On Jan. 21, former Yankees shortstop and captain Derek Jeter and former Rockies/Expos outfielder Larry Walker were inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Perhaps no one was happier than the players and management of the Houston Astros, the Boston Red Sox, and the New York Mets, for whom the news was a welcome distraction from the sign-stealing scandal that’s been raging for the past several weeks.
Major League Baseball has received several black eyes over the last 25 years, including the 1994-1995 players’ strike and the revelations of widespread steroid use among players from the late ‘80s until the 2000s. Now a new scandal is rocking the baseball world, and despite the best efforts of MLB executives to get on top of it, it’s unclear if the story is over or just getting started.
Rumblings surfaced over the last 18 months that the Houston Astros were stealing opposing teams’ signs and alerting Astros hitters about what type of pitch they’d see next. During the 2017 season, the Astros used a camera in center field to zoom in on the opposing catcher’s signs. The signs were then relayed to someone in the tunnel leading to the Astros’ locker room, who would bang on a garbage can to signal the next pitch. The scheme came to light when former Astros pitcher Mike Fiers joined the Oakland Athletics and warned his new teammates about what the Astros were doing.
MLB investigated and found that the accusations were true. It suspended general manager Jeff Luhnow and manager A.J. Hinch for one year, fined the team $5 million, and took away its top draft picks for the 2021 and 2022 seasons. After MLB announced its findings, Astros owner Jim Crane immediately fired Luhnow and Hinch. The fallout spread quickly around the league. Alex Cora, the Astros’ bench coach in 2017 and the ringleader of the ploy, stepped down from his role as manager of the Boston Red Sox. And Carlos Beltran, a player on the 2017 Astros squad, resigned from his new job managing the Mets without having managed a single game.
For some, the news was much ado about nothing. After all, sign stealing is as old as the game itself. That’s true, but only in part. Conventional sign stealing — by runners on second base, pitchers tipping their pitches, and coaches indicating to batters where catchers are setting up — is part of the game, but it’s not against the rules. Using electronics to steal signs is. Thus the harsh punishment handed out by MLB.
For many baseball purists, the scandal lends credence to the idea that the sport now relies far too much on statistics and technology. These have created whole new ways of building and managing teams while transforming the experience for fans. They can tell viewers not only how far a home run travels but also its exit velocity; not only the speed of a pitch but also its spin rate, the depth of a curveball’s break, or the width of a fastball’s cut. Television broadcasts display batting averages and ERAs based on pitch location and selection.
The scandal is far from over. MLB is still investigating allegations that the Red Sox cheated in 2018 when they won the World Series. And although the league didn’t find evidence to support accusations that the 2019 Astros stole signs through a sophisticated system of buzzers hidden underneath the players’ jerseys, many fans are still suspicious. In Game 7 of the American League Championship Series, television cameras captured Astros second baseman Jose Altuve imploring teammates not to tear off his jersey after hitting a walk-off home run to advance to the World Series. He then ran into the dugout to change his shirt before coming back on to the field to celebrate. It was an odd reaction, given the moment. Altuve and teammate Alex Bregman both denied the allegations, pointing to the MLB report for validation. But the league’s failure to find evidence of the cheating doesn’t mean the cheating didn’t happen. If it did, it could take another whistleblower to bring it to light.
So far, the scandal has only resulted in punishment for executives and coaches. At some point, the league will have to come down on the players as well. If MLB is concerned with the integrity of the game, who better to pay the price than those who directly benefit from breaking the rules?
Jay Caruso is the managing editor of the Washington Examiner Magazine.
