MLB’s sign-stealing scandal takes down another; Texas Rangers say they won’t be next
Another head rolled Thursday, the fourth ensnared in Major League Baseball’s latest scandal that has given the sport its biggest black eye since the Mitchell Report.
Carlos Beltran is out as New York Mets manager without managing a game. He was the only player mentioned in the MLB investigation into the Houston Astros’ high-tech sign-stealing scheme, and now he’s retired again.
He joins former Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow, Astros manager A.J. Hinch and Boston Red Sox manager Alex Cora in baseball prison.
The commissioner’s report, released Monday, outlined the cheating. Cora implemented Beltran’s scheme, which he brought from an unnamed team, while Luhnow and Hinch did nothing to stop it as the Astros won the first World Series in franchise history in 2017.
Cora allegedly took the scheme with him when Boston hired him as manager, and the Red Sox promptly won the World Series in 2018.
Everyone in baseball, even commissioner Rob Manfred, knows that players steal signs and have since the game’s infancy. What’s unclear is how many teams have done so illegally via technology, how long they have done it, and if anyone else has done it since Manfred’s stern warning late in 2017.
The Texas Rangers are on record saying they have heeded the warning.
“One of the things I preach heavily is getting an advantage in every way,” manager Chris Woodward said Wednesday. “We know other teams are doing it. We don’t know if they’re crossing a line. All we can do is make sure we don’t cross that line.
“It is part of the game. But there was a line drawn by the commissioner’s office, by the league, that said you’re not allowed to cross this line or you’re going to have consequences. They thought they did.”
Woodward said that players see signs and tendencies on video before games and pass that along, but the Rangers don’t do it during games. GM Jon Daniels said that teams are required to put in writing that they did not use technology to gain an advantage in real time.
Daniels said that he is confident that the “unnamed team” from which Beltran brought his scheme was not the Rangers. Beltran finished the 2016 season with the Rangers after being acquired at the trade deadline, and played for the Astros in 2017 before retiring.
The Rangers haven’t investigated the matter thoroughly, Daniels said, because the evidence they have seen strongly suggests no wrongdoing occurred.
“The last couple years, but definitely this last year, we had to sign off on it,” Daniels said. “We have to certify that, to the best of our knowledge, we’ve played by the explicit rules that have been laid out. You’re not in every spot every time. You can’t be in every room at every point in time, but I’m confident we didn’t cross that line, that our players and staff honored that, and we told the league as much.”
The Astros’ and Red Sox’s championships came against the Los Angeles Dodgers. Woodward was their third-base coach.
He, along with Dodgers coaches and players who twice took the game’s most difficult loss under what are now questionable circumstances, has every right to be ticked.
Woodward, though, didn’t show his cards Wednesday when asked his thoughts.
“We got beat,” he said. “I don’t have a feeling one way or the other. I just have to prepare our team to not cross the line but be fully prepared to compete on a daily basis.”
Robinson Chirinos, who signed Wednesday with the Rangers and played for the Astros in 2019, said that he saw nothing untoward happening last season as Houston returned to the World Series.
He has played against them far longer than he played for them, and he said that the remembers one occasion in 2017 when he heard the Astros scheme in play.
They would steal a signal from a center-field camera and relay it to someone in the dugout who would then hit a trash can with a bat if an off-speed pitch was coming.
Chirinos said that he now uses multiple signs when calling for pitches, rather than just sticking down a finger. Some pitchers he worked with last season wanted multiple signs even when the bases are empty.
In 2018, Chirinos said, Cole Hamels did the same thing with the Rangers.
So, it appears players have suspected some kind of advanced sign-stealing. Baseball either doesn’t know, doesn’t have the evidence or doesn’t want to say how widespread it has become.
“They don’t feel comfortable,” Chirinos said. “They just don’t want to give those signs away. I feel like every team has to do that.”
