hawk1689 said:
As others have pointed out...If it were common, it wouldn't work and therefore they wouldn't be doing it.
They didn't do it in 2018 before Fiers ratted them out. They found it not to be that useful. And only some players even used it during 2017 as others seemed to not find it useful from the start or weren't comfortable doing it.
You don't think with all the veteran leadership they had on the team that if it was really that much of a cheating advantage far and above what other teams did that they wouldn't have spoken up and tried to stop it? Knowing that their career reputations would be at risk.
If you think about it, it seems more like it was a behavior they did as a counterweight to believing the other team was doing just as much on their end to try to break Astros signs.
There are posts on the Astros thread on this very site, before any of this broke and Fiers did the interview where the poster was at an Astro game and noticed Astros staff sitting in seats near them with binoculars scanning the crowd and talking about finding plants for the opponents trying to steal signals and spy on the Astro dugout.
The fact that AJ Hinch took at baseball bat to the monitor in the hall 2 separate times makes it pretty evident that he hated the players doing it, but him not stopping them seems to say that he knows other teams are doing it too and he felt they had to fight fire with fire.
7nine