The cheating scandal that nearly ruined baseball | Hacker News Reader

The cheating scandal that nearly ruined baseball

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38 pointsThevet31 comments

Bad timing to be releasing a book about the Astros cheating scandal and claiming it "nearly ruined baseball" as MLB is currently embroiled in an even bigger cheating scandal. This was published a week ago by Sports Illustrated[1]: "This Should Be the Biggest Scandal in Sports". But baseball has survived everything from a World Series being throw to the steroids scandals of the 90s. It will survive these scandals too.

[1] - https://www.si.com/mlb/2021/06/04/sticky-stuff-is-the-new-st...

"The sticky stuff helps increase spin on pitches, which in turn increases their movement"

uh, no. That's not how pitch movement works. How did SI let a writer who knows so little about pitching write this garbage?

I can’t recall the last time (prior to rules enforcement) I’ve seen a pitcher not grab their hat, glove, or belt before each pitch helped by spin in order to use some form of adhesive. Actual data would be helpful but the impression I get is that literally every team did it and allowed the opponent to do it in exchange.

How do you think pitch movement works? I'm no physicist, but everything I have heard states that spin (or a lack thereof) is the primary driver of pitch movement.

The key is "lack thereof". See for example knuckle ball.

I don't mean to be rude, but I don't think you know what you are talking about here. The benefit a knuckleball gets from its lack of spin is unpredictability in its movement and not movement itself. Outside of the knuckleball, breaking pitches (i.e. pitches with the most movement) generally spin more than non-breaking pitches. For proof you can just take a look at the spin rate leaderboard[1]. Look how far you have to scroll down the list before you start seeing fastballs.

[1] - https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/statcast_search?hfPT=FF%7CFT%...

This accurately describes the magnus effect which powers the majority of the movement that a pitch has.

Movement refers to the "horizontal break and vertical drop" of a pitch against the average.[0] If a pitch has more break and more drop then it has more movement. A pitcher can increase these by increasing the spin rate[1]. That's why spin rate is all the rage these days among sabermetric geeks.

[0] https://www.mlb.com/glossary/statcast/pitch-movement

[1] https://www.mlb.com/news/how-spin-rate-affects-curveball-out...

We've sent a repost invite to the user who submitted that article (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27418901). Hopefully it will show up soon!

Edit: here it is: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27496095

> MLB is currently embroiled in an even bigger cheating scandal

"bigger", depending on definition used, is definitely subjective here and many would consider the Astros' scandal to be bigger.

I don't know what definition you would need to use for the Astros scandal to be "bigger". This one involves more players, more teams (including the Astros as an early adopter of this type of cheating), has been going on for longer, and seemingly has had a larger impact on on-field results. It is still early, but the initial numbers suggest that at least 1/3 and potentially 2/3 of pitchers were using these substances[1]. Batting averages have already jumped from .231 to .245[2] since MLB has threatened punishments.

[1] - https://twitter.com/Travis_Sawchik/status/140406216185342361...

[2] - https://twitter.com/Travis_Sawchik/status/140406534464229785...

"bigger" as in having a massive outsized advantage compared to their opponents that contributed to a championship. The reason individuals, but not so much teams, are vilified for the steroid era is that it was relatively widespread. There are a lot of wrongs in baseball, some explicitly illegal some not, but ones that cause extreme disparity perpetrated at the organization level (the level championships are won at) cause the most outrage for the size of their unfair effects, be it Black Sox or Astros.

How is stealing signs cheating? Seems like it should be part of the game. Don't like it? Encrypt your signs. Make baseball a cyber arms race. Maybe then it would be interesting again.

I think Mark Rober made a video where he creates a sign stealing device, though not necessarily as advanced as what the Astros were doing

Perhaps read more than the first paragraph. It's not just stealing signs, it's the technology: "they used a camera mounted in center field to steal signs and relay them to hitters in real time"

Yeah I read that part. What's stopping the other team from doing the same?

The visiting team is not gonna get access to the stadium to do that. It favors the home team.

The cheating aspect is using any outside technology. A runner on second isn't forbidden from trying to steal the sign and communicate it to the batter. However you aren't allowed to have someone watching live video, using binoculars to watch the catcher from the outfield, or any other technologically aided approach to stealing signs.

Plus teams often do "encrypt" their signs. That is why you might see a third base coach give 10 different signals. Only one or two of them are needed to convey the instructions. The rest are just used to hide the true signal. However it is now trivially easy to decrypt these signs using machine learning. Here is a video on it.[1]

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmlRbfSavbI

I get the impression from the article that the Astros were mounting hidden cameras in their own stadium, which of course is a capability that the away team wouldn't have access to. It wouldn't be much of an arms race, it would just always result in a huge advantage for the home team.

Just to clarify, it wasn't hidden - it was known to be there. The issue is them accessing it from a monitor within the hall to the dugout.

This is an underrated response. Yes, deciphering signs was an edge, as long as the means to acquire that edge was honest. It was never considered cheating and I think people are conflating the real issue as simply stealing signs when in reality it’s the combination of stealing signs USING CAMERAS

I played HS baseball and we were taught to pay attention to other teams signs and try to decipher the opposing teams tip off signal was. (The sign immediately before the intended sign)

Stealing signs IS part of the game.

It’s common, even in little league to try and pickup bunts and steal calls.

The Astros however used the home field advantage and centerfield camera to pickup pitch signs, and then relay that to batters so they knew when a pitch with minimum movement was coming.

That’s cheating through and through. The visiting team is straight not on the same playing field there.

Doctoring the ball, similarly has been a thing for a long time. But only those most obvious (pine tar on the hat) generally got smacked. And even sometimes not then. But generally it’s a level playing field.

> How is stealing signs cheating? Seems like it should be part of the game.

Exactly. I lost whatever respect I had left for baseball from this non-scandal. These signs are 100% public info, everyone can see them. Don't like opposite team analyzing them? Too bad. Come up with something better or just plan your strategy out of sight.

Whining about other teams looking at 100% public info is beyond silly, I can't have any respect for a sport that thinks this is somehow "cheating".

> The union, for years the strongest in sports history, found itself torn between members who hared the Astros and chose who played for them.

> They spend on tickets and cable TV and screaming packages because they love unpredictable drama and assume chat the result is determined on the field, not off it.

What the heck is going on with the spelling in this article? It's littered throughout. Was it OCR'd from a handwritten submission or something?

From a book

I stopped watching baseball when this scandal was uncovered. I stopped approving marketing expenditures on baseball. The Houston Astros' actions and MLB's slow, weak response to them made the experience pointless.

Three years of cherished memories and experiences were revealed to have been farcically invested. So, I could not invest any fandom attention or money into MLB any further. I like sports. I do not like exhibition games.

I'd like to take your comment a step further, if you don't mind

> I stopped watching baseball when this scandal was uncovered.

Do you really think that this is the only scandal that's going on right now? Or that it started with this particular instance? There's probably so much going on behind the scenes since decades now that the sport has likely never been fair or clean. And this is not just baseball, it's with every sport up to and including the Olympics

I guess I'm just trying to understand why people watch sports in the first place. Because for the vast majority, it is almost ALWAYS because it's an exhibition game and/or entertainment and the notion of fair play is the last thing on their minds..

I enjoy the exhibition of skill and arms race to compete within a framework of rules.

Motor racing in particular gives me enjoyment to watch teams fighting each other and creating inventions that stretch and test the rule book, but with boundaries. Items like NASCAR’s Tiregate (doctoring the tires) are clearly beyond the line (to me and in the rule book at the time) while Penske’s fueling tower or race teams using custom air guns, different gases, or SCUBA tanks to drive their pneumatic guns are, for me, okay and legal until made illegal (as they have been now).

* https://www.hagerty.com/media/automotive-history/nothing-ben...

This is something I have never heard of. But what most have heard of is the Black Sox Scandal:

"The Black Sox Scandal was a Major League Baseball game-fixing scandal in which eight members of the Chicago White Sox were accused of throwing the 1919 World Series against the Cincinnati Reds in exchange for money from a gambling syndicate led by Arnold Rothstein. Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis was appointed as a response to the incident to be the first Commissioner of Baseball, and given absolute control over the sport to restore its integrity.

Despite acquittals in a public trial in 1921, Judge Landis permanently banned all eight men from professional baseball. The punishment was eventually defined by the Baseball Hall of Fame to include banishment from consideration for the Hall. Despite requests for reinstatement in the decades that followed (particularly in the case of Shoeless Joe Jackson), the ban remained."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sox_Scandal

A quick How To guide with links to source, for those of you with baseball teams who are behind the times:

https://youtu.be/PmlRbfSavbI

OT, but as a page on “Literary Hub” the typos in this really do my head in and kept dragging me out of the details.

Hared instead of hated? Tide instead of title? Was this voice recognition or OCR or something?

It ruined baseball for me.

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