Marwin Gonzalez, the Twins, and How the Astros Cheated Minnesota

I wonder how long Marwin has with the Twins. This has to affect how he is regarded by his teammates, no? While I am personally not someone who really cares about sign stealing, and feels the method is not important, if the goal/result is the same...... it is surely not the majority opinion, nor MLBs, and certainly not the players. This has to make him a tainted person in the clubhouse. I don't see how it can be good for "chemistry".

The Twins were robbed in another way, too, by paying for prediction from Gonzales that will never happen again without cheating.

One side note to the sign stealing is that the impact was more than just the times when a breaking ball was signaled. There is also value in knowing that a breaking ball is not coming (no banging). In that instance hitters could sit on a fastball with a higher degree of confidence.

As the story goes, many teams and players noticed something was up, but MLB swept it under the rug until Fiers took the nuclear option and went public. 

Even worse, when people brought it up, Hinch and others on the team repeatedly mocked them as sore losers coming up with wild excuses for why they couldn't beat the Astros.

Not too long ago:

https://news.google.com/articles/CAIiEL0Sd1yZLqjmo3watMuCeYYqFwgEKg8IACoHCAowjuuKAzCWrzwwxoEY?hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US

Here’s a “fun” question no one is asking: what if the Twins hitting a MLB record of home runs the first year Marwin is in town isn’t just a coincidence?

Watching these Astros/Twins games is infuriating. I'd urge you to click through and watch some of the games. (Links are on the site.)

Astros players cheating, scoring, then high-fiving as if they'd just done it all themselves. The Twins pitchers getting mauled and looking depressed. 

It's much, much easier to hit well when you literally know what pitch is coming. Completely unfair and dishonest, and really pulls the rug out from baseball as an enjoyable and competitive sport.

I personally can NOT WAIT for the regular season to start and have the Astros get abused by other teams fans at EVERY game. Its going to be glorious. I hope they dont even win 70 games. ( Unlikely) but man that would feel good. 

An interesting note before saying that Marwins 2017 was solely a result of cheating, we know that the trashcan usage began mid season. Below are Marwin's splits for 2017.

1st half .308/.391/.576, wRC+ 160, BABIP .338

2nd half .299/.363/.485, wRC+ 128, BABIP .348

May was by far his best month with an insane .382/.461/.737, wRC+ 217

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/sports/texas-sports-nation/astros/article/How-the-Astros-cheating-scandal-played-out-14972308.php

My guess: for the first few weeks of the 2020 season, Marwin is going to hear garbage can banging when he comes to the plate from some unhappy fans in the crowd.

No matter what the cause, Gonzalez has just this year left on his contract and his career with the Twins.  We have Lewis, Gordon, Blankenship coming up and utility is a good place for at least one of them.  

With Donaldson we now have all the positions plugged in and there is less need for Gonzalez to force his way into the lineup.

I guess I don't see the correlation? The Twins aren't cheating, and he isn't using PEDs, so what advantage would he bring?

How do we know we weren't cheating is what he is saying. The Red Sox improved on the system in 2018 by eliminating the not so subtle trashcan approach the Astros used. For all we know Gonzalez found a new way too. It is believed that using tech to steal signs was more wide spread than 2 teams. He is just raising the question that maybe Marwin brought ideas of how to do that.

Nothing suggests this actually happened but it could have happened. The Astros  got away with it and we only found out because of a rat. Pretty much every player admits that if they can steal the other teams signs they will. So i don't think it is outside the realm of possibility that the Twins did but it is unlikely. Finding out that at a minimum 2 of the last 3 world series were won by teams cheating but not learning about it until well after the fact suggests how easy it is to get away with this.

Here’s a “fun” question no one is asking: what if the Twins hitting a MLB record of home runs the first year Marwin is in town isn’t just a coincidence?

Well I wish we would've cheated better when we got our butts handed to us in the playoffs. This is silly. If you have any sort of evidence that there was cheating by the Twins last year then please share. Are you saying the Yankees were cheating as well? After all, we were trading the HR lead with them right up to the end. If all it takes is banging on a trashcan then the Astros should've been leading. The reason no one is asking that "fun" question is that until there's some sort of evidence that cheating occurred it's not based in reality and therefore a useless mind experiment.

Per NBC Sports "First, let’s be 100 percent clear about something: the Astros and the Red Sox were not — not by a long shot — the only teams stealing signs. To suggest that they were is to live in fantasyland. Tom Verducci reported the other day that the investigation of the Astros led to at least seven or eight other teams being mentioned. Last night Michael Baumann of The Ringer linked to stories over the past couple of months in which sources said they believed that the Diamondbacks, Indians, Rangers, Cubs, Blue Jays, Nationals and Brewers have engaged in sign-stealing shenanigans as well." 

 

I am not saying that the Twins cheated. Clearly, I am just some guy that doesn't have inside information. I just think it's interesting that no one has even thought that it was a possibility. 

I don't think it's fair to say that no one has thought of the possibility. I'm sure it's crossed someone's mind. The point is that two months into the biggest scandal in MLB since PEDs, with nearly 1/3 of the teams in the league to be mentioned as at least "under suspicion", there hasn't been a whiff of the Twins being involved. Until that happens, it's a thought experiment. It's a question without any basis in known facts.

The game after the Berrios game, Santana, Rogers, and Kintzler held the Astros to 2 runs. The game after that our favorite whipping boy, Kyle Gibson held his own.

Meanwhile, when the Astros's visited Target Field that year, sans garbage can, they hung 40 runs on the Twins in 3 games...including 9 base-runners and 4 runs in 5 innings to hang another loss on Berrios.

I'm all for consequences (although, 'punishment' comes from the league, not the Twins). They created an advantage by willfully, and in an organized fashion, doing something against the rules. They cheated. But there is simply not much in the data to say that it was particularly effective or sustained....despite what some will try to do by cherry-picking specific at-bats and games.

Brooks initially posted it, but by the logic used here didn't the Twins cheat the entire league last year, the AL Central in particular, by riding Pineda's hot second half to a division title? 

As far as links to MN and cheating, it's a fallacy to prove a negative. That doesn't mean the Twins are entirely innocent here. Most fan bases would be better off reserving judgement. It's entirely possible all of this is more widespread, or that using video to gain an advantage runs much deeper than what is currently being reported. We can name individual players who were caught using PEDs during the 90s/early 00s, but we also know the problem went well beyond those individuals. While MLB tries to clean up their house, they very well could be content to let Houston and Boston bear the brunt of public scrutiny. 

Look at how many bombas the twins hit at home (137) and how many they hit on the road (170) with all due respect, Your "fun" question is ultimately a "dumb" question.

Unless the method used wasn't exclusive to home games....

The possibility presented by the electronic device conspiracy would pretty much enable anyone to do this anywhere. You could have someone in the stands sending signals directly to the batter etc.

There is nothing to implicate the Twins but like PEDs it can be fair to wonder about things outside the known violations.

Watching these Astros/Twins games is infuriating. I'd urge you to click through and watch some of the games. (Links are on the site.)

 

Astros players cheating, scoring, then high-fiving as if they'd just done it all themselves. The Twins pitchers getting mauled and looking depressed. 

 

It's much, much easier to hit well when you literally know what pitch is coming. Completely unfair and dishonest, and really pulls the rug out from baseball as an enjoyable and competitive sport.

Here's the most egregious inning from the most egregious game: https://youtu.be/7FYj9_5sQk4