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This whole ordeal was overblown, to be honest. Cheating is quite common throughout baseball, and pro sports in general, just the other teams didn't get caught/snitched out. It's all a business, after all.
If the other teams did not get caught or snitched out, then how do YOU know they are cheating?
So, if other teams are caught, the problem is no longer that the Astros cheated, the problem is that people expressed distaste for the Astos cheating? If other teams are swept up in the scandal, then wouldn't the " sanctimonious blowhards" simply expand the range of their contempt?
My bet is they won't be as sanctimonious when their range of contempt includes their own team.
What would people have Astros fans do? The fans didn't cheat. Should they root for the Dodgers and Yankees now? Should they quit watching baseball?
Part of the exchange I had with our man from Houston Heights was that a lot of the problem that sits with us is just how gawshdanged brazen they were with it. Banging on stuff in the dugout tunnel in half-empty parks in May/June, and then continuing to do it after the memo went out and the Astros already clinched. The Astros are, at minimum guilty of more sheer stupidity than the rest of the league, for being the ones to get caught first.
Excellent point. I didn't believe the whistleblower reports when this started because I didn't find it plausible that everyone could be in on it and expect to get away with it, in a league where players come and go all the time. The question I often asked is why Fiers, a AL pitcher, would be in on a batting scheme? If he knew about it then maybe the batboys knew about it.
I've not heard anything specific on the scope of it. Were they reading signs on every pitch of every game? Or select pitches for select batters in select situations?
Excellent point. I didn't believe the whistleblower reports when this started because I didn't find it plausible that everyone could be in on it and expect to get away with it, in a league where players come and go all the time. The question I often asked is why Fiers, a AL pitcher, would be in on a batting scheme? If he knew about it then maybe the batboys knew about it.
I've not heard anything specific on the scope of it. Were they reading signs on every pitch of every game? Or select pitches for select batters in select situations?
I think they were reading signs on most pitches, but perhaps only actually giving signals at certain times. But there were enough times that have been documented, where it didn't matter, and the Astros were stupid in trying to win more when it didn't matter, instead of employing this scheme only in the most clutchest of situations, when you might actually have fans doing some periodic banging on something. Instead it was a long-running, repeating pattern that people easily picked out. Just like hand signals. Aided by video technology, no less. What comes around goes around, what goes around comes around and so forth.
Fiers, for his part, is a well-known axe-grinder and grudge-holder. It's funny to me seeing Yankee people beatifying him for exposing how their team got supposedly cheated out of a title, when it was the Yankees' own inability to hit on the road as well as the Astros did that got them eliminated. Fiers was left off the 2017 postseason roster after his trying to settle a two-year-old beef with Giancarlo Stanton, who of course was playing for the Yankees in a game that did matter at the time. So Hinch left him at home, he sulked off to Oakland, then waited another two years to spill his guts.
MLB probably would have just brushed it off, but this is the YouTube and reshare and retweet and Internet pitchfork mob age. There was a spark, then there was a fire and it wasn't going to burn out on its own. So MLB investigated, and it turns out sometimes people with axes to grind are at least dealing in truth sometimes.
My impression is that you would welcome an expansion of the scandal to take some of the heat off the team which you follow.
If such schemes are widespread, of course. Are you saying you just want one or two teams exposed as an example with the rest of it swept under the carpet?
Personally, I think MLB knows lots more than they have said. There's a reason they are not going after the players. Nobody comes out to the park to watch the managers.
If such schemes are widespread, of course. Are you saying you just want one or two teams exposed as an example with the rest of it swept under the carpet?
Personally, I think MLB knows lots more than they have said. There's a reason they are not going after the players. Nobody comes out to the park to watch the managers.
First, what did you read in my posts which would make you think that I was advocating sweeping any scandal under the carpet? I can't find anything.
Second, I wrote that my impression was that you would welcome the scandal expanding in order to take some of the heat off the Astros. You responded yes, "if" such schemes are widespread...and that wasn't the premise. I was saying that you seem to want an expanded scandal, as in you are rooting for that "if."
If such schemes are widespread, of course. Are you saying you just want one or two teams exposed as an example with the rest of it swept under the carpet?
Oh, no, none of them really want any probes to go beyond the Astros or the Red Sox, especially if you're in New York. That's a hard-on that'll last all offseason, and nothing will kill it faster than asking, for example, exactly why Aaron Judge hit below the Mendoza line in every other AL East park last year but not at Yankee Stadium. It could be a statistical fluke from a small sample size, just like home/away splits in the playoffs. Or it could be something else.
First, what did you read in my posts which would make you think that I was advocating sweeping any scandal under the carpet? I can't find anything.
Second, I wrote that my impression was that you would welcome the scandal expanding in order to take some of the heat off the Astros. You responded yes, "if" such schemes are widespread...and that wasn't the premise. I was saying that you seem to want an expanded scandal, as in you are rooting for that "if."
You should probably stick to what I actually said and not speculate about how I feel or what I want. I mean, isn't it a bit hypocritical for you to challenge my characterization of what you want and demand that it be supported in your actual words yet you want to characterize what you think I want without it being similarly based?
So, if other teams are caught, the problem is no longer that the Astros cheated, the problem is that people expressed distaste for the Astos cheating? If other teams are swept up in the scandal, then wouldn't the " sanctimonious blowhards" simply expand the range of their contempt?
The sanctimonious pie as it were, or is at that time, will be shared more evenly amongst all the guilty monkeys. The Astro's are eating way more pie than their share, at this time.
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