Much Ado About Nothing is a comedy by William Shakespeare thought to have been written in 1598 and 1599 ...
Yesterday on MLB Network Brian Kenny hosted a too long panel discussion on the most recent state of emergency: some teams may have used electronic equipment to view, interpret and relay to their batters information about the next pitch: whether it will be a fastball and/or location presumably.
Listening to this junk makes my teeth hurt. Baseball thinking continues to devolve. Too many baseball fans are overly influenced by experts, media, ... into concern about the inalienable right of grown men to communicate during a game with finger signs.
Here is possibly the most bizarre aspect: the current description of how this works is that the cheating needs a runner on second base who can relay the sign to the batter. In the previous millennium, it was presumed that the runner on second base could see and possibly interpret the catcher's signs and relay information to the batter. Why wouldn't a team simply rely on that? And the way the defensive team would try to prevent that was by using complex signs, which presumably would not be interpreted, when there was a runner on second base. I think in 2018 a Met pitcher became so obsessed with the thought that a runner on second base was stealing the signs that the pitcher intentionally balked the runner to third base.
See the confusing nature of this and why concern does not make much sense? If the catcher uses complex signs with a runner on second base, the team at bat would have difficulty interpreting in time before the next pitch.
Another thing is that discussions focus on the cheating team gaining access to the MLB replay TV room in each ball park, used to help teams decide whether to challenge a call by an umpire.
They never really describe what could be seen that could not have been seen by watching the game on TV. In the regular season it seems that at least 90% of catcher signs are seen by the TV viewers. That is reduced to possibly no signs on TV during the tournament because national TV networks use techniques to appeal to non fans who may be willing to watch a show with human drama accentuated by extreme closeups of people's facial expressions.
Aren't there still TVs in the locker room? In the manager's office? Fans in the ball park can watch the game on TV while waiting on line at a concession stand. The telecast can be streamed to phones of thousands of fans at the game. The fans could relay information to the home team batters and do it openly.
Finally, many teams have a coach or the manager call the pitches and signal that info to the catcher who then flashes his fingers in the age old way of communicating with the pitcher, who then pretends to be agreeing or selecting among multiple options.
Why not have the pitcher look at the dugout person calling pitches instead of relying on the catcher to relay?
The whole thing is ridiculous.
Obviously, if signals are coming from the dugout such that pretty much anybody in the ball park could see the signs, then it's entirely based on the defensive team being confident that the batting team cannot interpret the signs quickly enough. The Yankees seemed to be doing this when Aroldis Chapman gave up the pennant winning home run to Jose Altuve in 2019. Yankee catcher Gary Sanchez was getting the signs from the Yankee visiting team dugout in Houston and then signalling to Chapman who then threw the pitch. Altuve had his back to the Yankee dugout on the third base side.
MLB continues to develop a plan to prevent this form of cheating so that it can dictate new rules to the players and umpires. Conversely, MLB is timid in unilaterally implementing solutions to the slow pace of play. MLB won't even enforce an existing rule like 12 seconds between pitches with no base runner. Yes, 12, not 20. MLB won't order the umpires to not allow either explicit or implicit time outs between pitches.
Oh, and the whistle blower on this sign stealing "scandal", Mike Friers, is not a hero. To be a hero, Friers, when he was a member of the 2017 Houston Astros, would have gone to his manager, AJ Hinch, and described the situation and threatened to go public if it was not stopped. But he only became "courageous" after he had left the Astros and joined division rival Oakland As. And as far as we know, Friers kept the 2017 tournament money he received; and Friers didn't even pitch in the tournament.
Boone and/or Rothschild appear to give signs when Altuve homers to win 2019 pennant. Tuesday, November 19, 2019
What if both teams are cheating? Wednesday, November 27, 2019
Astros home/road hitting splits 2017-2019. Saturday, December 28, 2019
Showing posts with label Signs.
No comments:
Post a Comment