My opinions regarding the steroid era of baseball are well laid out to regular readers of my blog. In short, I felt the writers who now shame and try to blackball anyone associated with steroids (whether proven or not) didn't seem to have as much a problem with it when it was happening. And I felt the league did little to nothing for too long allowing it to get out of hand. And in the era of suspicion there is a lot of finger pointing and difficulty in quantifying any advantage juiced players might have had, especially because it may have been such a league wide issue pitchers and hitters were both benefiting from it.
Now enter baseball's newest scandal: technological sign stealing.
Most notable is the fact that now two World Series winners - 2017 Houston Astros and the 2018 Boston Red Sox - have both been accused of inappropriately using cameras, sounds, and signals to steal signs. In both instances the grievance is said to have happened "during the regular season", but that doesn't do much to ease the reality that these were the WS winners those years. For one, it seems odd to utilize such an edge in the regular season but not post-season (unless of course there were greater league scrutiny in watching for such a thing during the post-season) and even if we grant the benefit of the doubt and only go as far as the reported scandals it begs the question of how many wins did the team get by sign stealing? In short, would they have been playoff bound to have a shot at a World Series in the first place?
Now we should pause a moment and be clear, we are still only talking allegations (although at least for the Astros the reports are sounding more and more like there will be discipline shortly meaning those have been substantiated enough to merit such action in the league). But as the news broke that the Red Sox too may have done the same we find ourselves asking what can be done? Perhaps more alarming is the fact that the issue seems far more of a league wide issue. Jeff Jones reported that multiple players named Texas and Milwaukee as major sign stealers. The Yankees were accused of sign stealing with the YES network. They in turn accused their rivals. The Brewers have accused the Dodgers. We shouldn't forget several years ago the Blue Jays supposedly had a person in the bleachers who was a sign stealer for the team.Then the players have gotten involved. Darvish suggested Yelich stole signs, Yelich blasted back he didn't need to with him. Davies said 90% of his former team (Brewers) wasn't interested in sign stealing at all and there was no elaborate system. Middlebrooks, speaking much more generally, said it's a league wide issue and even the 95 loss teams that no one is naming are using it.
In short: the issue is wide spread enough that it's getting to the point players of saying "everyone's doing it". And every team or hitter with a remarkable run of success is falling into suspicion. Indeed, it's hard to tell how much it is helping if it is as wide-spread as the accusations within the league make it seem.
Is this starting to sound familiar?
It sounds to me an awful lot like the PED scandal: wide-spread, hard to quantify, suspicion everywhere, some evidence found, and the top dogs especially the ones put under the eye of scrutiny. Of course though, I have to ask, if Alex Bregmann has a Hall of Fame worthy career, will the BWAA withhold it because his team was found sign stealing? My guess is no. The reason being the blame is thrusted more on the team. But of course, how then can you rely on his career numbers? Or his team's success (and his role in it)? Steroids in the locker-room, even gained by trainers didn't stop them from putting the blame in the players for wanting the competitive edge and not the teams that paid them to find it (and even lent their personnel towards the task). And how will you know for sure which members of the team used the sign stealing and which didn't (think again about Davies' comment, which hints that players are not all in agreement on the issue)? These problems highlight why the BWAA treatment of the steroid era is such a joke. But they also should tell us that we are entering the same mucky world and the game needs to again act.
Not only must there be some strong discipline meted out to the teams accused if they are found to be guilty (which to his credit Commissioner Manfred has hinted at there being), but the next collective bargaining agreement needs to address this issue and even come down with significant punishment to players involved so that they have a reason to not want the competitive edge.
As a fan of teams like the Brewers and Yankees and Astros, I don't like to see their names brought up in this. I don't want the success of my team tainted with actions that seem beneath the game. Sure sign stealing has always been around and in some way is permissible, but it doesn't feel clean or honest. And adding technology and cameras to do so just adds to it. It feels like having a secret microphone to listen in on the other team's huddles in football so you know the play and can anticipate it. Something intuitive tells us it should not be a mainstream part of the game. And however difficult it is to fix, something needs to be done now...
...before the 2019 Nationals are accused!
