Opinion: The Astros were disgraceful, but MLB should have seen this coming
We live in a world in which, if a baseball player slides into a base safely but loses contact with it for the blink of an eye, he can be out. It is a world in which at least one team has been accused of using lasers to establish marks on the field so it could better position its outfielders. It is a world in which general managers without Ivy League degrees are now outliers. And it’s a world in which the sport takes in nearly $11 billion annually.
We should have seen it coming. Sign-stealing, using the human eye, has been baked into baseball culture for a century. Put millions of dollars on the line, outfit each team with frame-by-frame, high-definition video, and, lo and behold, the notion of using the available tools for unintended purposes proved too tantalizing to resist. Go figure.
Major league baseball is perhaps our most quantified and analyzed sport, one in which teams now more than ever sift through the sands for even the slightest advantage. That the sport’s powers put into place mechanics that could easily be exploited seems obvious now. It should have been obvious in 2014, when the replay challenge system went into effect. It was not, and the Astros’ sinister ways developed from there.
That the Astros initially stood by Taubman offered further insight into the culture Luhnow created. Eventually, they fired Taubman, a move Luhnow clearly wouldn’t have made on his own. The general manager never appeared to understand the intimidation tactics at work in that incident. He viewed Taubman as a piece that helped his club win more games.
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