It has been a brutal postseason for catchers, with passed balls and wild pitches and pitches missed altogether because of misinterpreted signs and crossed-up signals. "You know why that is, right?" an evaluator asked. "It's all about the cheating."
It's all about the cheating, the paranoia about the cheating, the paranoia about the paranoia, the spying and the counter-spying.
Major League Baseball would love for this postseason to be about the Astros trying to win back-to-back titles, the upstart Brewers, the Dodgers trying to finally push across the championship finish line and Mookie Betts and J.D. Martinez leading the Red Sox. But today, the conversation is about mysterious Astros employee Kyle McLaughlin popping up next to opposing dugouts with a camera and repeatedly being chased out by security in Cleveland and Boston. Despite an MLB statement Wednesday, which included a cursory explanation before declaring the matter closed, we don't fully know what he was trying to glean or if his presence was designed merely to unnerve opposing managers and coaches or if the Astros even benefited from whatever he was doing.
What we do know is that baseball officials and staffers who usually worry about bullpen strategy and spin rate are today asking themselves if they should be wary of surveillance bugs and cameras in visiting clubhouses. They wonder if they need to create something like a baseball version of the White House Situation Room -- a place where their organization's information is secure. They are asking questions about the vulnerability of the WiFi in other ballparks. And they are reviewing critical sequences of games played against the Astros and wondering if Houston cheated to win.
