Read My Lips

Read My Lips

Oh, those poor, poor Astros.  They couldn’t finish off the Nationals during the World Series, and they keep getting into trouble for stuff, like an assistant GM bullying female reporters and people stealing signs.  Apparently, no one in the Houston organization was taught that it’s wrong to steal.  But that’s exactly what The Athletic is alleging this week in a pretty detailed story.

First, a little background: teams have been trying to steal other teams’ signs since the dawn of baseball.  Is that bad?  Well, it depends.  If I’m sitting in the dugout and can see the base coaches or someone in the other dugout flashing signs and I can figure out what they mean, then that’s OK in my book.  I mean, I’m just sitting there.  The signs take the place of conversation.  If I’m sitting there and can hear what my opponent’s planning to do, I’m not going to stick my fingers in my ears or say, “Hey, guys, move it somewhere else so I won’t know what you’re up to.”

Ditto standing at second base.  If I can read the catcher’s sign and relay it to my teammate at bat, that’s OK.  How different is that from acting on a pitcher who’s tipping his pitchers?  What, I should ignore the tip that a fastball/curve/change is coming?  That’d be dumb.  Well, the catcher who doesn’t change signs with a baserunner at second is basically tipping pitches to the runner. 

Notice that the “theft” involves nothing more than paying attention with your own two eyes.  As long as that’s the case, everything’s fair in love and war.  But once you start adding anything to this equation—including but not confined to binoculars, zoom lenses or TV feeds in the dugout—then we’ve got a problem.  You either cheat like they did back in 1900, or you don’t cheat at all.

It’s interesting that the Astros haven’t put up a defense like they initially did for their bullying assistant GM; that certainly suggests guilt.  It’s also interesting that Houston is the poster child for the cutting-edge organization, all analytics and whatnot.  Back in the day, anyone caught (or suspected) of using binoculars to steal signs was called out as a cheat (we’re looking at you, Leo Durocher).  That doesn’t seem to bother the analytics’ crowd.  I wonder why.

Maybe no one’s come up with a logarithm to measure cheating.  Ergo, it doesn’t exist, at least for some people.