MLB: Keeping baseball’s technologies while avoiding cheaters-to-be

By Jeff Kallman | Feb 16, 2020

HOUSTON, TEXAS - OCTOBER 30: Max Scherzer #31 of the Washington Nationals comes off the field after the second inning against the Houston Astros in Game Seven of the 2019 World Series at Minute Maid Park on October 30, 2019 in Houston, Texas. (Photo by Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images) /

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(Photo by Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images)

(Photo by Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images) /

On Friday, MLB pitcher Max Scherzer addressed the question of how not to throw the high-tech baby out with the Astrosoxgate bathwater. Here’s what he said.

Max Scherzer earns respect for more than just his tenacity on the mound. When he opens his mouth, he’s either a rich source of good humor or a splendid source of thoughtfulness. And when it comes to MLB government and its player’s union talking seriously about preventing future Astrogates and Soxgates, Scherzer knows it’s got to be done but it won’t be simple.

It never really is.

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To hear Scherzer’s talk with The Athletic‘s Ken Rosenthal in an MLB Network interview Friday, it’s not a question of whether to restrict camera mounted in the ballparks or in-game access to replay rooms in the clubhouses, it’s a question of how much to do it without negating the reasons they’re present in the first place. While still blocking illicit off-field-based electronic sign espionage.

“Really trying to get in talks with players across the league to try to come up with as fair a system as possible,” said Scherzer, the world champion Washington Nationals’s pitching ace and player representative to the Major League Baseball Players Association. “Replay has been in the game and enhances the game, but we’ve seen the unintended consequences of this.”

And how.

The Houston Astros have been exposed as electronic cheaters with their staggering success of 2017 and beyond now under permanent taint. They graduated, we know now, from front-office sign-stealing algorithms and replay room reconnaissance to either installing or altering (off the mandatory eight-second delay) a camera behind the outfield to send stolen signs to their clubhouse for transmission to their hitters.

It cost general manager Jeff Luhnow and manager A.J. Hinch their jobs. Concurrently, the Boston Red Sox have been exposed for their own replay room reconnaissance ring, at minimum. Commissioner Rob Manfred has yet to swing a disciplinary hammer down upon their heads, but married to Astrogate it cost manager Alex Cora his job in light of Cora’s in-it-up-to-his-kishkes involvement in the Astro Intelligence Agency. Leaving the Red Sox’s 2018 success under permanent taint, too.

Manfred is on the record as saying he’s considered barring teams from their video rooms once a game gets underway, and no video access other than a single replay screen with a security guard accompanying it. Scherzer and his fellow players may well think that’s just a little extreme, especially considering the value of being able to break down previous plate turns or mound innings for immediate benefit.

But Scherzer knows today’s tech advance benefits can turn only too swiftly into tomorrow’s espionage or other cheating. He knows boys will be boys, always have been, always will be, and every advance brings six parts benefit and half a dozen parts abuse.

“We need to come up with rules now that limit how many cameras we can have on the field, how much replay we can actually have,” he told Rosenthal. “We’re trying to decide how much access players should have to that during the game.”

That’s the big key. You don’t want to remove a player or pitcher’s chance to adjust during a game, and you don’t want to remove replay reviews on close plays that can turn games around, particularly down the hot stretch of a postseason race and especially in the postseason itself. But you don’t want the high-tech cheaters to corrupt and taint the game and its championships anymore, either.

Baseball’s Luddites will always harrumph, hem, haw, and heave, but technology applied properly has enhanced our game. Do we really want to neutralize or remove it solely because two cheating teams that we know of weaponized it?