January 24, 2020

Keuchel’s Take

Dallas Keuchel talks about his knowledge of the Astros sign stealing scandal, and apologizes for breaking the rules. He also thought at the time that it was not a big deal. A number of teams had already developed multiple signs to thwart the theft:

“When stuff comes out over the course of a big league ball season, it’s always blown up to the point of, ‘Oh my gosh, this has never happened before,'” Keuchel said at the first day of the White Sox’s winter fan fest. “I’m not going to go into specific details, but during the course of the playoffs in 2017, everyone was using multiple signs. For factual purposes, when there is no one on base, when in the history of baseball has there been multiple signs?

“There was probably six out of eight teams using multiple signs. It’s just what the state of baseball was at that point and time. Was it against the rules? Yes, it was, and I personally am sorry for what has come about, the whole situation.”

ESPN.com

This was his round about way of saying the sign stealing didn’t have a direct effect on them winning the World Series that year.

3 thoughts on “Keuchel’s Take

  1. Pft

    He is right about the signs. He does not mention location. I have mentioned before location is the easiest thing to steal and provides a significant advantage

    Teams as a collective will no longer be involved in this activity. Individual players will devise their own methodology using close friends and family and tech. The best paid players will have the best opportunity to do so, and free tickets offered to players by teams will give their agents access to locations that will facilitate transfer of such information to the player using signs or audible signals, or even wireless buzzers attached to batters body

    I believe this has been going on for some time and teams like the Red Sox and Yankees have been in on it even before Cora and the Astros. No way to prove that though

    ReplyReply
  2. David Pinto Post author

    I think it’s the alpha-male extreme competitiveness of these athletes. They need to win, and how they win doesn’t really matter that much to them. Alex Rodriguez is a great example. He was easily the best player of his generation, maybe the greatest hitter/fielder combination ever given his shortstop position. Yet he used performance enhancing drugs, tried to knock the ball out of fielder’s hand, and yelled “I got it!” to distract a fielder on a pop up. Why? He didn’t just need to win, he needed to dominate.

    I suspect that if you add up the times it helped them versus the times it didn’t, there is a small positive difference that may be indistinguishable from random chance. It’s like the people who say they won the lottery when they get two dollars, ignoring they $20 bet.

    ReplyReply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *