Astros/Red Sox Guilty But Are They Alone?

Baseball’s Public Enemy No. 1: the Houston Astros.

The franchise, which has been a feel good story over the past four years, has lost all credibility, likability, and favor across the sport. They have reached near pariah status.

Sign stealing has been a part of the game forever but it was always done on the field, not behind a camera. A runner at second relays a sign to the hitter in the box, the dugout figures out a team’s signals and relays that to the players on the field.

What crossed a line in baseball circles was the use of technology to aid in the cheating.

It broke a code, an unwritten rule.

The Astros are guilty. The Red Sox are guilty. And these teams won consecutive World Series championships.

Are we naive enough to think they were the only teams cheating? There have been a record number of home runs in the past few seasons. It can be attributed to the emphasis of launch angle, smaller ballparks, shorter seams on the baseball…

What if it is that hitters know which pitch is coming?

Our two guilty parties could very well be the only teams to be caught and benefited the most from the cheating. For all we know, every team cheats but are not as talented or don’t utilize the data as effectively as the Astros or Red Sox.

As teams continue to increase their use of analytics and data on the field, was this the eventual next step? If you had the ability to know what pitch is coming, what hitter wouldn’t want to know?

What can be done? Punishments aside, what steps can Major League Baseball take to make sure teams don’t do this again? Take all in-game video access away from teams? Station an MLB official inside the dugout, clubhouse, and and video room in each stadium?

At this stage, there are more questions than answers.

It is being treated as a higher crime than performance-enhancing drugs by the Commissioner’s Office and current and former players.

Many have come out saying this strikes at the integrity of the game. You will get no arguments here. It absolutely does. It changed the course of two championships that we know of.

What makes this a different level of cheating is that it was not an individual player; it was the organization. Never in baseball have we seen a franchise take steps that sully the game.

We may find out that these two franchises are alone in their deceit and the game can move on. But if the steroid era taught us anything is that if there is one, there are likely more.