Pitcher: rather face steroids than sign stealer. Except sign stealers don't succeed as much.

The hysteria about the sign stealing scandal/crisis reaches a new moronic height with this.

History repeating itself? How Astros cheating affair compares to MLB's PED scandal by Gabe Lacques USA TODAY

Veteran lefty Alex Wood recently bridged the gap between the game’s two scandals of this century in one tweet: “I would rather face a player that was taking steroids than face a player that knew every pitch that was coming.”

It’s a fair point. As unstoppable as Barry Bonds was in 2001, his 73 home runs and 177 walks still came with 93 strikeouts. So even one of the greatest hitters of all time, with access to perhaps the greatest chemist in sports history, had little chance if he was sitting fastball and instead received a changeup.

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The point is neither fair nor logical. For one thing, these are not mutually exclusive. For another, as stated in a recent post here, my guess is that at least 90% of the time a batter "knows" what pitch is coming it's because the pitcher or one of the pitcher's teammates has tipped the pitch. Pitchers are not baseball players and are now exposed as being a bunch of cry babies, too.

It's pretty easy to simply check the basic data. I did. Astros should have been much more successful hitting at home where they were stealing the signs 2017-2019. But they weren't. Neither were the 1951 New York Giants, the other team known to have stolen signs at home in winning the NL pennant over the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Anecdotally, any hit by the Astros in recent years could be attributed to the batter knowing what pitch was coming. But the idea that the Astros had a perfect record of knowing all pitches, all the time is absurd. But that's the premise above.

Then there's the other side of the coin. How much did opposing batters score, especially during tournament games? For the umpteenth time, the 2017 Yankees in the ALCS against the Astros in the four games in Houston scored these runs: 1,1,1,0. That's why Houston won all four games. Might one or both runs scored by Houston in the first two 2-1 wins in Houston have been because of cheating? Sure. Also, maybe not. Definitely, who knows? The Yankees outscored Houston in the three games in Yankee Stadium by an average of 5.5 runs per game and won all three. But the Yankees scored only three runs in the four games in Houston.

So instead of just running your mouth, put a little effort into this. Punishment should not be 99% of the focus, especially since the "crime" (communicating with finger signs) is so ridiculous and even more preventable with just a little effort. How dumb do you have to be to be a victim of such nonsense ... for three years?

Showing posts with label Signs.