By Josh:
If you are a baseball fan and read stuff on this site then I’m pretty sure you know about the Astros using cameras to gather and send info to hitters in real time. Giving hitters a warning as to whether a fastball or an off speed pitch was coming.
A lot of people are talking about how this impacts their 2017 World Series championship, but there is so much more that could be impacted because of their actions.
The Proof
I’m not going to link all of the videos that have come out because there are too many and they are all over twitter. Nor am I going to talk about the former Astro who came out and admitted it was going on.
What I am going to talk about is the amazing fixing of James Paxton by Carlos Beltran and a theory I have as to why Gerrit Cole didn’t want to be an Astro.
In April Carlos Beltran took James Paxton aside and showed him ‘video’ of him tipping his pitches to the Astros. He wasn’t tipping his pitches to other teams only when he played against the Astros and former Astro, Beltran, is the one who ‘spotted it’.
This World Series the Astros Front Office showed their true colors and the second the final game was over Gerrit Cole disassociated himself from the Astros. I have to wonder if that isn’t because he didn’t like the culture of not only the front office but the cheating of the team.
The Impact
Yes, the Astros suddenly went from a middle of the pack K to BB ratio team to the best by a wide margin from one year to the next. Yes, that resulted in them winning a World Series in 2017 and going to the World Series again this year.
As much as I want the Astros to pay I don’t think they are going to have to give up their championship or anything like that. (We all know MLB is too afraid to punish anything like this). They might lose draft picks but that is all the team is going to have to face.
However, the players may end up being hurt by this in the long run. What is voting for the All-Star team going to look like next year? How many fans who would have voted for Altuve, Correa, Bregman and others now choosing to vote for someone else.
Do Hall of Fame voters who hate steroid users begin to lump potential Hall of Famers like Altuve into that group and not vote for them even if their career numbers put them into the discussion?
All-Star games and Hall of Fame voting don’t even compare to the biggest impact of all of this. The increased distrust of Major League Baseball. Add this to high ticket prices, a potential work stoppage at the end of this collective bargaining agreement, and an obvious frustration that fans are feeling with Major League Baseball and what you have is another straw added to the bundle. Pretty soon that bundle is going to be big enough to break the camel’s back, and when that happens the damage may take decades to fix.