In Christy Mathewson’s book Pitching in a Pinch, he dedicates an entire chapter to the various methods employed by baseball players to know what the pitcher will throw before he throws it and communicate that information to the batter. There would be no way for them to communicate the exact location of where the pitch will be thrown, but for good hitters knowing whether it is a fast ball or not can often be enough to significantly increase their odds of winning. 

Teams can acquire this information in a variety of ways: a runner on second spotting the signs while on bases, or a coach noticing something in the pitchers motion on off-speed pitches. Mathewson is clear that any methods using some kind of device other than our human senses crosses a line:

Dishonest sign stealing might be defined as obtaining information by artificial aids. The honest methods are those requiring cleverness of eye, mind, and hand without outside assistance. One of the most flagrant and for a time successful pieces of signal stealing occurred in Philadelphia several years ago.

Mathewson describes his manager’s discovery that the team from Philadelphia had devised a method of communicating signs spotted by the third base coach back to the hitter. Mathewson’s manager walks over the to the opposing team’s coach and began “pawing around in the dirt and water with his spikes and fingers”:

Up came a wire, and when he started to pull on it he found that it was buried about an inch under the soil and ran across the outfield. He kept right on coiling it up and following it, like a hound on a scent, the Philadelphia players being very busy all this time and nervous like a busher at his début into Big League society … One of the substitutes started to run for the clubhouse, but I stopped him. “‘I guess you’ve got the goods,’ Murphy answered with a laugh, and all the newspapers laughed at it then, too. But the batting averages of the Philadelphia players took an awful slump after that.”

In 2017 the Houston Astros had a monitor installed inside their home dugout that showed a live camera feed of the catchers signaling to the pitcher. Another player watching this monitor would then bang on a trash can to communicate to whoever was hitting whether the incoming pitch was an offspeed pitch. The scheme was exposed after a reliever for the Chicago White Sox noticed a banging sound, audible in the absence of any crowd noise, this being a doldrums game after the Astros had clinched but before the postseason began. Like many other veterans of that team, Twins shortstop Carlos Correa can scarcely go anywhere in the league to this day without being booed because of his involvement. 

I thought about the long history of this kind of cheating when watching highlights from the Twins 3-1 AL Wild Card victory against the Toronto Blue Jays, their first postseason wins after 18 consecutive losses. I was lucky enough to attend this game in person. The atmosphere at the stadium was at a healthy simmer, but Royce Lewis’ two-run home run in the bottom of the first inning set things to a boil that did not relent until the final out. As someone who still has scorecards from meaningless regular season losses hanging around the house, I know I will be treasuring the one I kept that game for many years to come. 

I mention being there because it was not until I watched the highlights afterwards that I heard ESPN color commentator Alex Rodriguez suggest that somehow the Twins seemed to know in advance when Blue Jays pitcher Kevin Gausman was throwing his splitter. On the MLB highlights from the game feature Rodriguez shows a montage of splitters from Gausman and says the following

Rodriguez: [Gausman] has an outstanding split finger. He’s thrown nine so far. He’s only had one swing and miss. But I want you to focus on the takes and the body language. I know they’re not very competitive, but look at the body language. Never even an effort to swing. So I don’t want to be a conspiracy theory [sic], but to me the split is too good not even to budge. 

To be clear, he doesn’t suggest the Twins were doing anything nefarious in this game. And he is right about Gausman’s splitter, which boasts a swing-and-miss percentage of over 40% according to Baseball Savant. Perhaps the scouting team or one of the players picked up something in his mechanics or delivery that suggested the pitch. Better communication amongst hitters has been cited by multiple Twins as a big part of their second half offensive improvement, including greater involvement in the hitters meetings. And as Mathewson suggested more than a hundred years ago, these kinds of advantages are perfectly legitimate in the eyes of the baseball gods if obtained the right way. And as a pitcher with two pitches, Gausman may just be an easier mark than most, at least based on his past performance against the Twins. 

That said, it was funny to hear this coming from Alex Rodriguez. Throughout his career he was a key contributor to the Twins playoff losing streak during his tenure with the Yankees. He also seems like the kind of person who ought not to toss around idle accusations of unfair advantage. After initially denying ever using any performance enhancing drugs, in 2009 he admitted in a press conference that from 2001-2003, with the help of his cousin, he took a banned performance enhancing drug (PED). His last period using the drug coincided with the first widespread testing for PEDs in Major League Baseball, though in his press conference Rodriguez attributed his stopping to a neck injury. 

In his press conference he also talks about something that anyone who looks closely at the “Steroid Era” must conclude: PED use was rampant in the game. “It was very loose,” as he put it, in part because there was little risk of getting caught and the rewards for improvement were substantial. It is perhaps then all the more evidence of Rodriguez’s great skill that he was one of the game’s best hitters before, during, and after his reported use of PEDs. One could say the same of many other greats from this era: Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Rafael Palmeiro, to name a few. All three would be in the Hall of Fame but for their association with steroids, just as Alex Rodriguez would be. 

Like sign stealing, steroids and other PEDs were ways to get an edge over the competition, but it can’t entirely do the work for you. The scandal of cheating is the violation of the sanctity of sports, which in many peoples minds is a rare example of meritocracy. When the widespread use of PEDs by some of the most famous players in baseball came to light, it was common to hear fans lament how unfair it was to all the players who tried to play clean. 

As a kid, that’s exactly how I felt about the disparity in payroll and prestige between the Twins and pretty much any other team, but especially the Yankees. How could it be fair that two teams had to play each other when teams like the Yankees had enough money to sign all the best players? The fact that all the luck seemed to turn their way made this material disadvantage all the more brutal. Nothing would have made me happier than to see them finally win but each time the effort seemed more futile. Perhaps seeing the Twins doing well in the postseason struck A-Rod as simply unfair.

Competition creates conspiracies as readily as winners and losers. After many years of the Twins being paired with the Yankees, I at times believed this was being engineered to prevent a high profile playoff matchup against two teams from smaller television markets. Or that it was because the villain Bud Selig wanted revenge after his failed attempt to contract the team in 2002. Or perhaps it was due to an internal conspiracy by Twins management to coast on the back of a generally bad division with the assurance that their fans in Minnesota would be too polite to blame them. 

The playoff losing streak for the Twins has lasted literally the entirety of my adult life so far. Each year they entered the playoffs and I would try to look past their many flaws, willing a victory only to be disappointed. Seeing Joe Mauer, one of the greatest catchers and certainly greatest Twins of all time, not win a single playoff game after his rookie season is so tragic that I would’ve gladly helped the Twins cheat any way they could in order to get the win. 

Thankfully that wasn’t necessary. In the end their victory in 2023 came down to a combination of long-term planning and in-the-moment execution that makes baseball such an interesting sport. This offseason the Twins traded beloved infielder Luis Arraez just after winning a batting title to Miami for pitcher Pablo Lopez. It was an unpopular decision among many fans, but it yielded their game 1 playoff starter and opened an infield spot for Edouard Julien, who took a walk to become the only Twin to score in the first game who wasn’t named Royce Lewis. Other offseason moves, trading for centerfielder Michael A. Taylor and signing Carlos Correa and infielder Donovan Solano, gave the Twins enough depth to avoid last years brutal September collapse and come into the playoff strong. 

Those players also made fantastic defensive plays that likely saved the opening game for the Twins. Taylor robbed an extra base hit with runners on. Correa fired a laser to the plate to prevent Bo Bichette from scoring on a broken play. Solano made an excellent diving stop at first base to end the game. Together with Lopez’ pitching and Royce Lewis continuing to bring his own brand of magic, it was enough to give the Twins a victory and end the longest postseason losing streak in the history of North American professional sports.

The next day, they won again thanks to great pitching by Sonny Gray and shutdown performances by their bullpen, including the playoff debut of Brock Stewart and back-to-back outings for Louis Varland, Caleb Thielbar, Griffin Jax, and Jhoan Duran. The two runs were driven in by Carlos Correa and Willi Castro, who was an unheralded signing at the last possible moment. Strong defense, like the pickoff move by Gray and Correa to get out of one of many jams forced by the Blue Jays pesky lineup. 

It was playoff baseball, returning to Minnesota finally after all these years. Next a five-game series against the Astros. Now that we’ve broken this curse, I think they may have a shot to beat them. I just need to figure out how to get this trash can into Target Field.