MLB: Is it tough for GMs to know if their players are cheating?
Jon Daniels (Texas Rangers GM): “It’s a challenge to suggest that you know everything going on at every time, every minute of every day. Certainly, if it’s bigger than a bread box and it’s in your hometown big-league park, I think you have a lot more likelihood of being aware than otherwise.”
Jerry Dipoto (Seattle Mariners GM): “I would like to believe that I’m dialed in enough to know what they’re doing. I would also like to believe that I’ve watched the game for long enough that I know when something just doesn’t look right. I hope so. But I can’t say for sure.”
David Forst (Oakland Athletics GM): “I would hope so. A big part of my job is to be in touch with everything that’s going on in the organization. That’s not easy to do. But I would hope so.”
Andrew Friedman (Los Angeles Dodgers GM): “I’ve actually wondered that question a lot this offseason. I think the answer is I’m not sure. But I do think it’s fair to say that it’s a failure to manage on my part if I don’t . . . if I didn’t know about it, there could be a concerted effort to make sure I don’t. And if that’s the case, it’s hard, because it’s so nuanced with what the infraction is and how many people were complicit in it. There’s just so much to it that I don’t know the answer. But I think being held responsible for failure to manage is fair.”
Among those GMs, Forst might have one of the least concerns about whether his team plays straight, no chaser. As a pitcher Brett Anderson pointed out to McCullough, the Oakland Coliseum video rooms are so far away from the dugouts that using them to start a sign-stealing plot, as the Astros did pre-AIA and the Boston Red Sox are still under investigation for doing, might be two things: difficult, and impossible.
“I know the A’s weren’t cheating,” said Anderson, now with the Milwaukee Brewers and formerly an A’s teammate of Astrogate whistleblower Mike Fiers. “Because, one, I don’t know if they could afford it. And to relay from 300 yards away in the video room? What were we going to do, get some vendor to throw some popcorn up in the air, or something? It’s too far to relay something.”
What Moore, Daniels, Dipoto, Forst, and Friedman may not be aware of is that there have been a past instance or two of off-field based, device-abetted sign-stealing cheating where a guilty team’s general manager was very well aware of the scheme if not encouraging it explicitly. Now and then, so was an owner.