The whole cheat-ageddon that issue that has torn apart the Houston Astros, and has now cost the jobs of A.J. Hinch, Jeff Luhnow, Alex Cora, and recently Carlos Beltran. But, the idea that the Houston Astros cheated in 2017 and then just stopped OR that they got away with it in 2017 and didn’t try to enhance their techniques, is simply ignorant.
Coincidently, on the Michael Kay show on YES there was a discussion of just that. Then they included a little take on when Jose Altuve hit the homer off Aroldis Chapman and screamed, “DON’T TEAR MY JERSEY OFF!”
I did some investigative research (I mean, I typed Jose Altuve, walk-off, Chapman into YouTube) and I found the video. Interestingly, just as Altuve is entering the scrum of Astros he grabs to top collars of his jersey as to keep it on. Watch.
Remember when Altuve hit that walkoff against Chapman to send the Astros to the World Series? When he made sure that his teammates didn't rip off his jersey in the celebration? Yeah that fucker was hiding a buzzer. pic.twitter.com/gCnFQrPpQp
— dren (@dren_braves) January 16, 2020
You can also see when Altuve leaves the scrum and is being hugged by Carlos Correa, Alex Bregman, and Gerrit Cole, he was still grasping at the top of his jersey.
Then, there’s this Ken Rosenthal interview immediately after.
This might be overthinking, but there is a definite change in Altuve’s body language after he is asked about when he was asking teammates to not tear off his jersey. He replied that it was due to his wife getting mad at him and laughed it off, but he immediately seemed different. Disinterested.
Now, that all sounds like a conspiracy. But… when Carlos Beltran’s niece tosses this out on Twitter… it’s a different story.
https://twitter.com/Jomboy_/status/1217886556263940098?s=20The lead-in from Jomboy, who was at the forefront of this cheating scandal, mentions that he’s heard this from others. Then, Cincinnati Reds pitcher, Trevor Bauer confirmed that he’s heard this as well.
I’ve heard this from multiple parties too, for what it’s worth… https://t.co/zDlp0x4bKs
— Trevor Bauer (@BauerOutage) January 16, 2020
Now, Bauer has had bad blood with Astros players since he has been questioning their methods for a while. He could be just piling on for piling on’s sake, or, and since he would have much to lose here, has actually heard this from others.
This is far worse than banging trash cans. Sure, they cheated, created a system with technology. But this goes far beyond any of that. This is a multilevel, sophisticated approach to cheating in which the game has never seen before. Here is the premise.
Someone can be in centerfield tuned into the catcher looking for signs. Once the signs are determined, they will just need to press a button to transmit a signal to the hitter. The signal can just tip off when a breaking ball is coming, or they can get as advanced as signaling each and every pitch. Literally, everyone on the Astros is in question since every player could have hidden a radio device under their shirt. There was no sound, no tells, no “employees” that happened to be around the other team’s dugout.
This was a virtually undetectable method of cheating that has broken the trust and affected multiple franchises, money, and players.
It takes a HELL of a lot for someone to feel bad for the New York Yankees, but right now, the only way to see it is, they were robbed of at minimum two World Series appearances and very possibly a title. I don’t know what sort of investigation is needed, but it has to be done and if this is true, all involved players need to be banned for life.
