Author: /u/manbags

I picked this up a while back shortly after it came out. I read a little bit and saw some questionable reporting so I put it on the shelf and decided it probably wasn’t worth the read. But With Evan Drellich’s new book, I figured I might as well read this one first The stuff in parentheses is my own comments

I believe Drellich recently mentioned this book indirectly in a podcast, but now I can’t find the clip. He said there was another book that was much more limited in what it covered, and it basically served as something for the Yankee organization (mentioned indirectly) to put a stamp of approval on. Martino does baseball reporting for SNY (SportsNet New York) which would be consistent with that claim.

Here are my take-aways.

The first half or so of the book recount the history of sign stealing and some notable examples like the ’51 Giants with the telescope (It’s notable that multiple schemes before the ’17 Astros involved communicating pitches to batters in real-time. The primary difference being binoculars, telescopes, or live game broadcasts in lieu of center-field cameras and flashing lightbulbs or arm signals from center field instead of trash can banging).

The next portion gives brief histories of key players from 2017: Luhnow, Hinch, Cora, Beltran, and even Hal Steinbrenner and Brian Cashman.

• Lunhow is portrayed as an asshole (This should come as a surprise to no one).
• Hinch is said to be a conflict-averse manager who didn’t want to disrupt what he thought was good chemistry between the team and Cora. He had a poor experience previously with his first managing gig with the DBacks which played into this.
• Cora is a smart player/coach who successfully integrates front office analytics with old-school methods. This makes him a great manager. He has a few explosive spats with Hinch but players love him and he’s a nice guy (in contrast with other recent reports).
• Beltran is portrayed sympathetically. He is said to be a passionate supporter of inexperienced ESL players. He’s also passionate about gaining any information that will benefit a batter even if it’s against the rules.
• Hal Steinbrenner and Brian Cashman are basically revolutionaries compared to previous Yankee leaders. The two of them always wanted to do things their own way (analytics) but weren’t able because of George Steinbrenner (The New York bias is pretty clear here).

After that Martino gets to the point of the book- Turning the Astros into the villians of baseball.

First he recounts the trash can scheme and 2017 regular season. (Not much to be said here).

There’s an entire chapter dedicated to the postseason and World Series.

• “Chapter 13. Yep, the Astros Used the Trash Can in the World Series”

With such an attention-grabbing title you’d expect some kind of explosive new information. None is offered besides what others have claimed. The Kershaw breaking balls, hallway monitor, and vague statements from “witnesses” are the only arguments presented.

Martino also talked to the Astros fan who logged all the bangs from 2017. That fan said the 2017 ALCS and World series were too loud for bangs to be detected by audio software, but not for lack of trying. (It’s worth noting that that fan screened the ALDS and found no bangs. https://signstealingscandal.com/)

Martino claims the Astros also cheated in the WS at Minute Maid by mudding the baseballs inconsistently and making sure they only used the good ones when pitching (even if true, this wouldn’t be cheating. Bad gamesmanship at worst. Opposing pitchers could just keep asking for different balls until getting a good one, which is what Martino claims the Astros were doing. Anyone who watched that postseason should also remember all the talk of the slick baseballs that were hard to grip).

After that Martino talks about 2018 and 2019. He goes over the obvious stuff like the Osuna trade and Taubman scandal. One interesting point Martino makes is that Taubman was actually against the trade and believed Luhnow deserved the following criticism. Taubman’s blowup was a result of conflicting feelings about the trade and being drunk.

He also makes accusations outside of 2017 that have never been commented on or corroborated by anyone else publicly. He claims the Astros used a massage gun on the dugout wall to tip hitters of incoming pitches after they abandoned the trash cans in 2017. (This is what Erik Kratz says the Rockies did)

Martino claims that the Astros cheated against the Yankees in the 2019 ALCS. He says that in game 1, Yankees catcher Gary Sánchez was tipping the fastball that night by rising higher in his crouch. Alex Cintron picked up on this from the dugout and whistled to batters when a fastball was coming. MLB said that audio cues to hitters were not allowed in spring training that season, making Cintron’s whistling cheating (while Martino is technically not wrong, I think most would argue that this scenario isn’t really cheating since it involved no cameras or tech, only dugout personnel reacting to something they can see right in front of them).

Martino also claims that in game 6, there were suspicious flashing lights in center field that seemed to have different patterns corresponding to pitch types when Astros were batting. But no one recorded them, and they stopped when the Yankees pointed them out to MLB personnel.

Martino then goes over the buzzer theory. He acknowledges that the evidence against the buzzers is too strong to ignore.

There’s a section where Martino mentions the interview between Carlos Correa and Ken Rosenthal during spring training 2020. In that interview, Correa vehemently defended the team and argued that the Astros didn’t benefit from any illegal sign-stealing in the World Series. Martino dismisses any pretense of neutral reporting and explicitly tries to refute the points Correa made in the interview. Honestly this is probably the worst part of the book.

The story finishes by briefly going over the fallout of the scandal breaking and what each of the previously mentioned people (Luhnow, Hinch, etc.) had to deal with. Martino basically characterizes the Astros front office as having completely fallen apart by the end of it.