@@Houston Astros

The Astros Cheating Scandal, five years later | Baseball Bits

  • October 31, 2024



The Astros Cheating Scandal, five years later | Baseball Bits

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It’s been five years since the Houston Astros Cheating Scandal broke via an article in The Athletic. The Astros trash can banging scheme set the sports world ablaze. The Astros cheated in 2017, the year of their 2017 Astros World Series title.

In the five years since, we’ve gained some perspective. We’ve learned the Astros sign stealing wasn’t an isolated incident, and fines like the Red Sox apple watches and Yankees letter have been handed down by MLB to other teams. The Astros banging scheme was the most flagrant, but baserunner schemes were in use all over the league.

With help from five new sources, we’re going to explore this scandal with some hindsight. Did the Astros cheat in the 2017 playoffs? Did they cheat on the road? Did they cheat in 2018 and beyond? These questions will be answered to the best of our abilities. Rob Manfred regrets giving Astros players immunity, but the trade-off has been a lot of info about how the scheme was hatched by Carlos Beltran and Alex Cora and put to work.

We’ll also the learn about the roles played by those suspended in the wake of the scandal, like Astros Jeff Luhnow and Astros AJ Hinch. What did they know about the Astros sign stealing?

I hope you’ll enjoy this episode of Baseball Bits, a Foolish Baseball production.

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The Athletic article: https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/1363451/2019/11/12/the-astros-stole-signs-electronically-in-2017-part-of-a-much-broader-issue-for-major-league-baseball/
Rob Manfred’s Astros Report: https://img.mlbstatic.com/mlb-images/image/upload/mlb/cglrhmlrwwbkacty27l7.pdf
The Astros Edge: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNU64BVw95g
Winning Fixes Everything by Evan Drellich: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/winning-fixes-everything-evan-drellich?variant=40828339322914
Cheated by Andy Martino: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/658290/cheated-by-andy-martino/
Sign Stealing Scandal by Tony Adams: https://signstealingscandal.com/

Soundtrack from Maxo:

https://maxo.bandcamp.com/

31 comments

  1. I can live with the immunity. It made sense to speed everything up as information was desperately needed. The issue was not voiding the title. That was the single dumbest decision in sports history.

  4. I think the mental aspect of this is often over looked. Sure they did better on the road then at home, but they also never slumped. They always were doing good because when at home they had extra confidence and other teams were scared and had to game plan more. The only true way to check how much the cheating helped would be to go back in time and replay the whole season without cheating and we can never do that. This cheating scandal is just awful for baseball.

  5. i cannot stress enough how much i don't care; but i don't understand why this is "cheating" (yes i know it's technically cheating). shouldn't baseball players know how to encode signals? like, it's ur choice not to cut the deck, but don't get mad when someone shuffles themselves a flush.

  15. As an Astros fan, this really hurt. I stopped watching them until they reached the World Series again vs. Atlanta. There's a lot I could say about it, but honestly? I just wish people would stop booing Jose Altuve. That's the only remnant of the scandal I still think about often.

  18. Altuve and Bergman like the only players left from 2017 yet y’all act like he Astros have the same team and never stoped cheating rent free

  22. Buzzer conspiracy was lazy reporting of "my team lost" crying that totally lost the plot of sign stealing and led to a lighter punishment. Thanks New York, try prying that one away.

  23. Find it funny how the Red Sox are connected to this but because the Astros did it much more no one really cares (there was much less to be done about them either way though).

  25. Didn’t know mlb had stopped uploading full game replays, that’s quite aggravating, it was one of the things I most admired about the league’s online presence in comparison to other sports

  27. Always dislike the "they were an extremely good offense regardless" discussion. Same with Barry Bonds. Them being great without the outside help makes it WORSE that they resorted to these measures and were rewarded for it.

  28. The punishment for cheating was "well people will boo them" and the scumbags had the temerity to whine about it and act like it was adversity to overcome. I hope none of them get in the HOF.

  30. Lets be clear. Putting them on a base runner system does not put them on a level playing field. The other teams were not using a camera to decode the signs. The legal way to do this is to have runners on second decode it. Jeter was famously good at this and that is legal. Using a camera to relay it to Blechley Park for Inigma analysis is way way not.

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