author’s note: The following story is my attempt to summarize/plagiarize the story: “Does electronic sign stealing work? The Astros’ numbers are eye-popping” by Jayson Stark and Eno Sarris, which was recently published at The Athletic.com. I am going to justify this by suggesting that you should subscribe and read the whole story. It’s my favorite sports website by a long shot. (Click here to visit)
A brief refresher, the 2017 Houston Astros won the World Series. Turns out they were illegally stealing signs with a combination of a closed-circuit TV, trash can bangs and electronic buzzers.
So you ask, “What is the big deal about stealing signs?”
Two quotes to explain that:
“Hitting is timing. Pitching is upsetting timing.” - Warren Spahn
“Straight ball, I hit it very much. Curve ball, bats are afraid. I ask Jobu to come take fear from bats. I offer him cigar and rum.” - Pedro Cerrano
Now imagine if Jobu could have told Cerrano in advance when a breaking pitch was coming? Pedro could simply take the pitch and wait for a fastball. And avoid striking out. It’s not always what you swing at, it’s what you DON’T swing at.
A couple highlights from The Athletic story….
In 2016, Astros hitters struck out 1,452 times. That’s the 8th highest total in the history of baseball.
In 2017, Astros hitters struck out 1,087 times.
In one year they went from striking out at one of the highest rates in history to a team that struck out less than any other team that season. Is this normal? According to the friendly nerds at Stats Inc., this sort of thing has happened exactly……never. At least since the live ball era started in 1920. In fact, no other team in history has come within 80 strikeouts of doing it.
Stats also found the 2016-17 Astros were the only team in 100 seasons to cut their strikeout rates by more than two strikeouts per game in one year. 8.96 to 6.71. Home strikeouts dropped from 744 to 502. The Astros reduced their strikeouts at home by 83, more K’s than the next-closest team in the last 100 years.
OK, we get it, Jobu was helping bats very much. How does this affect my fantasy baseball team?
Who suddenly stopped swinging and missing at breaking balls from 2016-2017?
Marwin Gonzalez, incredibly, went from a 40 percent swing rate to just 10 percent.
Carlos Correa 27 - 15;
Jake Marisnick 30 - 13;
George Springer 18 - 12;
AND according to Tony Adams at signstealingscandal.com, these four players combined for the highest percentage of trash-can bangs with Gonzalez leading the way with 147 bangs during his at bats.
Evan Gattis has a career strikeout percentage of 22.5. In 2016 it jumped to 25.5. In 2017, it dropped to just 15.4. Only five players in the history of baseball have had that kind of turnaround.
Some good news, despite the fact Jose Altuve inexplicably moved UP in the box against Aroldis Chapman before crushing an off-speed pitch for the series winning-home run. And even more inexplicably was completely obsessed with keeping his jersey on during the post game celebration, there is little evidence he benefited much from Jobu during the regular season. His bats weren’t afraid.
His numbers are pretty normal unless you count that trash can thumping can only be heard during 2.8% of his at-bats. That would be an outlier for the 2017 “champion” Astros.
You get the idea and I’ve got to get back to serving coffee. Why not subscribe to The Athletic and read the whole thing? It’s worth your time.
Colin Gawel founded Pencilstorm and clearly has WAY too much time on his hands at Colin’s Coffee.