Thanks for that. It made me want to watch The Last Waltz again.
I am worn out on the cheating shit.
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Oh hell, not complaining, but there goes another couple of hours yet again.
And yes, it’s always amusing to see the people who bitch(ed) about the Astros go and join the teams that were doing the same. I’m completely done with thinking/talking about it.
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I still haven’t figured out how the “scandal” helped the Astros win the World Series.
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Especially since they won two games in LA.
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I think there’s a pretty strong case to be made that Game 5 turns out differently if they didn’t cheat. I seem to recall that not one Astro swung at a single Kershaw breaking ball in the pivotal early 2-out comeback inning. I have been meaning for a while now to go back and watch that inning to see if the bangs are audible.
Thoughts and prayers.
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I think there’s a pretty strong case to be made that that’s a load of crap.
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I still haven’t figured out how it made the Yankees unable to score
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That was the wind. And space lasers.
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I think your “pretty strong case” is bs.
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I had no doubt you would.
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Even if you know what pitch is coming, you still have to hit the damn ball. Nearly every Houston home run or clutch hit in that game 5 was a ball out over the plate that the pitcher did not locate. To say that Houston did not earn that win is absurd.
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If you are talking about the 4th, Bregman chased a 3-2 curve and hit a fly ball to left for an out. He must have not cheated on that pitch. I think you will find they swung at several breaking pitches that inning, but I have not watched in a long time. If you are talking about the 5th, Kershaw walked two before getting pulled for Maeda, but I do not remember what he threw on those walks.
I am not surprised this argument is being made for the Dodgers, but I am surprised to the point of shock you are the person making it. You played baseball; I know that because I coached you. Stand up at the plate against Kershaw in your mind. If you do not hear a bang, what does that tell you? Does silence mean fastball or does it mean the sign stealer does not know what pitch is coming? How do you know? If you know what pitch is coming, can the cheating also square up the ball? Ridiculous, and I expect former players to know that.
Not chasing curves is evidence of cheating??? My 1997 Mac team did not swing at curves either unless there were two strikes, but the reason was they could hit FBs WAY better, and we had a policy (rule?) to not swing at curves. Maybe the Astros were disciplined enough to lay off low curves and to hunt FBs. That seems possible to me.
If you have the MLB souvenir DVD or BluRay, you can watch each 2017 WS inning pitch by pitch. Maybe the complete game also is on YouTube. The MLB video sound is so good you can hear the HPU’s calls. Do your research, and report back. I have the video and will see if I think your research is accurate. Next we can move to how cheating actually won Games 2 and 7 in LA.
You have said you are buddies with Maybin’s wife. Ask her to ask him about your Game 5 theory. He had a big role on that team and no doubt knows.
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It’s also available on YouTube:
Bottom 4th starts at 1:44:07
Bottom 5th starts at 2:23:58
Plainly obvious that Kershaw, like most other pitchers that night, started having a lot of trouble locating his offspeed stuff. Astros pitchers got more patient and started looking for the fastball which was reliably in or near the zone. No banging to be heard.
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I was referring to the inning in which after two outs the Astros loaded the bases and Kershaw came out of the game and Altuve (or Yuli?) tied it up. I will gladly watch it again.
Understand, I don’t give two shits what people say about the banging scheme anymore. It was a little more sophisticated of a system—maybe, or maybe—notably—less—than what their chief competitors were doing at the time. I’m actually kind of awkwardly impressed with all the code-breaking and signaling that went into it.
If it’s true that they didn’t use it in the playoffs (and I have always halfway wondered why they wouldn’t have) it just makes it more infuriating that they used it at all, given the fact that they were much worse as an offensive unit at home that year than on the road, and then went on to kick everybody’s ass at home in the playoffs. If you don’t need it to hand Kershaw’s ass to him, why use it at all? But oh well.
My contention is that they had gotten quite good at their system by the end, and it helped them lay off breaking stuff. It doesn’t seem like much of a stretch of the imagination that after a few innings they broke Kershaw’s signs and were able to spit on his sliders until the bases were juiced.
But yes, more than happy to watch that game again. And happy to see that Waldo has already reported no bangs.
The system for notifying the hitter was a poor one, as I tried to point out in my initial reply to you. If a bang was an off-speed pitch, would it be a slider, curve, or changeup? Did silence mean fastball or “I have no clue?”
Traditional sign stealing systems used words, e.g. on my teams, first name is fastball, last name is curve. The runner at second would use some sort of signal with his body. The Astros trash can system Beltran taught them left hitters really not knowing for sure a fastball was coming if there was no bang.
PS Altuve hit a 3-run homer, not a grand slam. Kershaw walked two, and Maeda came in to pitch to Altuve.
I’ve always thought the reason they abandoned the system in '18 was that they no longer considered it effective. I’ve always thought that in specific at bats, such as facing a two-pitch reliever where they were certain they had the sign, it could prove to be a significant advantage. But, in other cases, it could be a disadvantage. For example, right after the signs were changed, which happened frequently, a “no-bang” means nothing but the batter could construe it as a fastball and miss the hook by a foot.
The road-home splits in '17 tell me it was insignificant at best.
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This was true from the outset. It was a dumb signaling system.
I have read the “not effective” comment many times. The media ignores that, of course. To the true hater, know what pitch is coming means a hit 100% of the time. It ain’t that simple.
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Your supposition doesn’t matter.
You act as if a Houston hitter knew where the pitch was going to be thrown because they heard a bang on a trash can. The game is played by humans, this was not some video game “cheat code.”