|
ilmucche posted:I thought we were trying to come to a consensus on the astros, the team who banged the cans to win the world series, not any other team I think it's at least relevant if some other teams were also doing video cheating, even if they weren't also doing something as hilarious as can banging. Like, the idea would be something like "even if what the Astros did was worse than what Boston, New York and LA were doing this is still a matter of degree; they weren't doing anything categorically different." Of course, that seems to stop well short of "Astros did nothign wrong" or "therefore they were sufficiently punished."
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2023 16:21
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 28, 2024 15:50 |
|
|
Hand Knit posted:I think it's at least relevant if some other teams were also doing video cheating, even if they weren't also doing something as hilarious as can banging. Like, the idea would be something like "even if what the Astros did was worse than what Boston, New York and LA were doing this is still a matter of degree; they weren't doing anything categorically different." The current thread consensus is *only* the Astros did something wrong, and what was wrong and different is that they had an organizational structure in place specifically to steal signs. It's most definitely relevant if other teams had the same type (or stronger) organizational structure in place specifically to steal signs. All of the moralistic hand wringing about how it was institutional rot and morally bankrupt leadership structure that led to this really loses its luster when it turns out other teams had similar sign stealing infrastructure that was widely reported. This will change to "actually it was the can bangs" or whatever narrow distinction the posters here use to justify to themselves why their team cheating was fine but what the Astros did was beyond the pale. Sab0921 fucked around with this message at 17:08 on Apr 14, 2023 |
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2023 17:05
|
|
|
Sab0921 posted:The current thread consensus is *only* the Astros did something wrong, and what was wrong and different is that they had an organizational structure in place specifically to steal signs. It's most definitely relevant if other teams had the same type (or stronger) organizational structure in place specifically to steal signs. I don't think this is quite fair to others who have been posting here. A better way of thinking about it would be something like "the Astros won the championship based on their cheating; their cheating did more damage than that of other teams, and therefore deserves commensurately higher punishment." And that seems reasonably, at least on the face of it. Like, if I tell a lie so that my friend pays for dinner and you tell a lie to get my dear old mother to sign over her estate to you, we've both technically defrauded someone by lying but the fact that my dear old mother's estate is worth much more than a dinner (at least I hope it is) means that what you've done is in some relevant way worse. Sometimes an act is made worse by what it accomplishes even if it's the same thing as other, otherwise equivalent acts. So even if other teams were cheating, it's the Astros that won the title. It's at least reasonable to think that that does make what they did more significant, even if they were doing the same thing as other teams.
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2023 17:31
|
|
|
Hand Knit posted:I don't think this is quite fair to others who have been posting here. A better way of thinking about it would be something like "the Astros won the championship based on their cheating; their cheating did more damage than that of other teams, and therefore deserves commensurately higher punishment." And that seems reasonably, at least on the face of it. Like, if I tell a lie so that my friend pays for dinner and you tell a lie to get my dear old mother to sign over her estate to you, we've both technically defrauded someone by lying but the fact that my dear old mother's estate is worth much more than a dinner (at least I hope it is) means that what you've done is in some relevant way worse. Sometimes an act is made worse by what it accomplishes even if it's the same thing as other, otherwise equivalent acts. I think it's unfair to say that when each of the Red Sox, Yankees, and Dodgers (the teams they beat in that 2017 run) were all cheating as well with at least the Dodgers having a very elaborate organizational structure for sign stealing. To say what the Astros did is measurably worse because they won a title and the Dodgers merely won the NL makes the Astros worthy of more severe punishment is a weird take. I think it should be clear by now that what the Astros did wasn't unique to them and it was something most good teams in the MLB were doing in that era. I get that people have put themselves in a corner about it because of all the moralizing about cheating the game, but it's just what baseball was in the mid 2010s. It's similar to spidertack for the later years after sign stealing - it's cheating, and wasn't supposed to happen, but pitchers across the league regularly did it. Sab0921 fucked around with this message at 18:24 on Apr 14, 2023 |
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2023 18:06
|
|
|
No one else was relaying signs to batters without a runner on 2B That's ~75% of all PA that other teams were not relaying signs to batters, but the Astros were. They cheated 4x as much as everyone else!
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2023 18:36
|
|
|
is this different from "everyone was using steroids but McGwire and Bonds broke records with them" as a justification for singling them out
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2023 18:36
|
|
|
fwiw I don't agree that the Astros are bad because they won the WS while cheating. They cheated significantly more than anyone else and it gave them the edge they needed to win a very close series. I will never believe that their sign stealing wasn't the crucial edge in Game 5.
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2023 18:46
|
|
|
bawfuls posted:fwiw I don't agree that the Astros are bad because they won the WS while cheating. They cheated significantly more than anyone else and it gave them the edge they needed to win a very close series. Right - you're only mad that the Dodgers lost. You don't really care about cheating. You're fine when the Dodgers do it, what makes you upset is that the Dodgers lost and you attribute that to cheating. Do you ever look at it the other way? Let's just look at the 2017 World Series, Games 1 and 6 were at Dodger Stadium, very close and the Dodgers had an incredible read on Keuchel and Verlander and worked every count deep. Could Justin Turner's game 1 HR been a result of a stolen sign? There was a man on 2nd at the time. What about Chris Taylor's go ahead double in Game 6 against Verlander with a man on? What does Justin Verlander's legacy look like if the Astros win Game 2 and Game 6 that he started, is he the World Series MVP? I'll pose it a different way. Let's say the Dodgers won, and that Verducci article from 2018 became a huge deal about the Dodgers elaborate sign stealing operation and everything else was the same including the Fiers article. Does it make sense for me as an Astros fan to be mad forever about it? Sab0921 fucked around with this message at 19:04 on Apr 14, 2023 |
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2023 18:59
|
|
|
If we're taking everything Gattis said on twitter at face value - and why not, it's not like any other players are going to come forward on this - and combine it with the stuff we already knew, then I think this is a pretty good picture: 1. More or less every team at some point realized that the advent of the replay room and its non-delayed/non-cropped feed meant they could use it to grab signs. 2. At the lowest level, teams would just get the signs from the replay room, tell guys in the dugout, and later if there was a runner on they'd try to relay those signs to the batter. 3. A handful of teams took this a step further and tried to mix in more technology. Gattis says there were four, which were presumably the Red Sox (Apple Watch situation), Yankees (league memo specifically telling them to stop electronically stealing signs), Dodgers (no real proof beyond Gattis' hearsay but again we're taking him at his word) and Astros (obviously). 4. The Astros took it even further beyond those other three teams, and implemented multiple methods of relaying signs directly to the batter without the need for a runner on, with the most infamous being the can banging. They also had a system they called "codebreaker" they employed to decode the opposing team's signs in real time from the replay room. I don't think it's fair to say they did nothing above and beyond other teams in terms of cheating: the fact that in the 2017 WS the Dodgers felt compelled to change up signs with the bases empty while the Astros did not tells you all you need to know about the difference in sophistication and depth of usage of their respective sign-stealing systems. 5. The Astros - already being a good team - gained a considerable additional edge by also being the best cheaters, and these two things propelled them to a WS win. I don't think we'll ever quite come to consensus on this part, because while I imagine Astros fans would prefer if the ring had come without cheating, it's ultimately still a ring and I don't blame them for being happy about it, but fans of other teams who got bumped off by the Astros along the way are always going to be bitter. 6. The league probably knew teams were doing this on some level, but didn't make a fuss because they wanted it out of the public eye. When Fiers came forward and this whole thing blew up, the league seemed to take very deliberate steps to thread the needle of making it look like the Astros, only the Astros, and nobody but the Astros was doing this, but also we're gonna send everybody else a memo too telling them to absolutely not do this thing we assure you they're not doing, oh and no player punishments because anybody hit with one would have absolutely sung like a canary about the wider issues in the league. 7. The Astros ended up winning another WS with largely the same team some years later, so unless time truly is a flat circle and another scandal comes out it must be acknowledged that the 2017 Astros were capable of a WS win on their own, although it goes without saying the cheating gave them an additional edge. tl;dr - In an environment where everybody was probably cheating at least a little the Astros cheated the most, that cheating factored into them getting a ring, and while they are certainly not blameless or some kind of martyr organization I think it's fair to say they were scapegoated by MLB as the only true cheaters in an attempt to paper over what was in fact a league-wide issue. The cheating sucks - I think everybody can at least agree they wish it hadn't happened - but the win itself will always be contentious and if you're trying to get Sab, bawfuls, and mcmagic to all come to a consensus position on it I think you'd have better luck convincing Putin to unilaterally retreat out of Ukraine and declare surrender.
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2023 19:05
|
|
|
Feels Villeneuve posted:is this different from "everyone was using steroids but McGwire and Bonds broke records with them" as a justification for singling them out i was trying to think of a joke like "the law in its majesty punishes both Mark McGwire and Neift Perez for hitting 70 dingers" but I think Perez actually got suspended. Anyway, I think the strongest version would push something like "ideally nobody's being singled out, rather there is harsher punishment for people who did more harm and people who cheated and won did more harm than people who cheated and lost." Of course you can then ask "what the gently caress do you mean 'harm' this is baseball"
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2023 19:11
|
|
|
Sab0921 posted:Right - you're only mad that the Dodgers lost. You don't really care about cheating. You're fine when the Dodgers do it, what makes you upset is that the Dodgers lost and you attribute that to cheating. We're all a bunch of idiot sports fans so it's probably best to put aside that we're all hollering homers and focus on the rest of what he's posting. Who cares if bawfuls, himself, in particular, the person, would still be mad in this case? What do you think of his idea that the Dodgers being the only team to relay signs without a runner on second makes their cheating worse?
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2023 19:13
|
|
|
Sab0921 posted:Right - you're only mad that the Dodgers lost. You don't really care about cheating. You're fine when the Dodgers do it, what makes you upset is that the Dodgers lost and you attribute that to cheating.  Verlander's legacy isn't currently tied up with postseason performance. People already consider him a winner because the Astros won in 2017, and because his overall postseason ERA is 3.64 (though his WS ERA is 5.63 most people don't seem to notice/care). October Kershaw is a meme so powerful that it apparently takes WS MVP to dispel it, since the 2020 title alone didn't do it. There is no equivalent October Verlander meme to be dispelled. If the Dodgers won in 2017, and were cheating 4x as much as the Astros, yeah you should be mad about it. But that didn't happen. It was the Astros who were cheating 4x as often, and who won the squeaker of a series. bawfuls fucked around with this message at 19:24 on Apr 14, 2023 |
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2023 19:22
|
|
|
Hand Knit posted:We're all a bunch of idiot sports fans so it's probably best to put aside that we're all hollering homers and focus on the rest of what he's posting. Who cares if bawfuls, himself, in particular, the person, would still be mad in this case? What do you think of his idea that the Dodgers being the only team to relay signs without a runner on second makes their cheating worse? You mean the Astros, but I don't see a meaningful difference that it was only done in high leverage situations - it's the question I posed to him, in the 2017 World Series, the Dodgers got some very clutch bombs at home with runners on, is that somehow better? Also, a player has come out and said the Rockies were doing the live signaling with a massage gun, so it's safe to say more will come out in the future. What also gets lost in this is the effectiveness of the sign stealing scheme. Throughout the regular season, the Astros were better on the road than at home and the LA times did their own analysis and were like eh, it didn't seem like it was that effective. https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2020-02-27/astros-cheating-analysis
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2023 19:23
|
|
|
Do not start with this extremely tired "the sign stealing didn't even matter" bullshit because I'm going to post baseball savant data from Game 5 where it abso-loving-lutely mattered, as Gattis himself acknowledge in that twitter thread.
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2023 19:26
|
|
|
Sydin posted:If we're taking everything Gattis said on twitter at face value - and why not, it's not like any other players are going to come forward on this - and combine it with the stuff we already knew, then I think this is a pretty good picture: Do you take Gattis at face value when he said Altuve didn't cheat?
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2023 19:26
|
|
|
bawfuls posted:No there was not. The runner was on 1B. Anyone who makes $1 more than me is ungodly rich, anyone who makes $1 less is lazy and needs to work harder. The Dodgers cheating is ok, but when people cheat against the Dodgers - that's a problem. I also think you need to keep perspective. Baseball is fun, but it's just a business at the end of the day. There isn't animosity between the organizations. Andrew Friedman is a lifelong Astros fan and his dad has run the sports facility corp. that owns Minute Maid for 20 years. The players go between orgs regularly. Outside of a few, the players themselves don't care. At somepoint you gotta just be like, well poo poo, that's baseball. It's not even the first time the Dodgers got got by a sign stealing scheme in a famous way! Sab0921 fucked around with this message at 19:39 on Apr 14, 2023 |
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2023 19:30
|
|
|
bawfuls posted:Do not start with this extremely tired "the sign stealing didn't even matter" bullshit because I'm going to post baseball savant data from Game 5 where it abso-loving-lutely mattered, as Gattis himself acknowledge in that twitter thread. Stuff is the same in all three games (actually he got slightly more break on the Slider in Game 5, closer to his season average that year). But Game 5 in Houston for some reason they just weren't whiffing on the slider.  Kershaw in Game 1:  Kershaw in Game 5:  Kershaw in Game 7 (4 IP 0 R): 
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2023 19:37
|
|
|
Alfred P. Pseudonym posted:I think the Astros should be disbanded because I don’t like them. Do the Yankees too while we’re at it. Harsh but fair.
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2023 19:39
|
|
|
bawfuls posted:Stuff is the same in all three games (actually he got slightly more break on the Slider in Game 5, closer to his season average that year). But Game 5 in Houston for some reason they just weren't whiffing on the slider. They took the exact same number of swings against the sliders lol in Game 1 and 5 and they only had 2 whiffs in game 7. I really just think you need to keep perspective. Baseball is fun, but it's just a business at the end of the day. There isn't animosity between the organizations. Andrew Friedman is a lifelong Astros fan and his dad has run the sports facility corp. that owns Minute Maid for 20 years. The players go between orgs regularly. Outside of a few, the players themselves don't care. At somepoint you gotta just be like, well poo poo, that's baseball. It's not even the first time the Dodgers got got by a sign stealing scheme in a famous way!
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2023 19:40
|
|
|
Sab0921 posted:They took the exact same number of swings against the sliders lol in Game 1 and 5 and they only had 2 whiffs in game 7. what the gently caress are we talking about??? and now Sab of all people is lecturing me about keeping things in perspective?  yes surely the fact that the Giants cheated to beat the Dodgers in 1951 should make me ok with the Astros cheating to beat the Dodgers in 2017, makes sense!
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2023 19:42
|
|
|
bawfuls posted:Yes turns out its easier to hit the slider you're swinging at if you know it's a slider before you start your swing! Yes dude - you need to keep perspective and chill out. It's just a game and those involved, even your beloved Dodgers and Clayton Kershaw, cheat to gain an advantage. I'm sorry they lost and I'm sorry you had to see it live. If it makes you feel better, I sat and watched the Astros lose the World Series in Minute Maid in 2019 and again in 2021. E: the only person who doesn't cheat is Jose Altuve, who is perfect.
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2023 19:52
|
|
|
Jose Altuve would burn down an orphanage if he knew he could get away with it
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2023 19:56
|
|
|
Sab0921 posted:It's just a game and those involved, even your beloved Clayton Kershaw, cheat to gain an advantage
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2023 19:59
|
|
|
Shinjobi posted:Jose Altuve would burn down an orphanage if he knew he could get away with it Only so he could rebuild a beautiful new one to replace it so the orphans can finally live somewhere that feels like home and is clean and safe. He'd want to get away with it because he wouldn't want credit for rebuilding the orphanage, just thanks to god and the Astros for giving him a shot to play baseball. Jose is perfect and we do not deserve him.
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2023 20:00
|
|
|
lmao Clayton Kershaw has literally built an orphanage in Africa
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2023 20:05
|
|
|
bawfuls posted:lmao Clayton Kershaw has literally built an orphanage in Africa I like Kershaw! He's great, I've even met him several times - super nice guy, very quiet, very tall, impeccably tailored suits. He is also richer than Jose. Came from Highland Park, rich parents, $250MM contract. Jose is just a hard scrabble, work-a-day lunch pail immigrant trying to make it in America. Sab0921 fucked around with this message at 20:15 on Apr 14, 2023 |
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2023 20:12
|
|
|
Sydin posted:If we're taking everything Gattis said on twitter at face value - and why not, it's not like any other players are going to come forward on this - and combine it with the stuff we already knew, then I think this is a pretty good picture: That was said more eloquently than I ever could, but I largely agree. Everyone has bias in this conversation so a consensus is impossible.
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2023 20:33
|
|
|
We could just agree to stop saying demonstrably untrue things like “there’s no categorical difference between relaying signals from second and relaying signs from the back.”
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2023 20:35
|
|
|
Sydin posted:If we're taking everything Gattis said on twitter at face value - and why not, it's not like any other players are going to come forward on this - and combine it with the stuff we already knew, then I think this is a pretty good picture: I think this is a good summation, yeah.
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2023 20:39
|
|
|
STAC Goat posted:We could just agree to stop saying demonstrably untrue things like “there’s no categorical difference between relaying signals from second and relaying signs from the back.”
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2023 20:48
|
|
|
bawfuls posted:ah but this requires admitting that the Astros were in fact doing something different from everyone else Lol looks like you triggered someone enough to buy you an avatar
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2023 20:51
|
|
|
Kirios posted:That was said more eloquently than I ever could, but I largely agree. Everyone has bias in this conversation so a consensus is impossible. Fine except there is one thing that isn't true: quote:4. The Astros took it even further beyond those other three teams, and implemented multiple methods of relaying signs directly to the batter without the need for a runner on, with the most infamous being the can banging. They also had a system they called "codebreaker" they employed to decode the opposing team's signs in real time from the replay room. I don't think it's fair to say they did nothing above and beyond other teams in terms of cheating: the fact that in the 2017 WS the Dodgers felt compelled to change up signs with the bases empty while the Astros did not tells you all you need to know about the difference in sophistication and depth of usage of their respective sign-stealing systems. The Astros *did* change up their signs constantly, especially in Dodger Stadium through complex signals and tons of mound visits. McCann even talked about it in the post game interview. In the past, Bawfuls and STAC have explained this away by saying that well since the Astros were cheating they assumed everyone else was when they weren't, and now that we know they were, it's something else. Also - the article I posted with the cameras installed by the Dodgers and the analysts pouring through the signs is because they had their own complex code breaking system - why else would they have that set up? Sab0921 fucked around with this message at 20:57 on Apr 14, 2023 |
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2023 20:54
|
|
|
The SI article you posted is talking about in house cameras recording game footage for analysis between games for the purposes of sign stealing and other things. It’s not the same issue at all. There’s no rule that says you can’t record the game and analyze the footage. High school coaches record games and analyze them. The writer of that article puts forth the idea that some teams have a financial advantage with the technology and that this practice SHOULD be banned for the betterment of the game to some kind of pure competition ideal instead of one where some have heavy advantages because of their video prep. But it explicitly has nothing to say about the Dodgers analyzing and relaying information in real time which is what the Astros did. See, this is the problem. There's evidence of the Yankees and Red Sox cheating in this same general area by using technology to relay analysis from the back to the dugout mid game. There's accusations of worse for them, the Dodgers, and others largely from embittered Astros players or fans. But as best as I can recall there isn't actually any kind of credible evidence that says anyone was doing the thing the Astros were doing. Live, in game, analysis of pitches and relaying it to the batter mid AB. That's a huge demonstrable difference. edit: Well I guess that's not true. There's circumstantial evidence that Alex Cora brought the Astros system to the Red Sox. But even there that seems purely conjecture since no one ever blew the whistle or investigated them. STAC Goat fucked around with this message at 21:30 on Apr 14, 2023 |
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2023 21:03
|
|
|
Kirios posted:Lol looks like you triggered someone enough to buy you an avatar
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2023 21:08
|
|
|
bawfuls posted:this is a crime against Kershaw and I will not stand for it Really it's Jansen. I couldn't find one like that with Yuli bomb off Kershaw
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2023 22:07
|
|
|
His old av was a cool Kershaw one is what he meant I think Also whoever bought that did a bad job, might as well have that Ken Jeong gif where he's trying to read a tiny piece of paper to go along with it
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2023 22:09
|
|
|
Intruder posted:His old av was a cool Kershaw one is what he meant I think
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2023 22:16
|
|
|
Monathin posted:I think this is a good summation, yeah. My only quibble is that the 23 squad only returned 4 position players and 2 SPs and therefore I dont think it’s largely the same team. Also I can’t comment on the varying levels of cheating, but the Astros were certainly most blatant about it and had they been using like, a shirt guy in the bleachers instead of a method in which each and every stolen sign could be identified after the fact, this is an entirely different thing. I don’t think the woulda copped to it, Fiers or not, and we’d be fighting about if they cheated at all. And i would be saying, of course they didn’t zoux fucked around with this message at 22:23 on Apr 14, 2023 |
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2023 22:19
|
|
|
There’s something fundamental about n it that supports that theory. Because the MLB investigation explicitly said they used more tactics than the banging cans. We’ve got the largely baseless buzzer theory and mildly more credible accusation by Aaron Boone of whistling. But we know they did other things. We simply don’t talk about it in earnestness because we have no evidence so it’s all gonna be conjecture and bias. Ultimately what made the Astros system so effective was the simplicity and clarity of the banging, which also made it easy to unravel once the public was tipped off. We’d never be able to delineate some kind of whistling system from video and that also probably made it a less than effective system than the banging. Which is what makes the “Dodgers and everyone else did the same thing” thing so annoying since it’s effectively screaming about buzzers and tattoos.
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2023 22:37
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 28, 2024 15:50 |
|
|
Some team was allegedly doing it with one of those massage guns on the bleachers, but they were a lovely team so no one cared, but I wonder if anyone's tried to go and see if you can hear anything on the mlb archive videos e: it was the rockies lol probably didn't work because the thin air can't transmit those sounds
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2023 23:07
|
|