Well, Alex Bregman still has a few years left in him. There are even some Cub fans who planned to boo him at home games because of his involvement in the scandal (per Reddit). I don’t know how many followed through.
I’m not a baseball fan, but I remember thinking at the time that getting all hot and bothered about sign stealing was pretty weak tea.
“No fair, you peeked! I’m telling mom!”
If you thought it was about stealing signs, you don’t understand what happened.
Sign stealing is a normal part of baseball. It’s how you do it and how you convey it that’s cheating.
Yes, and now they have PitchCom, which violates the very rule that made what the Astros did cheating.
Meh.
Given the various forms of “cheating” that have been endemic in MLB for as long as I can remember, and noting that much of the continued yammering comes from fans of clubs that just weren’t good enough to beat the Astros at their best, that labeling belongs in the dustbin of baseball history.
Altuve may well join Carlos Beltran as a deserving member of the Hall of Fame.
Yawn.
Eh I still feel that way on Altuve. We love players who make it on sheer grit and competiveness and then get outraged that they are a little too competitive. Who would suspect the guys who did everything in their power to win their entire lives would do everything in their power to win. Astros did go a bit too far, but sign stealing has always been a place where teams pushed the envelope and the Stros were certainly not unique in their pursuit of advantages. Isn’t really much evidence that Altuve took advantage of the drums anyway.
Altuve is probably done as a good player, so I don’t suspect he will last more than a year or two more but I do hope he eventually makes the hall.
Why just Altuve? What about Carlos Correa?
The Astros cheating was institutional. They used cameras, ffs. Teams knew that if there was a runner on second he might try to steal signs, so they switched things up. That’s baseball. This wasn’t.
ETA: I’d like to know if they switched from banging trashcans to wearing buzzers, as rumored.
Well, because I forgot about him, that’s why.
Also, Correa isn’t the face of the franchise, or of that championship team. He’s played for the Twins, and hasn’t put together a Hall of Fame resume like Altuve. Same reason George Springer doesn’t get as much hate either.
Never
Dissolve the team. Tear down the stadium. Sow salt where it stood.
The type of cheating they did is no longer possible (thanks largely to them being caught at it)
and
The team won a weak division this year with a 0.500 record and then got their hat handed to them by the White Sox in the post season
so
they’ve outlived the Cheater stigma for me.
Real hoodie for sale for Astros fans. One example of many.
Problem is that they were eliminated in September…
Correa is no longer on the Astros roster. Neither is George Springer, or anybody else on the 2017 championship team. Except Jose Altuve.
He played 32 games for the Astros this year before landing on the 60 day IL in May. He was targeting a postseason return, but doctors called that off mid-September.
Good catch. I was looking at their current roster. Correa is 32 years old, so he will more than likely be on the team again next season.
Anyway, I don’t much care about the whole Cheatstros thing any more. I think the players involved should have received some sort of penalty, but whatever. What I’d really like is to beat Houston in the postseason. And I’m sure @silenus and other Dodgers fans would like to see L.A. stomp the Astros in a World Series.
As a Yankees fan, I think they cheated in the 2019 playoffs too, but it’s also true that my team couldn’t hit for shit in that stadium.
They are sending signals to the opposing team?
I think of it like this, and it’s not a perfect analogy but it’s the closest I can think of.
When playing Poker, sometimes you can see another person’s cards; that’s called “tipping your hand” and is a phrase that has entered contemporary English as a common saying. If you are careless enough to tip your hand, then that’s fair game.
If you set up mirrors strategically placed around a room to be able to see other players’ hands, that’s cheating. Even if seeing another player’s hand at the table when they are clumsy with cards is part of the game, going out of your way to do it in a manner that’s expressly forbidden by the rules is a big deal. You can’t just say “seeing other players’ cards is a routine thing so who cares” if you understand the game.
Sign stealing is part of baseball. Getting bent out of shape about it is being a sore loser. But using cameras to get an unfair view of a pitcher (which is explicitly forbidden) and relaying that info through coded messages like banging on trash cans (which is also explicitly forbidden) is not fine, and gives a team an unfair advantage. The Astros’ wins that year will always have an asterisk.