MLB: Technology and Sign Stealing

The sign-stealing scandal surrounding the Boston Red Sox and Houston Astros cropped up again over the weekend, not because of any real new information that has come out, but because of a flood of new reactions to it.

First, there was Justin Verlander, who in accepting his AL Cy Young Award, made comments about the Astros’ “technological and analytical advancements,” which drew some laughs, some groans and according to one writer, some serious daggers from CC Sabathia.

Whether or not Verlander was intending to make jokes, thumbing his nose at Astros critics, or simply was unaware he was stirring a hornets’ nest is unclear, but it certainly fired up Twitter’s hypocrisy watchdogs, and not without merit.

Another thing that happened was that Dallas Keuchel apologized for the scandal. Keuchel hasn’t played for the Astros since 2018, and as a pitcher didn’t benefit directly from the sign-stealing operation, but he apparently felt the need to speak out. The apology contained watered-down phrases like “not every game there was signs being stolen,” and “it just happened to come out with the Astros,” but it was something, I suppose.

(You can discuss this on the BSL Board here.)

Finally, the Dodgers held their annual FanFest on Saturday, allowing players and management alike to react on public record. The Dodgers are of particular interest in this whole thing, as they lost back-to-back World Series to the key figures in the scandal – the Astros in 2017, and the Red Sox in 2018 – and a solid portion of their fanbase has been wallowing in victimhood to an Oscar-caliber degree.

Justin Turner, the Dodgers’ de facto captain, addressed the situation with nuance, saying on one hand that “it’s hard to feel like they earned it,” and on the other that “we don’t want a fake banner hanging in our stadium. We didn’t earn that.”

Pretty reasonable takes, in my opinion.

When you add it all up, this weekend was just another wave in a cycle that will be repeating for some time, perhaps a very long time. It will become a talking point again in spring training. And again when the 2020 season begins. And again as soon as the first high-and-tight pitch sends Jose Altuve or George Springer or Alex Bregman sprawling into the batter’s box dirt.

That’s where we’re at, and unfortunately it’s going to take away from what started as a pretty fun offseason (especially for Scott Boras) and a 2020 season that promises a broader, deeper wealth of young athletic talent than ever before.

At first I resisted writing about this topic because I wasn’t passionate about it either way. To me, it was black and white – it’s against the rules to use technology to steal signs, so punishment is warranted. That’s what separates it from traditional sign-stealing, which falls into “unwritten rules” territory. Everybody does it, but if you’re caught being too obvious about it, the players will police it themselves on the field.

The use of technology, though, is banned in the actual written rules, and judging by player reaction around the league, I would guess that not everybody is cheating in this manner. And whether or not you think the punishments handed down were too harsh, too light or just right, you can’t deny that Rob Manfred sent a pretty clear message not to do it anymore.

But the more I thought about this and the more I read about it, the more I started to think that maybe we’re looking at all of this wrong. Maybe MLB should actually embrace it.

The practice of baseball teams using technology for ethically questionable purposes has been around for a long, long time. According to Derek Zumsteg’s book, “A Cheater’s Guide to Baseball”, there was an incident in Philadelphia in 1898(!) in which a wire was found in the ground around third base. A player would sit in the stands with binoculars, signal the incoming pitch with a ground-rattling buzz to the third base coach, who would relay a sign to the batter. Genius!

The New York Giants used a similar system in 1951, the year they beat out the Dodgers for the NL pennant on Bobby Thompson’s famous clinching homer.

And the Chicago White Sox were known for signaling pitches via lights on their electronic scoreboard, a practice started by George Kell in 1955 (he was himself inspired by stuff he saw the Red Sox doing during his previous stop in Boston). The White Sox continued this practice for decades despite their activities being more or less known around the game.

For several years I ghost-wrote columns for Hall of Famer pitcher Bert Blyleven for NBCSports.com. I specifically remember one column we did on sign-stealing, and Bert talked about the stuff that went on in Chicago.

Unfortunately the article seems to have been lost during one of NBC’s web site redesigns, but what I remember is that Bert was more annoyed than upset about Chicago’s sign-stealing. Instead, he and his catcher opted to combat the practice by changing signs for every batter. The process would leave him mentally fried after games, but in 181.1 innings at Old Comiskey Park, Blyleven had a 3.28 ERA, 1.208 WHIP and struck out 7.5 per nine innings, all right around his career averages (3.31, 1.198, 6.7).

None of these anecdotes are meant to condone what the Astros, Red Sox and perhaps others have done. The use of cameras is banned, so the punishment is just. I’m just wondering if a more realistic approach isn’t warranted.

We might be in a situation where the toothpaste is out of the tube, and there is no getting it back in. There are cameras literally everywhere, and messaging technology is widespread. Heck, you could probably get it done simply by having eagle-eyed fans in center field post to Instagram with the hashtag “curveballcoming.” There is no escaping it.

At this point, maybe the onus is on the pitching team finding a method that is more effective than simply signaling out in the open, in front of the world, what pitch is coming. Or, like Blyleven did, making those signals more varied and complex.

There was an interesting article on MIT Technology Review earlier this month discussing this, making a case for why the Red Sox should not have fired Alex Cora.

Keep in mind, MIT is located a David Ortiz moonshot from Fenway Park, so consider the source. But potential fan bias aside, the article’s author, Konstantin Kakaes, writes, sensibly:

“Elaborate technology has become integral to both sports and is enthusiastically promoted by the leagues (MLB and NFL), which dictate the rules of their respective games. It is ludicrous for the leagues to breathlessly trumpet cloud computing partnerships with Amazon but cry foul when regular old cameras are used to film signals that are given in plain sight.

“If sports teams want to communicate among themselves in secret while transmitting in plain view, they should come up with more subtle signaling schemes. Dissembling and misdirection are necessary and crucial to both football and baseball. Alex Cora, AJ Hinch, Jeff Luhnow, and Bill Belichick were doing what all good coaches do: trying to find an edge. Given the ready availability of digital cameras, it is highly unlikely that they are the only ones to have done so.”

Kakaes is right about MLB wholeheartedly embracing technology in this Statcast era. As evidence, look no further than the news that robot umps will be tested in spring training, a key step toward an inevitable future.

And that’s just part of it. Players are using technology more than ever to improve their own craft, too. In my documentary podcast Razed Sports, I follow 40^th round draft pick Cole Uvila, who found some great success in his first full season in the minor leagues — in part by crafting and improving his pitches through the use of the high-speed cameras and radar equipment at Driveline Baseball.

So why not embrace all technology, at all times? Allow the cameras. Allow the Apple Watches. Allow the players to carry buzzers in their pockets. At least then it’s an even playing field. At least then it’s up to the players and management of each team to figure how to counter it.

The Dodgers’ Enrique Hernandez said on Saturday: “[The Astros] cheated and they got away with it. They got a ring out of it, so I guess if nothing happened to them as players, good for them.”

The “good for them,” came with a heavy dose of sarcasm, but that might be the right way to look at all of this in the long run.

Let the most innovative team win.