Cheating Again...

[DeployEloy]

https://www.latimes.com/sports/angels/story/2021-01-07/fired-angels-employee-bubba-harkins-names-players-illegal-product?_amp=true&__twitter_impression=true

Anyone surprised to see names like Cole and Verlander linked to this. Makes the Astros look even worse.

[Dumpjerry]

Not very credible.
1. Fired (disgruntled) former employee.
2. Fired for helping out the other teams' pitchers (***???).

Yeah, this guy is on the up and up.

Would be interesting to see if visiting pitchers generally had better games at Anaheim than any other road stadium (presumably their home stats would be best since that would provide an outsized sample size and "there's not place like home.")

[DeployEloy]

An SI article in March reported that he was fired for doctoring balls and supplying players with foreign substances for use. Really is a weird situation and I tend to believe where there's smoke, there's fire. Doesn't mean I take everything this guy is saying as 100% truth, but its clearly worth cracking down and investigating further.

article:

https://www.si.com/mlb/2020/03/06/angels-fire-employee-illegal-substances-pitchers

[HomeFish]

Not very credible.
1. Fired (disgruntled) former employee.
2. Fired for helping out the other teams' pitchers (***???).

Yeah, this guy is on the up and up.

Would be interesting to see if visiting pitchers generally had better games at Anaheim than any other road stadium (presumably their home stats would be best since that would provide an outsized sample size and "there's not place like home.")

The story goes that this guy was taught how to make a special blend of pine tar by former Angels relief pitcher Troy Percival, and this special blend was so good that other pitchers lined up to buy this stuff from him when they were in Anaheim.

He may be a disgruntled former employee, but there are some pretty incriminating text messages showing players appearing to ask this guy for pine tar.

Though how bad is the Angels pitching stuff if they had the Tony Montana of pine tar working for them and they still couldn't pitch Mike Trout to the playoffs.

[vegandork]

The story goes that this guy was taught how to make a special blend of pine tar by former Angels relief pitcher Troy Percival, and this special blend was so good that other pitchers lined up to buy this stuff from him when they were in Anaheim.

He may be a disgruntled former employee, but there are some pretty incriminating text messages showing players appearing to ask this guy for pine tar.

Though how bad is the Angels pitching stuff if they had the Tony Montana of pine tar working for them and they still couldn't pitch Mike Trout to the playoffs.

This was my first thought.

I don't care about this kind of stuff as much as I do other forms of cheating. It's always existed in baseball. Getting away with it - or not - has always been part of the fun of the game. But it needs to happen in game if they're getting caught.

[FourGoldGloves]

I don't care about this kind of stuff as much as I do other forms of cheating. It's always existed in baseball. Getting away with it - or not - has always been part of the fun of the game. But it needs to happen in game if they're getting caught.

If you have a rule that is more violated than adhered to then it becomes a means of selective enforcement for other reasons, like the pine tar bat incident. If everyone is a criminal anyone can be punished for any reason. I say either enforce the rule (not likely in general) or take it off the books.

Cheating part of the fun of the game? Like stealing signs, which has been part of the game forever? A little inconsistency there.

[TDog]

If you have a rule that is more violated than adhered to then it becomes a means of selective enforcement for other reasons, like the pine tar bat incident. If everyone is a criminal anyone can be punished for any reason. I say either enforce the rule (not likely in general) or take it off the books.

Cheating part of the fun of the game? Like stealing signs, which has been part of the game forever? A little inconsistency there.

There is a sharp line between stealing signs as part of the game and using illegal measures to steal signs. Stealing signs isn't cheating. Part of the art of flashing signs on a baseball field is preventing the opposition from reading them. Built into signs is the knowledge that the opposition is trying to figure them out. When coaches are communicating with players, when teammates are communicating, they do so with the knowledge that the opposition is watching. Will Clark wasn't cheating when he read Mike Maddux's lips in the 1989 NLCS before pretty much ending the Cubs' season. Sign stealing is elaborate lip reading with the sign stealers figuring out what the signs mean. It should be obvious where that's part of the game and where it's not. Many who have coached academic baseball has probably come across the boy who with no athletic skills who manages equipment and also possesses the uncanny ability to read the signs from the opposing coach. That's why signs have to become more complex. That's why catchers should be able to go to the mound when a runner reaches second to go over measures that will make the catcher's sign more complex to minimize the chance of a hitter knowing what's coming.

There was no gray area in what the Astros did, no inconsistency with their punishment. In fact, A.J. Hinch is lucky to be still eligible for baseball employment.