MLB Sign Stealing Controversy Is New Steroid Era

It seems every day there's a new wrinkle added to the Astros cheating scandal that gives the city of Houston and Major League Baseball another black eye amidst the biggest scandal the game has faced since steroids. It has now come out that MLB was in fact onto the Astros and warned them about cheating.

If it wasn't for Mike Fiers, a former Astros pitcher, coming out and blowing the lid off the scandal, TheAthletic's reporting and Jomboy's deep dive into the game footage, we wouldn't be privy to this information and the MLB would be business as usual.

It's unclear how systemic or far reaching this new scandal goes, but with what's been surfacing the past week it's definitely not a good look for the game or a handful of teams.

Jomboy made an appearance on the Micheal Kay show yesterday on ESPN New York 98.7 and he said some very interesting things. He states the the MLB did in fact know about the Astros and they had warned them not to do it anymore. That's when the Astros changed up their tactics and moved from banging on a trash can to the electronic buzzers that were tapped to the player's bodies under their jerseys; allegedly.

Now people are saying that when Jose Altuve hit a walk-off home run in game 7 one the 2019 ALCS off a Aroldis Chapman fastball, that he was in fact wearing a wire and did not want his teammates to rip off his jersey and expose it in their celebration.

At the time of the home run Chapman's smirk on his face looked rubbed a lot of Yankees fans the wrong way. With this information surfacing it seems that he knew that the Astros were stealing signs and he thought that he could reach back and throw a triple digit fastball right by Altuve.

In the wake of the Astros cheating scandal three teams have either fired or mutually parted ways with their manager. Of course the Astros got rid of A.J. Hindge while the Red Sox and Mets "mutually" parted ways with Alex Cora and Carlos Beltran. I can't think of anything that's ever happened in sports that I can truly compare this to.

This is just the tip of the iceberg and in my mind I believe that right now no team is safe. To cheat on such a level is way worse than taking performance enhancers. You can't inject timing into your buttocks, but if you know what pitch is coming next it could make a 5'6" 165 lb. ball player a MVP.