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MLB cheating scandal


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25 minutes ago, SCCWS said:

Agree. We know they stole signs at home so why did they have slightly better batting stats that year on the road?  

I think it's because of what I said earlier. While sign stealing does give some advantage, it's really not that big of an advantage. Just knowing fastball or off speed doesnt tell you location or which off speed pitch to gauge the break. There are many players who prefer not to know because it messes with their thought process.

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30 minutes ago, ptatc said:

I think it's because of what I said earlier. While sign stealing does give some advantage, it's really not that big of an advantage. Just knowing fastball or off speed doesnt tell you location or which off speed pitch to gauge the break. There are many players who prefer not to know because it messes with their thought process.

This is wrong imo.

Look at OPS by count - knowing a fastball is coming on 3-0 3-1 is a huge advantage for a batter. 

It's not a bigger advantage than steroids - that's absurd - but it's certainly a big advantage to know off speed or fastball. Timing and adjusting your hands and staying back are the toughest elements of hitting imo; although I could never hit a slider so I'm bias. The players who don't like to know are reaction hitters they're entire life and they're typically so gifted it doesnt matter.

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1 hour ago, ptatc said:

I think it's because of what I said earlier. While sign stealing does give some advantage, it's really not that big of an advantage. Just knowing fastball or off speed doesnt tell you location or which off speed pitch to gauge the break. There are many players who prefer not to know because it messes with their thought process.

You could be right, at least to a certain extent. But if sign stealing is not a big advantage, why did the Astros spend so much time doing it?

The main point of all of this to me is the intent to cheat. The game loses credibility when the fans doubt the results. 

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2 minutes ago, NWINFan said:

You could be right, at least to a certain extent. But if sign stealing is not a big advantage, why did the Astros spend so much time doing it?

The main point of all of this to me is the intent to cheat. The game loses credibility when the fans doubt the results. 

No doubt on the intent to cheat part. Some of the reason is the mental part. Some players do think it helps and when swinging a bat even the smallest advantage can help. However, looking at your stats, it didn't really seem to help.

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1 hour ago, Look at Ray Ray Run said:

This is wrong imo.

Look at OPS by count - knowing a fastball is coming on 3-0 3-1 is a huge advantage for a batter. 

It's not a bigger advantage than steroids - that's absurd - but it's certainly a big advantage to know off speed or fastball. Timing and adjusting your hands and staying back are the toughest elements of hitting imo; although I could never hit a slider so I'm bias. The players who don't like to know are reaction hitters they're entire life and they're typically so gifted it doesnt matter.

Everyone's entitled to their own opinion. I've never played the game at that level, I just go by my discussions with players during games, of course it was 30 years ago.

The stats really don't seem to support the idea either. It would seem to be an advantage and maybe in that one situation you mentioned it is by that is a very small percentage of at bats.

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2 hours ago, ptatc said:

Everyone's entitled to their own opinion. I've never played the game at that level, I just go by my discussions with players during games, of course it was 30 years ago.

The stats really don't seem to support the idea either. It would seem to be an advantage and maybe in that one situation you mentioned it is by that is a very small percentage of at bats.

The problem is that data really doesn't tell us anything, but for frequency; we don't have count knowledge for example - if they are banging on 0-2 or 1-2 and their OPS is 40 points higher than normal, it's still below average production but better than expected. 

There are a lot of variables that aren't accounted for in that generalist view; even citing raw home vs road splits takes out a lot of elements of competition and etc. 

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6 hours ago, Look at Ray Ray Run said:

The problem is that data really doesn't tell us anything, but for frequency; we don't have count knowledge for example - if they are banging on 0-2 or 1-2 and their OPS is 40 points higher than normal, it's still below average production but better than expected. 

There are a lot of variables that aren't accounted for in that generalist view; even citing raw home vs road splits takes out a lot of elements of competition and etc. 

Home field should be some advantage in of itself.  We know the Astros were passing info. So if the raw home/away splits did not reflect more success at home, the Astros did not get the advantage they were trying to get.   

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3 hours ago, Balta1701 said:

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/28639320


So uh....Pete Rose has a point and I don't like saying that.

I still don't think he really has an argument. It is on the wall of every MLB dugout "you gamble on the game, it's a lifetime ban." there has never been any punishment set forth for most other forms of cheating. Everyone in the game knows and has known that gambling is the one big no-no.

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Hinch interview was pretty good. Too many things unanswered though. He took accountability for 2017, but I think Verducci could have pressed harder for details. Alex Cora’s name wasn’t mentioned once, which was probably by design. I think he’s really the biggest cheater in the whole thing.

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https://www.wsj.com/articles/houston-astros-cheating-scheme-dark-arts-codebreaker-11581112994

On Sept. 22, 2016, an intern in the Houston Astros organization showed general manager Jeff Luhnow a PowerPoint presentation that featured the latest creation by the team’s high-tech front office: an Excel-based application programmed with an algorithm that could decode the opposing catchers’ signs. It was called “Codebreaker.”

This was the beginning of what has turned into one of the biggest scandals in Major League Baseball history. Throughout the 2017 season and for part of 2018, Astros baseball operations employees and video room staffers used Codebreaker to illegally steal signs, which were then relayed to batters in real time. Another Astros employee referred to the system as the “dark arts.”

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