An inside look at the Astros’ cheating scandal
By Jim Wilson
Note to readers: Former Oregon State football/baseball player Jim Wilson, an occasional guest columnist on my website, played pro baseball for more than a decade, with major league stints with the Cleveland Indians and Seattle Mariners. On opening day of the 2020 season, Jim wanted to share the following.
When major league baseball opens its abbreviated 2020 schedule this week, many fans will be interested to see what happens in Houston, where the Astros will play for the first time since commissioner Rob Manfred levied some of the harshest discipline in MLB history.
There are still some raw nerves around the league, which has sparked speculation about Astro hitters being thrown at in retribution.
The Astros’ sign-stealing scandal dated back to the 2017 and ’18 seasons. Allegations regarding the scheme came out in November of 2019, which prompted an investigation by major league baseball.
This January, that investigation confirmed the Astros illegally used technology to steal signs during the 2017 and ’18 seasons. The penalties included suspensions, a $5 million fine and the loss of top draft picks for two years.
According to the MLB report, the Astros were using their video replay room and later installed a dugout monitor to decode and relay signals by banging on garbage cans in the dugout. There were also accusations of Jose Altuve and Alex Bregman wearing body buzzers taped under their jerseys -- but those claims were unsubstantiated in the report.
The Astros subsequently fired Manager A.J. Hinch and General Manager Jeff Luhnow; later, the Boston Red Sox and manager Alex Cora parted company after his involvement was revealed in the MLB report. Soon thereafter, ex-Astro player and newly hired New York Mets Manager Carlos Beltran was fired before he ever managed a game.
Pat Casey
“If a guy picks up something in uniform, then I’m all for it, that’s part of the game,” Oregon State coaching legend Pat Casey says. “If somebody out of uniform is using technology that everybody doesn’t have access to, then that’s a premeditated thing and in my opinion is cheating,”
Stealing signs and picking up advantages through tendencies and patterns have always been accepted as part of baseball’s gamesmanship. Major league baseball made a clear statement that illegally using technology to steal signs crosses the line.
Here’s is Wilson’s 1972 Corvallis Boy’s Club All-Star team, which included former OSU second baseman Mickey Riley (bottom row, second from right), major league All-Star Harold Reynolds (middle row, second from left), ex-OSU quarterback Ladd McKittrick (middle row, far right), Kerry Eggers’ brother Tom (top row, second from right), ex-OSU running back Jaime Patton (top row, second from left), and Wilson (top row, far right),
I first heard about sign stealing when I was on a traveling 6th-grade all-star team and new teammate Harold Reynolds suggested that if we reached second base we could relay the catcher’s signs to the batter.
As a major league second baseman, Reynolds went on to play in two All-Star games and win three Gold Gloves awards and an American League stolen base title during his 12-year major league career.
Jim Wilson and Harold Reynolds
“I was a middle infielder, so I followed every sign and got really good at picking up sequences and figuring it out,” Reynolds says.
Gaining an edge through sign-stealing is not confined to actually intercepting the signs put down by the catcher. Signs are passed from coach to coach, from coach to player and from player to player, giving opponents several avenues to intercept and decode signs.
In addition to stealing signs, teams have long gained advantages through keen observation of tendencies and patterns tipped off by opponents; that’s the gamesmanship so prevalent in baseball.
“Remember when Jack Morris lost 20 games one year? It seemed like everybody in the whole league knew he was tipping his pitches,” Reynolds says.
“When he brought the ball to his waist he was throwing his fastball and when he kept his glove below his waist it was a forkball.”
Morris was 6-14 in 1989 and followed that up with 18 losses the following year, but those numbers provide statistical data to support Reynolds’ assertion that the Hall of Fame pitcher with 254 career victories was tipping his own hand.
Jim Wilson
During my professional career, Oregon State coach Jack Riley allowed ex-Beaver players to get swings in the old Armory as we prepared for our
respective seasons. One day we were facing Knute Buehler, a young right-handed pitcher from Roseburg who would ultimately go on to a Rhodes Scholarship, a career as an orthopedic surgeon and politician. (Knute was the Republican candidate for governor in Oregon in 2018.)
It only took a couple pitches to identify everything Buehler was going to throw.
The “tell” was a wiggle of his glove every time he would throw his knuckle curveball -- a pitch that takes a bit of jostling to get the proper grip. It was that easy. If there was a wiggle in the glove, he was throwing the curveball; no wiggle was the fastball.
We were nice enough to tell Buehler about his habit, but not until after the session was over!
In my second major league game, Indians bench coach Bobby Bonds gave me a verbal cue every time Minnesota hurler John Butcher threw a change-up, which was Butcher’s bread and butter. Third base coach Johnny Goryl read Butcher’s grip, relayed to Bonds in the dugout who passed it on to me at the plate.
That’s Butcher’s fault.
“The Brewers, with Robin Yount, Jim Gantner and Paul Molitor, were absolutely the best at relaying signs,” Reynolds recalls. “They mostly relayed location. I remember one game Mollie (Molitor) was at second and I was warning him about passing the signs. I told him, ‘Don’t make me tell Randy that you’re tipping signs,’ “laughs Reynolds, referring to 6-10 left-hander Randy Johnson.
As a member of the Oregon State team in 1980, I was part of a sign-stealing scheme that falls in line with Pat Casey’s definition of cheating. During a weekend series, three of my friends posted up beyond the center field fence at Coleman Field with a pair of binoculars. We hatched a system to relay the signs for fastball and breaking ball, with a third sign meaning the signs couldn’t be detected.
(Is there a statute of limitations for stealing signals?)
Ever since the advent of centerfield cameras, it became commonplace for teams to get a tape of opponents and break down their signs. The Astros went so far as to deploy a computer software program called “Codebreaker” to unravel the signs.
I’ve played on teams where players were assigned to track every move of the third base coach in hopes of figuring out the signs. Teams actually spend time coaching players on how to decode signs at second base, which is basically a process of elimination.
In 2014, MLB instituted a video replay policy and with that teams were allowed a television monitor in their dugouts. That’s like throwing raw meat into a shark tank and asking the shark to leave it alone; it wasn’t long before teams were being accused of stealing signs using the television monitors.
“We went into every series assuming our opponents knew our signs and it was our job to change them up,” Casey adds. “We changed our signs pitch to pitch, by count, by outs. No matter what you do, opponents will pick it up if you don’t flip your signs.”
In 2017, Manfred fined the Boston Red Sox for sign stealing and warned teams that future violations would result in managers and general managers being punished. Before the 2018 season, chief baseball officer Joe Torre issued a stern warning that team’s could not use video technology to steal signs.
That’s why the Astros’ punishment included the loss of both the manager and general manager's job. The age-old practice of stealing signs and picking up a competitive edge through observation in real time by uniformed personnel will always be a part of baseball.
As will the advantages gained through the tendencies and patterns of opponents -- the gamesmanship present in every sport.
It would be nice if the harsh penalties levied by both the major league baseball and the respective clubs put an end to cheating through illegally using technology to steal signs.
Don’t bet on it, though.
Readers: what are your thoughts about the 2020 MLB season? Share them in the comments below.
Reach out to Kerry Eggers here.
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