Stark: MLB explores delivering signs through technology

From SABR member Jayson Stark at The Athletic on March 10, 2020:

Imagine colored lights blinking on the mound. Imagine tiny earpieces, connecting pitchers with The Sign Whisperer on their bench. Imagine funky new-age wristbands, buzzing or flashing sign sequences.

Imagine all this, and you’re imagining a world that doesn’t exist in baseball today or baseball as we’ve always known it. But hardly a day goes by anymore, on this turbulent post-Astro-gate planet we now live on, where somebody doesn’t ask this pivotal 21st-century question:

Why are signs still being delivered to pitchers the same way they were a hundred years ago – with catchers wiggling their non-technologically enhanced fingers?

Why, asks Rays pitcher Tyler Glasnow, is baseball reacting to the Astros mess by talking about shutting down access to technology? Isn’t it possible that the long-term answer to combatting sign-stealing might actually be to embrace more technology? So …

Read the full article here (subscription required): https://theathletic.com/1665482/2020/03/10/lights-wrist-bands-earpieces-mlb-explores-delivering-signs-through-technology/



Originally published: March 10, 2020. Last Updated: March 10, 2020.