanks.

It’s like if somebody saw a bunch of little lizards run under a rock and said…”Okay, I saw some little lizards but if there’s a Gila Monster under that rock I might do something... but I’m not going to lift the rock to look right now.”

Well, if Astros execs, scouts, bench coaches, managers and... I assume... all their hitters are involved, that’s a pretty damn big Gila Monster.

But if you watch the MLB network or listen to baseball talk radio you’ll barely hear this story mentioned. Baseball keeps putting out all their flak about the winter meetings and free agents and the usual hype and avoiding the whole subject of cheating on a massive scale by one team...a now tainted World Series Champ….and perhaps who knows how many other organizations.

In my opinion, covering up the severity of this situation is the absolute worst thing baseball can do. They need to get on top of it immediately. To wit:

You can’t suspend all the hitters who profited from the cheating...that would destroy the Astros as a team and leave a hole in the league schedule. The punishment has to be mainly organizational, similar to what the penalities were for the St. Louis Cardinals when they hacked the Astro’s computer scouting reports to get a leg up in trade deals a few years ago. So…

1/ suspend and fine any team exec or staff member who participated... for one year without pay. If they could do it to Steinbrenner they can do it to these guys.

2/suspend and fine any coach who was involved... one year. They did it to Dodger skipper Leo Durocher in the 40’s when he hung out with gamblers.

3/suspend and fine any player or staff member who lies to the investigators.

4/take away ALL of the Astros draft choices next season. Also curtail international signings.

5/fine the Astros organization something like $20 million.

6/put a big fat asterisk next to the Astros name in the list of World Series Champs. Teams need a permanent reminder of the Wages of Sin. You can’t take away the rings and give them to the Dodgers. That would cause a riot in Las Vegas when everybody tried to get their betting money back. Just intentionally besmirch the memory of a questionable victory.

7/hire tech spies to circulate throughout the ball parks looking for cheats from now on.

The Astros were widely suspected of being sign stealing cheats for years. Now we know just how out of control they really were. This is not traditional sign stealing...the first base coach or the runner on second sees the catcher’s fingers and relays the info to the batter. That’s been part of the game for years. Teams can change signs and cover their fingers better to control it. But it’s personnel on the field and dugout who are involved with purely human resources. But a camera in the outfield? Relaying what to expect on every pitch to every batter?

Sorry Jose Altuve, but you’re going to have to lead the league in hitting on your own. George Springer will have to get his record number of Playoff homers the old fashioned way. And the Astros should have to live in the cheating hole they’ve dug for themselves for quite a while.

Marco Perella

12/5/2019