It’s been more than three and a half years since the world found out St. Louis native Jim Crane’s baseball team was using a center-field camera and trash-can-banging relay system during the 2017 and 2018 seasons to tell hitters which pitches were on the way to the plate, and those who doggedly defend those tarnished Astros teams still can’t help but reach for reasons to suggest what Houston did was somewhere between not so bad and relatively common.
It happened again this week, when the Blue Jays TV broadcast team noticed Yankees slugger Aaron Judge looking into his own dugout during a Toronto home game just before launching a home run.
“You don’t want to go throwing allegations around without knowing, but …” Blue Jays TV broadcaster Dan Shulman said during the broadcast, mastering the art of throwing around allegations without knowing.
And just like that, the Astros apologists came running, armed with their signature whataboutism.
Problem is, what has since become known is much more common than it is dastardly.
And there is no smoking gun of technological assistance.
Blue Jays reliever Jay Jackson was giving away the goods. He wasn’t protecting his pitch grips from prying eyes, and he was hinting at what he was throwing due to a noticeable difference in his delivery times. The Yankees appeared to be not only noticing, but relaying the information to the batter's box in real time.
Judge's only real mistake was fibbing in a post-game interview, when he claimed he was looking at the dugout because he wanted his teammates to calm down. Yeah, right. Here's what he should have said. If you’re giving the goods away, don’t get mad when someone takes them.
No cameras. No technology. Nothing but gamesmanship. That’s not cheating. That’s baseball. That’s not what the Astros were doing in 2017 and 2018.
Baserunners and coaches along the first and third-base lines have been relaying tips to hitters forever. Before the rise of PitchCom tech to call pitches, it was the signs that would get decoded. Now, it can be the pitch grip, if it's visible from the mound, or the way a catcher is positioning behind the plate. Some players chafe at the idea of the base coaches and dugout dwellers getting in on the action in addition to baserunners, but there is little that can be done to stop it. The word can spread with something as subtle as a whistle, or a simple lean toward the left or right.
During an appearance on former Cardinals catcher A.J. Pierzynski’s "Foul Territory" baseball show, former Cardinals starter Lance Lynn said he has one preferred deterrent. Chin music.
"If a guy’s on base and he sees your grip from second, that’s on you," Lynn said. "But players that are not on the field or coaches who are not playing the game are involved, that’s where I call it too much.”
Not liking it doesn’t stop it, though, and you can't go around hitting everybody who tries. What you can do, what you have to do, is self-police. Don't give those prying eyes anything to see. Or, make sure they're only seeing what you want. Some pitchers and catchers intentionally show one thing and then do another, to help keep opponents honest.
Here’s one thing that should change moving forward. Umpires should start forcing base coaches to stay inside the boundaries of their boxes. Some coaches drift because they want to be more distanced from foul balls. Others do it for, well, better views. The Cardinals occasionally ask umpires to steer opposing coaches back toward their boxes. It shouldn’t have to be requested. I’d expect to see the worst offenders get more attention moving forward after that aspect became a big part of the squabble between the Yankees and the Blue Jays.
The Cardinals have places they play and teams they play against where they will go as far as assign someone in the dugout the job of watching for any hints Cardinals pitchers are tipping. Certain pitchers who are more likely to fall into trends and traps are monitored even more closely.
"We're looking for all of it," Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol said.
"Just to be clear, there are certain things that would not be bucketed as cheating. If you are giving something away, it's up to the opposition to take advantage of it. We are constantly making sure that we are not giving things away. And if, in an inning, he (a Cardinals pitcher) falls into it and we see it, making sure the way it can be relayed isn't being relayed. There are several ways you can give stuff away. We do internal audits. Daily.”
The Yankees would have come out of this "controversy" smelling like a rose if one of their pitchers, Domingo German had not been busted during the same series for having too much sticky stuff on his pitching hand. Whoops. But even the sticky stuff debate — how much rosin (and sweat) is too much? — has a lot of gray area in it.
There was no gray area to what Houston did for seasons.
Covert technology is not the same as eyes and ears.
Even Astros apologists know this, whether they can admit it or not.
