Did cheating help the Houston Astros win the 2017 World Series?
A.J. Hinch, who was fired last month as manager over the illegal sign-stealing operation used during his team’s championship season, acknowledged that it is a fair question, saying that the world might never know.
“I hope over time it’s proven that it wasn’t [tainted],” Hinch said in an interview with MLB Network. “I understand the question. Unfortunately we opened that door as a group and that question may never be answered. We may never know.”
Both Hinch and general manager Jeff Luhnow were fired by the Astros about an hour after Major League Baseball suspended them each for a year.
The league found management to blame for a system used to steal pitch signs from opposing catchers during the 2016-2017 season.
Hinch defended the talents of his players, even though they put themselves in a position to have their accomplishments questioned.
At the outset, the scheme involved employees in the Astros’ video replay review room, who used live game feeds from the centerfield camera to attempt to decode and transmit opposing teams’ pitch-sign sequences, the league said, adding that a monitor was installed later on near the Houston dugout so that players could figure out the signs and hit a trash can with a bat to signal to their batter what type of pitch was coming.
With 101 regular season victories, the 2017 Astros ran away with their division by 21 games before going on to win Houston’s first World Series title.
“I can’t really pinpoint what advantages or what happened or what exactly would have happened otherwise, but we did it to ourselves,” Hinch said.
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