One of the wildest statistics I have seen from all of the fallout of this scandal is the fact that Clayton Kershaw had thrown 51 breaking balls and got zero missed swings. [0]
I can't believe this didn't stand out sooner to analysts or if it just got glossed over. I still think hitting a round ball with a round bat is one of the hardest if not the hardest things to do in sports. And to not get a single swing and miss on a pitch that is around 70 - 80 MPH and breaking around half a foot is insane.
Darvish too was a swing-and-miss pitcher (albeit admittedly wild) who was openly mocked by Astros players. He struggled mightily during the series. Granted he had been trending downward which continued after the series.
I'm the Astros fan who created http://signstealingscandal.com, so I'm definitely not saying they didn't cheat. They cheated in the regular season (I documented over 1,100 bangs). And I'm almost certain the Astros were cheating during the 2017 World Series. An interesting point though, in Darvish's 2 World Series starts (1 away, 1 at home), he threw 3.1 innings and gave up 8 earned runs (4 in each game). The other Dodgers pitchers threw 13.2 innings in those games and gave up 0 earned runs. I think it's possible the Astros were stealing signs and Darvish was tipping pitches.
That is incredible - I didn't know that. I remember watching him get absolutely lit up that series and thinking it was a little odd. But not that odd.
Somewhat related, but Bolsinger is now suing the Astros over this, arguing that that really nasty outing he had against them blew up his career. No idea how solid of a case this is, and I know less than nothing about "sports law", but it's an interesting inflection point in the fallout from all this.
The Astros hid behind the guise that they were outstanding at picking up "tipping" from opposing pitchers. i.e. The smallest difference in a pitcher's delivery, imperceptible to you or I, would indicate what kind of pitch was coming. Writers often talked about how Alex Cora or Carlos Beltran or Jose Altuve were just remarkable "students of the game" and would figure it out and tell the rest of the lineup who would pounce upon it.
It's kinda funny to look back on, because I remember lots of people producing videos where they would supposedly point out what the Astros were picking up on, and it never seemed very clear to me no matter how much they slowed down the footage.
Another thing to note is that there's always fun baseball stats coming out. Kershaw getting no misses on his breaking balls would just be one of several interesting tidbits talked about the next day. It wouldn't really cause suspicion, as most people would just assume it indicates Kershaw was ineffective.
For example, in the the 2017 ALCS, Astros pitcher Lance McCullers finished off the feared Yankees lineup by throwing 24 straight curveballs. This is no suggestion that Lance McCullers cheated; it's just an example that there's always odd stuff to reflect upon the next day.
You're right, baseball has a statistic for everything so it's not always going to be caught. I forgot about that McCullers game. His curve was on another level that day!
A statistic for everything, but little statistical or scientific literacy: so much data dredging goes on. When someone floats a number like "51 breaking balls with zero missed swings" or "24 straight curveballs" it's never presented with the rate at which this would be expected to occur in the pseudorandom/typical case.
There are close to a million pitches thrown in each season. If someone flipped a coin for every pitch in the 2000s, they would probably get a string of 24 head and a string of 24 tails. Given the number of pitches that have been thrown, and the human tendency to stick with what's working, the only reason that there wouldn't be 24 of one pitch thrown in a row is that they'd deliberately change it up.
Probably not quite 24 heads (or tails), but close!
I had to dig into this for work, and doing statistics on runs is surprisingly interesting. Suppose you've got a sequence of $n$ events, each of which 'succeeds' with probability $p$. The expected length of the longest run is approximately $\log_{1/p}(n*(1-p) + 0.577 \ln(1/p) - 1/2$. For a fair coin with $p$ = 0.5, this reduces to log_2(n) - 2/3, which is about 19 for one million events. Amazingly, the variance only weakly depends on n, but is about 2 for p=0.5.
Thus, you're probably not going to see a 24 head run in 1M events. I'm excited I got to use this information, as the project I learned it for was a total bust.
It’s a different calculation Matt is doing. You are calculating the probability of that run happening now. Matt is calculating the expected length of the longest run in 1 million tosses.
The distinction is important because a sequence of ten heads seems 'rare' in isolation. However, it is not particularly unusual when you go looking for it as a subsequence of some bigger set of trials.
Trevor Bauer has been loudly stating that the Astros' pitchers are using foreign substances on the ball to get the tremendous spin rates that they do. McCullers throwing 24 straight curveballs might in fact be suspicious.
I feel like the game tolerates some bending of the rules so long as the techniques were available and used in the 1920s--tar or earwax or whatever on the ball, a certain amount of incorrect calls from the umpire, and so on.
To throw a mix of pitches and get zero missed swings on one of the biggest movement pitches in the league... is extremely unlikely. It's not like he was having an off day. His pitches were on point the entire time. It's not like his breaking balls weren't breaking like normal or anything else. It's hilarious to think he was tipping the pitches.
That's actually not true. There was one swing and miss. Tom Verducci said so himself in his SI article the day before he went on MLB Network and said there was zero (https://www.si.com/mlb/2020/02/20/astros-cheating-scandal-cl...). The Statcast data show one, too. I have no idea why Tom Verducci changed from one to zero. It really doesn't change his point if it's one or zero.
I'm sure that we'll find all sorts of schemes like this in other sports as well in the US. Pretty obvious and easy reason why: legal sports betting is a $155B market growing at 8% annually in the US. I'd be curious to see who was making money off of the Astros.
There's way too much money chasing outcomes. Plenty of these players are vulnerable to different influence strategies.
I had a little insight into the esports gambling world at one point and it answered some questions for me about why there's so much money being thrown around there. I'm guessing (no evidence, but a strong hunch) there are a ton of shenanigans going on, as that whole side of things has a very wild-west feel yet there's a lot of money moving around.
Some folks at the same place helped me figure out what Venmo's social transaction messages are useful for: illegal gambling pools. I'd been wondering why those features exist or who'd want them, then saw it used for that purpose. Suddenly made sense.
Can you explain more by what you mean about the Venmo stuff, its sounds super interesting.
Are you saying that someone out there is doing crowd sourced intelligence for increased win modeling, based on the messages people put in their venmo transactions?
Or that the default public nature of the ledger is such that people can see that the bookie (I think im using that right) is getting money from other counter parties and proves their ability to pay out in the future?
The latter. I saw an email thread go around to organize a betting pool, using venmo (with the obvious warning not to say it was for gambling in the memo) and had a huge "ah ha" moment for why that feature exists. It's perfect for ensuring collections & payouts happen correctly and no money goes missing, or "missing".
It'd be hard to crowd source for better odds on there, I'd think, since people disguise those kinds of transactions. Same as with drug purchases, which are also prohibited on Venmo so you can't mention them but are, obviously, some part of the activity on there, though unlike with betting pools Venmo's (previously, to me) weird social ledger thing isn't a killer feature for that.
Probably they could spot betting pools and put some rules in place to make it annoying enough to use the platform for that purpose that people would stop, though I don't know why they would. I'd guess illegal activity's far from a majority of their revenue, but I bet it's still significant. Probably certain transaction patterns get really common on either side of major sports events.
athletes risk their lives cheating all the time, throughout all history, without even any financial incentive.
race car drivers using fake, lighter roll cages, cyclists using EPO to make their blood so thick they might die in their sleep, baseball players using cocaine and steroids. this happens not just where there is big money but amateur ranks where nothing is on the line except winning.
> legal sports betting is a $155B market growing at 8% annually in the US
Not only in the US. If I'm not mistaken all the Premier League clubs outside the top 6 had betting companies as their main t-shirt logos last season, and we're talking about the most watched football league in the world (and definitely the one where the most money is involved). Things are pretty much the same wherever else you look in Europe. Betting has destroyed football (its corrupt officials helped in that, too, but that's a different story).
Nope. It is 11 of the Premier League so just over half.
Football and betting is totally symbiotic. Betting is the reason the Premier League is the world's league. You can watch and bet on it everywhere. More money is bet on the EPL in Asia than in Europe. I think there is a problem with advertising but that isn't anything to do with the league (when the UK changed the rules on tobacco sponsorship it was a law, not a regulation of the league...and most of the issue isn't with shirt sponsorship).
I get that lots of people live somewhere where betting is illegal and there is a connection with organised crime. That just doesn't exist in reality.
Tying anything and everything to Trump is so tiresome and has nothing to do with the article, the Astros scandal, or the actions of commissioner landis/manfred.
I'd argue that Manfred's blanket immunity for guilty players has a lot in common with Trump's constant actions to paint all of his confederates as victims and scapegoats and pardoning a whole skein of cheats and con artists...
There seems to be a theme amongst so many concentrations of money that basically centers around "hey, we're already making this much, why not pull any bs we can and make even more? Let the losers lose, cause they're losers anyway."
partisanship has got to be at all time highs. My comment is likely seen as me defending trump and therefore anyone who dislikes trump just automatically downvotes it regardless of context. 2020 is awesome
The amusing part is, I can say with some amount of confidence that the Astros still would have done this if HRC has won. How the sitting president has any bearing on this is beyond me.
100% agreed. There is no correlation between Obama and deflate -gate or Trump/Astros Scandal. Its such a sensationalist thing to add (that I suppose works cause here we are talking about it) but overall my respect for journalism continues to go down. And its a shame cause this was an otherwise good article.
Cheating to win is a universe apart from cheating to lose (or putting yourself in a position where you could be pressured to do so, like Pete Rose) when it comes to the integrity of the game. I completely support the punishments MLB/Manfred handed out and would support more. But throwing games for money (Black Sox scandal, alluded to in the article's title attributed to a child saying "Say it ain't" so to Shoeless Joe Jackson) is different than sign stealing. I suspect the managers, coaches, and front office staff will have informal punishments of being blacklisted out of the sport for life.
How does it ruin the game less than people throwing the it? It’s not an earnest competition, which is the point of watching. Allowing steroids (something I am not in favor of) would ruin the game far less than breaking the premise of the game between the pitcher and batter.
Frankly I think it should be a crime to cheat—make the people have something to lose that hurts more than money.
Exactly, I commented above about how the cheating doesn't bother me that much, and I didn't say this because I didn't want to sound flippant, but sports are so not important enough to warrant government involvement.
Not have I, but prisons are a separate issue. I don’t think fines (or asking individuals to step down) are proportional to the level that this will ultimately destroy the sport at the national level. We already throw people in jail for public urination; why not for urinating on our national pastime?
I dont, and I cant stress this enough, give a single fuck about baseball or it status as our national pastime.
Now look, I'm not anti baseball, I'm not here to yuck your yum or say something shouldn't exist because I don't value or appreciate it. But professional baseball not existing anymore sure seems like a problem solely for the people who care about baseball to figure out, not the federal government.
> But professional baseball not existing anymore sure seems like a problem solely for the people who care about baseball to figure out, not the federal government.
I feel the same way about so-called "insider trading". The full effect is not to prevent the C-suite from stealing from investors, which they do all the time, but rather to punish lower-level defectors from such schemes.
Ok, I agree, cheating is lame. But a game in which a someone won by cheating is still competitive, while a game that is lost intentionally is just corruption to take money from fans.
I guess I don't see the big deal about sign stealing. I mean, in some sports, maybe stock car racing or something like that, this kind of thing would be totally encouraged. Squeaky clean compared to doping and what not.
Cheating to lose and cheating to win are two different things, with very different motivations.
However, cheating to win still takes something away from the game. But fundamentally, any sport is based on the principle of a level playing field... that everyone is playing by the same rules. This isn't a case where they stretched the rules, or went right up to the line -- they gained an undeniable advantage using tools that the other teams didn't have. When the batter know the pitch that's coming, you take the most competitive aspect of baseball away.
You might really like this book - racing has a culture of doing everything possible to push the limits set by the rules and the rule enforcement system. There is plenty of rule bending and mechanical engineering wonkery: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1310615.The_Unfair_Advan...
For my money, baseball teams should pursue simple encryption schemes where the sign thrown has to be decoded by the pitcher in his head, using as additional parameters the inning, batter, and a special private key agreed upon by the pitcher and catcher before each game.
Sign stealing itself is not against the rules, and has been a part of baseball since forever. It's something that can't really be prevented, like when you've got a runner off 2nd base and he can look right at the catcher when he's giving the signs.
It's using electronics to steal signs that is against the rules. It's because electronics basically allow you to "perfectly" steal signs, and one of the biggest things in baseball is that the batter doesn't know what the pitcher is about to throw.
Maybe I'm just cynical, but I've always just assumed that everyone in pro sports is cheating in basically every way they think they can get away with.
I never had a problem with Lance Armstrong cheating because I assumed everyone else near the top of the pack was also cheating. If everyone cheats, it is absolutely still an earnest competition. Lots of other guys probably took just as many steroids as Barry Bonds did and didn't hit anywhere near as many home runs.
I also think that there need to be rules that are enforced, because there's no game without rules, but the rules are always inherently arbitrary, and I've never felt the urge to heap moral blame on the cheaters in addition to whatever punishment they get for breaking the rules... I guess I sort of unconsciously took the position that as long as no one is getting like, physically injured, bending the rules as far as they'll go (and breaking them sometimes) is just part of the game, and penalties are penalties.
It's hard for me to see much of a distinction between taking strategic fouls and violating the rules in other ways, weighing the likelihood of getting caught against the potential gain.
Despite all of this, I don't cheat when I play sports nor would I teach my kids to cheat, but when millions of dollars are on the line (maybe because there are millions of dollars on the line), it doesn't bother me that anyone would try to gain any possible advantage.
They both ruin the game, we agree. I just think one is much worse, and object to the comparison and framing. They exist on a spectrum, like doctoring the ball (and the varying degrees of doing that), corking bats, the existing practice of stealing signs by baserunners off 2nd base...
> Regardless of the verdict of juries, no player that throws a ball game, no player that undertakes or promises to throw a ball game, no player that sits in a conference with a bunch of crooked players and gamblers where the ways and means of throwing a game are planned and discussed, and does not promptly tell his club about it, will ever play professional baseball.
I love this language, and it sticks out because it's in such stark contrast to anything a large organization would say today. It doesn't sugarcoat anything, it takes full responsibility, no double speak, no marketing euphemisms. And it says what they are going to do about it.
I think people somehow feel they are exposing themselves these days with that level of transparency, and maybe they are right. But I know that if I heard people speaking like this I would be drastically more likely to trust them and their brands. I would like to think it's still possible to communicate this way in the modern world.
>But Manfred also did something that may simply have been stupid, may have been craven, and may have been corrupt: extending blanket immunity to the players before launching a proper investigation
Players would refuse to testify without immunity and without player testimony it would be incredibly difficult to find the details of the cheating scheme. It also isn't even clear if MLB has the legal authority to punish players for this type of rule violation. The player's union has stated that MLB does not have that authority and MLB did not wish to fight them on it with a potential labor dispute already pending over league finances when the current collective bargaining agreement expires soon.
>Until and unless Commissioner Manfred lifts his ludicrous immunity offer and deals severely with the incriminated participating players as well as their management by banishing them all from the game, he will have thrown baseball back to where it was in 1919.
I personally think offering immunity to get players to testify and then reversing course and using that testimony to punish those players would do much more harm to baseball than this scandal.
==I personally think offering immunity to get players to testify and then reversing course and using that testimony to punish those players would do much more harm to baseball than this scandal.==
This could very well be true. As is, the MLB has created a precedent for cheating without ever having to face penalties.
I am on board if they create a new rule that applies punishments from this point forward. There should not be an ex post facto rule that is used to justify punishments that were eliminated as a possibility through both collective bargaining and the immunity deals.
Alternatively, if they started handing out lifetime bans to everyone fully or peripherally involved, you can expect the peripheral ones to come forward with all they know, hoping to avoid the ban.
You can’t just hand out lifetime bans without strong evidence of clear rule violations. A lifetime ban is stripping literally hundreds of millions of dollars from players. There would be years of legal battles if MLB tried to do it. The only way to get strong evidence of who cheated and how they cheated is through interviews and the players wouldn’t interview without immunity.
MLB simply had no good options that would allow them to directly punish players.
I was chatting with some friends about the Astros the other day, and they pointed out something interesting.
This has caused a renewed interest in baseball. It will probably increase attendance anywhere they Astros play, because people will want to come out and root for their local team to "beat the cheaters".
It'll be interesting to see how the attendance numbers this season play out.
The old no press is bad press theory in action. It will be interesting to see what actually happens when the season starts and moves into the all-star break.
Wait, does anybody actually believe any major sport doesn't look the other way when the right team cheats assuming it gets more butts in seats? Major sports aren't about the purity of the game. They're about money - pure and simple.
If MLB could replace all of the players with robots that played a game simulated on a computer, designed to play out a storyline as a drama instead of a legitimate competition, and make more money doing it then they would in a heartbeat and not lose a wink of sleep over it.
I'll throw in some alternate viewpoints from friends who support the Astros. The narrative I have heard is that this really is something that many teams do, to varying extents. That the Yankees have done it for years, and in fact that the Astros just expanded on what the Yankees were doing while Beltran was there.
That sign-stealing is part of the game, it isn't against the rules, and that most players who are complaining are in a gray area of hypocrisy, because they're mad they weren't in the loop on the tactic. My friends further believe that the Astros are being used as the patsies for all of MLB. The Astros will take the public blame for something most teams do or wish they thought of, and now all MLB will get on the same page about allowing or banning stealing like this.
These opinions are not my own, but I haven't seen the opinions or viewpoints of Astros defenders online - so here it is.
I think baseball is an extremely uninteresting sport. The pace of the game is very slow, as every batter is swinging for the fences, stepping out of the box, and there is usually no action for over 3 hours of "playing" time. What is the game today? On a time-basis, baseball is 99% players standing around waiting for something to occur.
Gone are the days of defensive brilliance and working players around the bases methodically with short hits, speed, and finesse. I won't miss baseball in the Olympics and I think it's rightfully falling to other much more interesting and engaging sports. The idea it is our "national pastime" is just laughable to me.
What's more, where I live, we had the Pawtucket PawSox try to extort Providence and RI for massive tax breaks and a premium parcel of downtown Providence land. Thankfully, Rhode Islanders called their bluff and let them move to Worcester. I'm glad my state acknowledged baseball is an incredibly slow-paced and yawn-inducing sport and we didn't want to pay through the nose for a stadium that hardly any of us would enjoy having.
It's funny you say that it's a negative because I think that's a positive. It's one of my favorite things to do to load up my team's games (Tampa Bay Rays fan here!) on MLB.tv and work on my side project while I watch the games. When the game is going slowly I'll pay more attention on my projects and vice versa.
But the actual game play is my least favorite part about baseball. I absolutely love the theory and statistics that goes into the front office decisions. It's this interesting mix of economics and game theory and negotiation theory. My favorite team is notoriously cash strapped (read: cheap) and I think it's fascinating watching the team wheel and deal to try to compete with teams that literally spend 2x-3x as much as they do
Yep, I think people who say they think it is boring really don't understand what these sports are about.
Two examples are golf and cricket. Both take days so the action clearly isn't important. If you go live, it is about the day out, having some beers with your mates, relaxing (tbf, golf has managed this far better than cricket which has had to move to shorter formats). Watching at home, it is the same thing. Relaxing, having a good time with your mates, whatever.
It is true, nothing is going to compare to seeing an "action sport" live: boxing, a huge soccer game...very little in life compares. But I think there is room for other stuff too: stats, stories, experiences, etc. (tbh, I think action sports are going to struggle against Esports too). I am a big soccer fan but rarely watch games, I just follow the story and the stats (and bet on games). Viewership has gone through the roof because the stories are just so compelling (and yes, the money too nowadays).
I hope that sport doesn't become "all action, all the time" though. Again, nothing compares to action but you can't watch that every day.
I want to second this. Baseball is best watched with friends or family as whatever you consider a step above "background noise." It can fill in lulls in the gathering, and when something exciting does happen it's easy to direct everyone's attention back to the game.
Growing up with baseball also plays a large part in deciding if you'll have any interest in it as an adult.
I think my friend and business partner put it best when I told him I didn't really care for the sport - he asked "Did you grow up watching it with your dad? [No] It's a lot like religion."
Agreed. Baseball is a weird slumberfest, I wonder why millions of people consider it even a remotely interesting sport. I'd rather watch a darts championship, it's got more energy.
Frankly basketball, baseball, and to some degree football are all taking on a WWF feel.
I’ve basically stopped watching all pro sports, I was an athlete in school, and for a long time and avid sports fan, but no more.
The rule changes in the NBA, caused me to drop the sport, the PED scandal of MLB caused me to drop MLB, and the rule changes to football are making it feel a whole lot like The NBA.
I didn’t watch a single NFL game last season, and I only DVRed the NFL playoff games, and only skipped through one game, deleting the rest.
Even college sports have lost their appeal. Only one sport left and that’s boxing, but the pay per view rates have caused me to stop buying those events.
I think pro spots have peaked and will continue to decline.
I am an Astros fan and baseball fanatic, so I have a lot to say here as do most people that fit in one or both of the above designations. I'm getting to the thread a little late so it's possible (probable) that no one will read this but I feel a bit better letting it out.
1. We cheated and got caught. On one hand the penalties are pretty severe. Draft picks mean that in 5-8 years we may be awful again. AJ Hinch was a DAMN good manager and when the Mets hire him in a year I'm going to be sad. Jose Altuve - for whom there is no evidence that he cheated - is one of the best hitters of the last decade and may never make the HOF b/c of this. The penalties individually and collectively are not small. On the other hand, I agree that more punishment could have been handed out.
2. MLB has done a TERRIBLE job explaining that not only was immunity essential for getting the truth but also that punishing players would wind up in a YEARS-long dispute with the Player's Association. Fans and the sport alike get all pissy that there is no official record of steriod users...well immunity wasn't offered. Can't have it both ways.
3. MLB is also shooting itself in the foot not releasing the Red Sox report during the height of the Astros story. It is probable that the 2018 champs will ALSO be exposed as cheaters. ANd they had the MVP that year as well. I will smirk at least a little when the Astros hatred starts to abait in June just in time for the Red Sox to re-kindle the story.
3. I have friends that work in Baseball. Of course it's speculation but 3 of them independent of each other have told me that the 3 teams that cheat the most are Houston, LAD, and Arizona. ANd all 3 conversations ended with the punchline of how little the Diamondbacks have to show for their cheating.
4. The sanctimony in baseball is comical AND sad. No sport likes to eat it's young like baseball. The same reporters that used the 1998 home run race to their benefit now vote against steroid players getting into the HOF. Anything to protect your 2 inches in the Sunday edition, fellas. LOL
5. Being mindful of #1, anyone that thinks the cheating is limited to Houston, Boston or just a couple teams is sniffing glue. ALL teams and players creep as close to the line as possible. Are there players that refuse to participate? ABSOLUTELY. Are there teams that play every game on the up and up? No way. There is simply too much at stake and the transfer of players and execs and coaches between teams means that the knowledge of skirting the rules isn't limited to Houston.
5b. You want examples? The team that closes the dome to induce more short fly balls. The team that lets the grass grow longer to make grounders in the infield slow down. The team that overwaters the dirt in the base-paths to slow runners. on and on and on.
6. MLB allowing ANY current-game film in the clubhouse is so stupid as to defy words. So a batter can walk into the clubhouse and review the at-bat he completed 30 seconds ago to look at pitch sequences and locations.....that's okay? Absolutely STUPID. Suggested result: eliminate replay on anything but scoring plays. Remove replay in the clubhouse and prohibit players from leaving the dugout except for bio-breaks with an MLB escort.
7. Finally, if anything ever drives me away from baseball it will be this: the "inside" baseball talk. Reporters and players and former players that patronize fans with things like "you wouldn't understand..." or "there is a game within the game..." A sport that allows/supports putting a fastball in a guy's ribs if he preens after a home run. A sport that says SOME version of sign stealing is fine BUT other versions are not.
Re #3, care to point to any evidence of LAD and Arizona shenanigans? I follow baseball pretty closely and I guess I haven't seen any. We can throw accusations all we want (#5, and #5b seems suspicious because doing something like closing the dome would have the same effect on the balls the home team hits too). Agreed on #6.
Different pitchers have different hit patterns — there are ground ball pitchers, etc. Excessively watering the dirt and closing the dome aren’t really cheating, just standard gamesmanship.
This is what drives me nuts about baseball. Yes, you are right. That is standard gamesmanship.
AND THAT IN ITSELF IS LUDICROUS.
What other sport allows the field of play to be modified to fit one style of play or player? Can you imagine a basketball team raising the rims 2 feet so that Giannis couldn't dunk AND IT BEING ALLOWED? Or a football team growing the grass to 8" so that a team with fast wide receivers would be slowed?
To me, baseball's rich (sarcasm) history of allowing random-sized fields and wall heights and open or closed roofs and watered or unwatered infields means that the more Circus-like elements of the sport are allowable. I too like some of this "gamesmanship". But I have a hard time understanding the difference of the allowed gamesmanship (stealing signs from second) and the disallowed and disgraceful gamesmanship (using ALLOWED in-clubhouse video to determine pitch sequences).
None, although here is a Yankees players detailing how they stole signs: https://www.google.com/amp/s/nypost.com/2020/02/21/mark-teix.... I simply mentioned that people I know who work for MLB teams have said such things. I already stated that I think every team cheats to some degree. That was my larger point- no team is playing the game by the rules. The Astros are the most egregious that we know of. I suspect the Red Sox report will be similarly damning. But the malfesence isn't limited to those two teams. The architect of the scheme played for 7 teams in 20 years...hard to believe he came up the plan in his 20th and final season.
I’m also a life long Astro’s fan. This whole thing is rough. I personally believe they should all be banned for life. It’s just too much wrong. As is, the whole organization needs to turn over, ownership included before I can even see myself wearing a ‘stros hat again. That’s because of precedent and norm of the game we know.
However, on another side. I’m tired of all this crap and dumb rules. Steroids? Use ‘em if you got ‘em. Why police it? I say Let the players decide. But I understand why that’s a unpopular opinion too.
Signs? Really? We literally have one guy on the field announcing to another guy what the next play is going to be and the opposing team is supposed to ignore it. How about let’s figure out a better way to communicate. There’s always going to be people that want to exploit such low hanging fruit. Especially with modern technology. The stupidest thing the Astros did was the banging in the dugout. If they had some silent obfuscated signal they would have never been caught (again, not defending the cheating but this is like a bank robber using a unicycle as a get away vehicle).
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 98.2 ms ] threadI can't believe this didn't stand out sooner to analysts or if it just got glossed over. I still think hitting a round ball with a round bat is one of the hardest if not the hardest things to do in sports. And to not get a single swing and miss on a pitch that is around 70 - 80 MPH and breaking around half a foot is insane.
[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/baseball/comments/f7w3yq/kershaw_th...
Somewhat related, but Bolsinger is now suing the Astros over this, arguing that that really nasty outing he had against them blew up his career. No idea how solid of a case this is, and I know less than nothing about "sports law", but it's an interesting inflection point in the fallout from all this.
https://www.si.com/mlb/2020/02/10/mike-bolsinger-lawsuit-ast...
It's kinda funny to look back on, because I remember lots of people producing videos where they would supposedly point out what the Astros were picking up on, and it never seemed very clear to me no matter how much they slowed down the footage.
Another thing to note is that there's always fun baseball stats coming out. Kershaw getting no misses on his breaking balls would just be one of several interesting tidbits talked about the next day. It wouldn't really cause suspicion, as most people would just assume it indicates Kershaw was ineffective.
For example, in the the 2017 ALCS, Astros pitcher Lance McCullers finished off the feared Yankees lineup by throwing 24 straight curveballs. This is no suggestion that Lance McCullers cheated; it's just an example that there's always odd stuff to reflect upon the next day.
There are close to a million pitches thrown in each season. If someone flipped a coin for every pitch in the 2000s, they would probably get a string of 24 head and a string of 24 tails. Given the number of pitches that have been thrown, and the human tendency to stick with what's working, the only reason that there wouldn't be 24 of one pitch thrown in a row is that they'd deliberately change it up.
kershaw’s curveball is considered one of the best curveball’s in baseball.
To get zero swing and miss, is quite a special feat.
I had to dig into this for work, and doing statistics on runs is surprisingly interesting. Suppose you've got a sequence of $n$ events, each of which 'succeeds' with probability $p$. The expected length of the longest run is approximately $\log_{1/p}(n*(1-p) + 0.577 \ln(1/p) - 1/2$. For a fair coin with $p$ = 0.5, this reduces to log_2(n) - 2/3, which is about 19 for one million events. Amazingly, the variance only weakly depends on n, but is about 2 for p=0.5.
Thus, you're probably not going to see a 24 head run in 1M events. I'm excited I got to use this information, as the project I learned it for was a total bust.
More here: Shilling (1990, College Math. J.) https://www.csun.edu/~hcmth031/tlroh.pdf
The distinction is important because a sequence of ten heads seems 'rare' in isolation. However, it is not particularly unusual when you go looking for it as a subsequence of some bigger set of trials.
[0] https://www.newyorker.com/sports/sporting-scene/baseballs-st...
>Sports Illustrated’s Tom Verducci spoke with an Astros player who explained how they knew what was coming...
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tWNe6cMsdsI
There's way too much money chasing outcomes. Plenty of these players are vulnerable to different influence strategies.
Some folks at the same place helped me figure out what Venmo's social transaction messages are useful for: illegal gambling pools. I'd been wondering why those features exist or who'd want them, then saw it used for that purpose. Suddenly made sense.
Are you saying that someone out there is doing crowd sourced intelligence for increased win modeling, based on the messages people put in their venmo transactions?
Or that the default public nature of the ledger is such that people can see that the bookie (I think im using that right) is getting money from other counter parties and proves their ability to pay out in the future?
It'd be hard to crowd source for better odds on there, I'd think, since people disguise those kinds of transactions. Same as with drug purchases, which are also prohibited on Venmo so you can't mention them but are, obviously, some part of the activity on there, though unlike with betting pools Venmo's (previously, to me) weird social ledger thing isn't a killer feature for that.
Probably they could spot betting pools and put some rules in place to make it annoying enough to use the platform for that purpose that people would stop, though I don't know why they would. I'd guess illegal activity's far from a majority of their revenue, but I bet it's still significant. Probably certain transaction patterns get really common on either side of major sports events.
race car drivers using fake, lighter roll cages, cyclists using EPO to make their blood so thick they might die in their sleep, baseball players using cocaine and steroids. this happens not just where there is big money but amateur ranks where nothing is on the line except winning.
Not only in the US. If I'm not mistaken all the Premier League clubs outside the top 6 had betting companies as their main t-shirt logos last season, and we're talking about the most watched football league in the world (and definitely the one where the most money is involved). Things are pretty much the same wherever else you look in Europe. Betting has destroyed football (its corrupt officials helped in that, too, but that's a different story).
Football and betting is totally symbiotic. Betting is the reason the Premier League is the world's league. You can watch and bet on it everywhere. More money is bet on the EPL in Asia than in Europe. I think there is a problem with advertising but that isn't anything to do with the league (when the UK changed the rules on tobacco sponsorship it was a law, not a regulation of the league...and most of the issue isn't with shirt sponsorship).
I get that lots of people live somewhere where betting is illegal and there is a connection with organised crime. That just doesn't exist in reality.
Tying anything and everything to Trump is so tiresome and has nothing to do with the article, the Astros scandal, or the actions of commissioner landis/manfred.
There seems to be a theme amongst so many concentrations of money that basically centers around "hey, we're already making this much, why not pull any bs we can and make even more? Let the losers lose, cause they're losers anyway."
Was deflate gate somehow a reflection on Obama?
Frankly I think it should be a crime to cheat—make the people have something to lose that hurts more than money.
Now look, I'm not anti baseball, I'm not here to yuck your yum or say something shouldn't exist because I don't value or appreciate it. But professional baseball not existing anymore sure seems like a problem solely for the people who care about baseball to figure out, not the federal government.
And yet, we still arrest for public urination.
I guess I don't see the big deal about sign stealing. I mean, in some sports, maybe stock car racing or something like that, this kind of thing would be totally encouraged. Squeaky clean compared to doping and what not.
However, cheating to win still takes something away from the game. But fundamentally, any sport is based on the principle of a level playing field... that everyone is playing by the same rules. This isn't a case where they stretched the rules, or went right up to the line -- they gained an undeniable advantage using tools that the other teams didn't have. When the batter know the pitch that's coming, you take the most competitive aspect of baseball away.
For my money, baseball teams should pursue simple encryption schemes where the sign thrown has to be decoded by the pitcher in his head, using as additional parameters the inning, batter, and a special private key agreed upon by the pitcher and catcher before each game.
It's using electronics to steal signs that is against the rules. It's because electronics basically allow you to "perfectly" steal signs, and one of the biggest things in baseball is that the batter doesn't know what the pitcher is about to throw.
Why is the answer to everything "throw them in jail", at a huge cost to taxpayers?
I never had a problem with Lance Armstrong cheating because I assumed everyone else near the top of the pack was also cheating. If everyone cheats, it is absolutely still an earnest competition. Lots of other guys probably took just as many steroids as Barry Bonds did and didn't hit anywhere near as many home runs.
I also think that there need to be rules that are enforced, because there's no game without rules, but the rules are always inherently arbitrary, and I've never felt the urge to heap moral blame on the cheaters in addition to whatever punishment they get for breaking the rules... I guess I sort of unconsciously took the position that as long as no one is getting like, physically injured, bending the rules as far as they'll go (and breaking them sometimes) is just part of the game, and penalties are penalties.
It's hard for me to see much of a distinction between taking strategic fouls and violating the rules in other ways, weighing the likelihood of getting caught against the potential gain.
Despite all of this, I don't cheat when I play sports nor would I teach my kids to cheat, but when millions of dollars are on the line (maybe because there are millions of dollars on the line), it doesn't bother me that anyone would try to gain any possible advantage.
Sibling comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22416698 said it much better than me.
I love this language, and it sticks out because it's in such stark contrast to anything a large organization would say today. It doesn't sugarcoat anything, it takes full responsibility, no double speak, no marketing euphemisms. And it says what they are going to do about it.
I think people somehow feel they are exposing themselves these days with that level of transparency, and maybe they are right. But I know that if I heard people speaking like this I would be drastically more likely to trust them and their brands. I would like to think it's still possible to communicate this way in the modern world.
Players would refuse to testify without immunity and without player testimony it would be incredibly difficult to find the details of the cheating scheme. It also isn't even clear if MLB has the legal authority to punish players for this type of rule violation. The player's union has stated that MLB does not have that authority and MLB did not wish to fight them on it with a potential labor dispute already pending over league finances when the current collective bargaining agreement expires soon.
>Until and unless Commissioner Manfred lifts his ludicrous immunity offer and deals severely with the incriminated participating players as well as their management by banishing them all from the game, he will have thrown baseball back to where it was in 1919.
I personally think offering immunity to get players to testify and then reversing course and using that testimony to punish those players would do much more harm to baseball than this scandal.
This could very well be true. As is, the MLB has created a precedent for cheating without ever having to face penalties.
MLB simply had no good options that would allow them to directly punish players.
I wonder if the signs employed by Major League teams are as simple as the ones dissected above?
This has caused a renewed interest in baseball. It will probably increase attendance anywhere they Astros play, because people will want to come out and root for their local team to "beat the cheaters".
It'll be interesting to see how the attendance numbers this season play out.
If MLB could replace all of the players with robots that played a game simulated on a computer, designed to play out a storyline as a drama instead of a legitimate competition, and make more money doing it then they would in a heartbeat and not lose a wink of sleep over it.
That sign-stealing is part of the game, it isn't against the rules, and that most players who are complaining are in a gray area of hypocrisy, because they're mad they weren't in the loop on the tactic. My friends further believe that the Astros are being used as the patsies for all of MLB. The Astros will take the public blame for something most teams do or wish they thought of, and now all MLB will get on the same page about allowing or banning stealing like this.
These opinions are not my own, but I haven't seen the opinions or viewpoints of Astros defenders online - so here it is.
Gone are the days of defensive brilliance and working players around the bases methodically with short hits, speed, and finesse. I won't miss baseball in the Olympics and I think it's rightfully falling to other much more interesting and engaging sports. The idea it is our "national pastime" is just laughable to me.
What's more, where I live, we had the Pawtucket PawSox try to extort Providence and RI for massive tax breaks and a premium parcel of downtown Providence land. Thankfully, Rhode Islanders called their bluff and let them move to Worcester. I'm glad my state acknowledged baseball is an incredibly slow-paced and yawn-inducing sport and we didn't want to pay through the nose for a stadium that hardly any of us would enjoy having.
But the actual game play is my least favorite part about baseball. I absolutely love the theory and statistics that goes into the front office decisions. It's this interesting mix of economics and game theory and negotiation theory. My favorite team is notoriously cash strapped (read: cheap) and I think it's fascinating watching the team wheel and deal to try to compete with teams that literally spend 2x-3x as much as they do
Two examples are golf and cricket. Both take days so the action clearly isn't important. If you go live, it is about the day out, having some beers with your mates, relaxing (tbf, golf has managed this far better than cricket which has had to move to shorter formats). Watching at home, it is the same thing. Relaxing, having a good time with your mates, whatever.
It is true, nothing is going to compare to seeing an "action sport" live: boxing, a huge soccer game...very little in life compares. But I think there is room for other stuff too: stats, stories, experiences, etc. (tbh, I think action sports are going to struggle against Esports too). I am a big soccer fan but rarely watch games, I just follow the story and the stats (and bet on games). Viewership has gone through the roof because the stories are just so compelling (and yes, the money too nowadays).
I hope that sport doesn't become "all action, all the time" though. Again, nothing compares to action but you can't watch that every day.
Growing up with baseball also plays a large part in deciding if you'll have any interest in it as an adult.
I’ve basically stopped watching all pro sports, I was an athlete in school, and for a long time and avid sports fan, but no more.
The rule changes in the NBA, caused me to drop the sport, the PED scandal of MLB caused me to drop MLB, and the rule changes to football are making it feel a whole lot like The NBA.
I didn’t watch a single NFL game last season, and I only DVRed the NFL playoff games, and only skipped through one game, deleting the rest.
Even college sports have lost their appeal. Only one sport left and that’s boxing, but the pay per view rates have caused me to stop buying those events.
I think pro spots have peaked and will continue to decline.
1. We cheated and got caught. On one hand the penalties are pretty severe. Draft picks mean that in 5-8 years we may be awful again. AJ Hinch was a DAMN good manager and when the Mets hire him in a year I'm going to be sad. Jose Altuve - for whom there is no evidence that he cheated - is one of the best hitters of the last decade and may never make the HOF b/c of this. The penalties individually and collectively are not small. On the other hand, I agree that more punishment could have been handed out.
2. MLB has done a TERRIBLE job explaining that not only was immunity essential for getting the truth but also that punishing players would wind up in a YEARS-long dispute with the Player's Association. Fans and the sport alike get all pissy that there is no official record of steriod users...well immunity wasn't offered. Can't have it both ways.
3. MLB is also shooting itself in the foot not releasing the Red Sox report during the height of the Astros story. It is probable that the 2018 champs will ALSO be exposed as cheaters. ANd they had the MVP that year as well. I will smirk at least a little when the Astros hatred starts to abait in June just in time for the Red Sox to re-kindle the story.
3. I have friends that work in Baseball. Of course it's speculation but 3 of them independent of each other have told me that the 3 teams that cheat the most are Houston, LAD, and Arizona. ANd all 3 conversations ended with the punchline of how little the Diamondbacks have to show for their cheating.
4. The sanctimony in baseball is comical AND sad. No sport likes to eat it's young like baseball. The same reporters that used the 1998 home run race to their benefit now vote against steroid players getting into the HOF. Anything to protect your 2 inches in the Sunday edition, fellas. LOL
5. Being mindful of #1, anyone that thinks the cheating is limited to Houston, Boston or just a couple teams is sniffing glue. ALL teams and players creep as close to the line as possible. Are there players that refuse to participate? ABSOLUTELY. Are there teams that play every game on the up and up? No way. There is simply too much at stake and the transfer of players and execs and coaches between teams means that the knowledge of skirting the rules isn't limited to Houston.
5b. You want examples? The team that closes the dome to induce more short fly balls. The team that lets the grass grow longer to make grounders in the infield slow down. The team that overwaters the dirt in the base-paths to slow runners. on and on and on.
6. MLB allowing ANY current-game film in the clubhouse is so stupid as to defy words. So a batter can walk into the clubhouse and review the at-bat he completed 30 seconds ago to look at pitch sequences and locations.....that's okay? Absolutely STUPID. Suggested result: eliminate replay on anything but scoring plays. Remove replay in the clubhouse and prohibit players from leaving the dugout except for bio-breaks with an MLB escort.
7. Finally, if anything ever drives me away from baseball it will be this: the "inside" baseball talk. Reporters and players and former players that patronize fans with things like "you wouldn't understand..." or "there is a game within the game..." A sport that allows/supports putting a fastball in a guy's ribs if he preens after a home run. A sport that says SOME version of sign stealing is fine BUT other versions are not.
AND THAT IN ITSELF IS LUDICROUS.
What other sport allows the field of play to be modified to fit one style of play or player? Can you imagine a basketball team raising the rims 2 feet so that Giannis couldn't dunk AND IT BEING ALLOWED? Or a football team growing the grass to 8" so that a team with fast wide receivers would be slowed?
To me, baseball's rich (sarcasm) history of allowing random-sized fields and wall heights and open or closed roofs and watered or unwatered infields means that the more Circus-like elements of the sport are allowable. I too like some of this "gamesmanship". But I have a hard time understanding the difference of the allowed gamesmanship (stealing signs from second) and the disallowed and disgraceful gamesmanship (using ALLOWED in-clubhouse video to determine pitch sequences).
However, on another side. I’m tired of all this crap and dumb rules. Steroids? Use ‘em if you got ‘em. Why police it? I say Let the players decide. But I understand why that’s a unpopular opinion too.
Signs? Really? We literally have one guy on the field announcing to another guy what the next play is going to be and the opposing team is supposed to ignore it. How about let’s figure out a better way to communicate. There’s always going to be people that want to exploit such low hanging fruit. Especially with modern technology. The stupidest thing the Astros did was the banging in the dugout. If they had some silent obfuscated signal they would have never been caught (again, not defending the cheating but this is like a bank robber using a unicycle as a get away vehicle).