0:00

Thanks for listening to the Frontline AudioCast,

0:03

the enhanced audio version of our documentaries.

0:06

We also produce a podcast, The Frontline

0:08

Dispatch, available wherever you get

0:10

your podcasts. Right now, here

0:13

is the audio cast of The Astro's Edge,

0:15

Triumph and Scandal in Major League Baseball.

0:18

The correspondent and narrator is Ben Ryder.

0:32

The Astros

0:34

have done it again

0:37

in 2023. As

0:45

they clinch their seventh playoff berth in a row,

0:47

the kings of the American League West remain

0:49

the Houston Astros. Correspondent

0:51

Ben Ryder examines the meteoric

0:54

rise of the Houston Astros. We

0:56

use the term the edge, right? But there's

0:58

a next level to that. It's called the bleeding edge. If

1:00

you want to excel in the world of sports,

1:03

you have to take risks. Exclusive

1:06

inside accounts. These guys are willing

1:08

to do whatever it takes. The historic

1:10

cheating scandal. The Astros used

1:12

a camera system to steal signs. The

1:14

players certainly were aware

1:16

of it. They went in on it. The scandal

1:19

is 5% of the story.

1:21

And the lasting impact on

1:23

the game. It became a brutally efficient

1:25

business. And the Astros did better than anybody

1:27

else. That's the deal that they made. They get

1:29

to have their title questioned forever. Now

1:32

on Frontline. I'd have thrown

1:34

them all out. Lifetime Ben. Lifetime

1:36

Ben. The Astros

1:39

Edge.

1:46

Frontline

1:46

is made possible by contributions

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you.

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Thank you. And by

1:54

the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Additional

1:58

support is provided by the Abrams Foundation. Foundation,

2:01

committed to excellence in journalism. Clark

2:04

Foundation, dedicated to heightening public

2:06

awareness of critical issues. John

2:10

D. And Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, committed

2:12

to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful

2:15

world.

2:16

More at Macfound.org.

2:19

And by the Frontline Journalism Fund,

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with major support from John and Joanne Hagler,

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and additional support from Laura DeBonis, and

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the Jarena Endowment Fund.

2:43

August 4th, 2017, Minute Maid Park,

2:46

Houston, Texas. Correspondent

2:48

Ben Reiter. It was the bottom of the

2:50

fourth inning when Mike Bolsinger

2:52

came to the mound for the badly trailing

2:54

Toronto Blue Jays. He

2:56

had one job to do. Pitcher Mike Bolsinger.

2:59

Just get one out. I mean, in

3:02

theory it should be easy. There's

3:04

another

3:04

one. He's put out. This

3:08

one's going to go. Ball in.

3:11

A three-run home run.

3:15

They just kept getting hit. Now

3:18

there's both contents on the first pitch.

3:21

Bolsinger recounted the game on my podcast.

3:25

I'm trying to remember a time I was rocked

3:27

more than that, and I just don't remember a time.

3:34

It truly was the

3:37

most embarrassing moment of my career, 100%. I've

3:39

never been more embarrassed myself, ever. Bolsinger

3:43

was precariously holding on to his place

3:45

on the team. But he was far

3:47

from the only pitcher the Houston Astros had

3:49

beaten up in 2017. Bases

3:52

are loaded.

3:53

I

3:58

remember in the interview.

3:59

After the game I told them before I

4:02

was like man, it's just like it was

4:04

like they knew what I was throwing Like they were all over my

4:06

stuff There's nothing I

4:08

could do

4:10

That night was Mike Bolsinger's very last

4:12

in the major leagues the

4:14

Blue Jays cut him after the game as For

4:18

the team that ended his career a

4:20

few months later They would win the World Series

4:23

and go on to become baseball's most dominant

4:26

club of this era But

4:31

there was more to the Houston Astros success

4:34

Something that almost no one outside the team would

4:36

know about until two years later

4:38

It sounded like

4:40

this Not

4:44

the crack of the bat but the banging

4:46

sound right before it a

4:52

Sound to let Astros batters know what pitches

4:55

were coming like many of the ones

4:57

that night in August 2017 from

4:59

Mike Bolsinger It

5:01

would spark one of the most explosive scandals

5:04

in baseball history

5:05

Article

5:25

It's a scandal still reverberating

5:27

through Major League Baseball today You

5:33

Put so much work into

5:35

getting to this spot in your

5:37

career and then you kind

5:40

of find out hey This is take away by people

5:42

that

5:42

You

5:58

This is how

5:59

the Astros players were greeted at the 2023 All-Star Game,

6:04

more than three years after the cheating scandal

6:06

broke. Even though these

6:08

guys hadn't even been members of the team in 2017.

6:17

Players who were

6:19

on that 2017 team have received

6:21

similar welcomes from rival fans. Long

6:26

before the Astros had become such lightning

6:28

rods synonymous with cheating, I

6:31

had reported on the team for Sports Illustrated,

6:36

writing about their influential and hyper-competitive

6:38

approach to baseball, driven

6:41

by data and drawn from Wall Street and

6:43

Silicon Valley. As

6:46

the teams racked up four World Series appearances

6:49

in six years, I've

6:51

been trying to figure out what I and most everyone

6:53

else had missed about the Astros rise.

6:55

How their ruthless

6:57

drive for an edge led not only to such

7:00

success,

7:00

but also such scandal.

7:05

My search for answers led

7:07

me far away from America's pastime to

7:11

a soccer club in Spain owned

7:14

by an American businessman named Jeff Luno,

7:18

the person credited and blamed for

7:20

constructing the modern Astros. I

7:23

take my responsibility, but there

7:26

are aspects of this that I

7:29

haven't explained until now. And

7:31

I think it's important. I have nothing

7:33

to hide. I never have. Luno used

7:35

to be the general manager of the Astros and

7:37

bore the brunt of the scandal. He

7:41

denied knowing about the cheating, but

7:44

he was fired and run out of the league. We

7:47

spoke for four hours, the most expansive

7:49

interview he's given on camera. How

7:52

could you not know that your team was cheating

7:55

like this? The umpire who was standing

7:57

at home plate didn't know. Like it's

7:59

not. out of the realm of possibility.

8:02

In fact, it's more rational to think that I didn't

8:04

know than I did know. Because I didn't start it,

8:06

I didn't create it, I didn't approve it, I didn't budget

8:08

for it, I didn't do anything, I

8:10

didn't lift the finger to make this happen.

8:15

Major League Baseball, in its investigation

8:17

of the scandal, didn't find any

8:19

evidence Luno knew about the banging scheme.

8:23

But they said that as the GM, he should

8:25

have known that the GM was a good player.

8:27

And pointed to a very problematic, win-at-all-cost

8:31

culture he created. How

8:33

do you respond to the public perception of like a

8:35

larger cultural problem within

8:37

the Astros? I think it's

8:40

wanting to create a narrative that is

8:43

easy to explain. There

8:45

was no toxic culture at the

8:47

Astros. We had a very

8:50

productive culture that led to a lot

8:52

of success in the game of baseball. Six

8:56

American League championships in a row,

8:59

four World Series, two rings.

9:01

For winning the World Series, that's a time stamp.

9:04

I don't think that's gonna be replicated anytime

9:07

soon. Are there legacies more than that? Because

9:09

there's other parts of the story. There's always

9:11

other parts, the Tom Brady

9:14

and the Deflate Gate, and there's always

9:16

something, right? I'm

9:19

not trying to minimize it, it's there, and

9:22

we all face the music. But

9:25

the Astros are one of the best

9:27

sports teams

9:28

of the 21st century.

9:32

Luna was an unusual choice to

9:35

lead the Astros from the start. Although

9:38

he'd spent the previous eight years in the front office

9:40

of the St. Louis Cardinals, he was a creature

9:43

of corporate America, with a resume

9:45

that included a stint at McKinsey, a

9:47

powerful and controversial management

9:50

consulting firm that advises governments

9:53

and corporations how to run efficiently

9:55

and profitably. It was a big

9:57

risk to hire somebody of my profile.

10:00

play the game professionally. I have an

10:02

engineering degree. I have an MBA.

10:04

That's not the profile that people typically

10:06

look for to run the sports side of

10:08

a sports organization. I was hired

10:11

to help innovate and to help push

10:13

the boundaries and to help figure out what's

10:16

next to look at the sort of long-term health

10:19

of the organization. He

10:21

was hired in 2011 by the team's new

10:23

owner, a self-made shipping tycoon

10:26

named Jim Crane.

10:27

And finally, our

10:29

crazy money story of the day comes from Houston.

10:32

The Astros were sold to businessman Jim

10:34

Crane for 680

10:35

million dollars. Why

10:37

is it crazy? Well, the Houston Astros are in last

10:40

place. Jim Crane will sit down with

10:42

all the executives, ask them what they

10:44

think we're doing right and ask them what we think we're

10:47

doing wrong. And we'll make some very,

10:49

very quick adjustments. He was buying

10:52

a team that

10:54

wasn't going anywhere.

10:56

He bought a bloated roster with old stars.

10:59

Jesus Ortiz was on the Astros

11:02

beat for the Houston Chronicle at the time.

11:04

That wasn't very popular either. No, no.

11:06

Like it was an unpopular team. It was a team

11:09

that's mediocre. It was a mediocre

11:11

team with a very

11:14

dissatisfied fan base.

11:19

Dissatisfied because despite a

11:21

few periods of promise through the years,

11:24

the Astros had never won a single championship.

11:29

Even lifelong Astros fans like Tony

11:31

Adams found it hard to root for the team

11:34

by the time that Crane bought it. I

11:36

admire the fans that went to

11:38

those games. I follow them. I

11:40

watch some games, but I will admit

11:42

that I didn't follow them as closely

11:44

as when they were winning.

11:46

I would end up talking to Adams a lot during

11:49

my reporting.

11:59

become such a viral thing.

12:02

It was almost like the national

12:05

pastime became maybe the Astros.

12:09

When Jim Crane offered Jeff Luna the

12:11

job in 2011, the Astros

12:13

were not only the worst major league team. They

12:16

were widely viewed as having one of the worst farm

12:18

systems as well. Crane

12:21

wanted Luna to turn that around while

12:23

operating with maximum financial efficiency,

12:26

which meant an end to pouring money into a

12:28

team that wasn't ready to win anyway.

12:31

Jeff Luna, you know, when you take a GM job,

12:34

there's certain sort of conditions. Usually

12:36

you have to keep the coach. These are the people

12:38

you're going to be working with, etc. So I asked

12:40

him what are the constraints,

12:43

what are the conditions of the job, and

12:45

he had a notebook in front of him and I thought

12:47

he was going to hand me a piece of paper with

12:49

a bunch

12:50

of new things like

12:52

sort of their requirements in this job. It

12:54

was a blank piece of paper and he handed it to me across

12:56

the table. So

12:59

that was a message that, look, do

13:02

it the way you think it needs to be done because you

13:05

know we obviously need help. It's like sliding a blank

13:07

piece of paper across the desk too. Basically,

13:10

yeah. I believe

13:13

within the first 12 to 24 months, he fired

13:16

everybody from the business side. We

13:18

ended up turning over probably about half

13:21

of the baseball operation side, so a little less than

13:23

he did over that same period of time.

13:26

Turning over firing. Yeah, I mean

13:28

not renewing or bringing new people

13:30

in, etc. When you're taking an organization

13:32

and completely changing the culture and changing

13:35

the dynamic, that's part of what has

13:37

to happen. Journalist Jesus Ortiz. I'd

13:39

been at the Chronicle for 13 years and

13:42

covered multiple general managers, but

13:44

Jeff Luna was the first time I heard somebody describe

13:47

a baseball player as an asset

13:49

instead of a human. And it took

13:51

me back. I'm like, wow. But

13:53

with Jeff Luna, they were assets

13:56

because a lot of very good, decent

13:58

baseball people were let go by...

14:01

in a way that a lot

14:03

of old Astros did not appreciate. People

14:07

who devoted their lives to the Astros. Jeff

14:10

Luna was quick to say, see ya.

14:12

From the Edge Podcast. Jeff

14:14

was very upfront with saying it's

14:17

a new wave of baseball people and

14:20

he was out to change

14:22

the way the game was played and change the

14:24

way the game was run.

14:27

Dave Tremblay was an Astros coach

14:29

for two years before Luna fired him. Tremblay

14:32

told me that in nearly 30 years in professional baseball he'd

14:36

never encountered anyone like Luna.

14:38

Dave Tremblay looked like a Wall Street

14:40

guy.

14:41

He looked like a businessman

14:44

dressed very nicely. He was very prim

14:46

and proper, very guarded with what he said.

14:49

He just gave you the impression that he wasn't going to let him,

14:52

wasn't going to let anybody get too close to him. The

14:57

culture was different.

14:59

The culture was very distant. I

15:03

equated it to almost like Secret Service

15:05

or FBI.

15:08

Luna began staffing up his operation

15:11

with people who, like him, didn't

15:13

have conventional baseball backgrounds. He

15:17

brought in a crew of non-traditional employees.

15:21

He established a nerd cave, which

15:23

was kind of a data center that was powering

15:25

the decision-making. And that

15:28

was led by a guy named Sigmeidel, who

15:31

Luna brought with him from the Cardinals. In

15:33

his past life, he'd been a bio-mathematician

15:36

for NASA. Luna called him

15:38

Director of Decision Sciences.

15:41

He brought in all sorts of other unusual people, too.

15:45

A mechanical engineer, a computer

15:47

programmer, a Wall Street valuations

15:49

expert. These were people who hadn't

15:52

played the game. Luna didn't have

15:54

anything against traditional baseball people, as

15:57

long as they shared a certain mindset. Jeff

16:00

knew that if you were going to get

16:02

something done, you had to hire

16:04

people that were outside

16:07

the box thinkers. One of those

16:09

outside the box thinkers was pitching coach

16:11

Doug White, who was brought in to help

16:13

reinvent the Astros farm system and

16:15

eventually became their big league bullpen coach

16:18

in 2018.

16:19

He just wanted people who

16:22

were willing to educate themselves for

16:24

the goal of reaching a championship.

16:27

People like you. Yeah, for sure. So

16:30

you feel like you're kind of inventing a new

16:32

way of

16:34

building teams and building players.

16:36

Absolutely. Every day was that.

16:38

Every day. Because we had to literally

16:41

create a system, a process

16:43

of development.

16:45

And we had to have the feedback for it. Because

16:47

it's like, Jeff's the kind of guy, he

16:49

doesn't want you just doing something. You don't just throw

16:51

shit at a board, right? It's like, I'm

16:54

doing this for this reason.

16:56

Is it working?

16:58

Yes, no. If it works, keep

17:00

it. If it doesn't, drop it. Try

17:02

something else. Early results

17:04

were not promising.

17:06

Pops it, but it lands. They

17:08

run into each other.

17:12

Jeff Luna. We're picked to be

17:15

lost by every paper and magazine

17:17

out there. So you've got to be optimistic

17:20

this time of year. And I think we've done some things to

17:22

make the team better.

17:24

The Astros kept losing, completing

17:26

a three-year run in which they lost more

17:28

games than any team in half a century.

17:32

Crane stuck to the strategy of not trying

17:34

to throw money at the problem. Their

17:37

payroll plummeted to the lowest in the majors.

17:40

The first thing they do is basically

17:42

cut salary to the bone. Maury

17:45

Brown writes about the business of baseball

17:47

for Forbes. They were going to do everything

17:50

through smarts, through draft, scouting. Brown

17:56

and others in the industry saw something cynical

17:58

in the strategy. tanking the

18:00

way the Astros did meant that they would earn

18:03

higher draft picks. They have

18:05

three consecutive years where they lose over honored games.

18:08

That allowed them to procure all the draft picks

18:10

that they had. I remember at the time

18:12

you would talk to people and they were furious

18:14

about this idea that you would purposely

18:17

lose, goes against everything

18:19

that you're supposed to do in sports.

18:22

In my conversations with Luno, he pushed

18:25

back on the idea that the Astros were intentionally

18:28

losing. We're

18:30

never gonna not try and win every

18:32

game, but we're not gonna go all

18:34

in on 2012 to turn a

18:37

hundred loss team into a ninety loss team.

18:40

That's not a sound return on

18:42

investment. In the interim, you're

18:44

being made fun of on Jeopardy. The

18:46

large valve used to control world

18:49

war fluids on oil rigs.

18:50

Is this preventer? The Astros

18:53

could have used one. What's a blowout preventer?

18:55

You are right. You know, no one's watching the games on

18:57

TV. We had a zero rating one night, I think.

19:00

Zero point zero Nielsen rating, right? Embarrassing

19:04

plays, right? Like the butt

19:06

slide, you remember? It

19:08

looked like the bad news bears out there at some night.

19:14

They were still losing when I first went down to Houston

19:17

for Sports Illustrated. The

19:23

plan was to write about whether there was any hope

19:25

at all for a team that had become the lapping

19:27

stock of the sports world. But

19:30

what started as an Inside the Magazine

19:32

feature turned into something very different.

19:38

In June 2014, Sports Illustrated

19:41

put my story on the cover with

19:43

a bold prediction that the Astros would win

19:46

the World Series exactly three

19:48

years later. Jesus Ortiz. When

19:50

that story came out, I remember thinking,

19:53

no way.

19:54

Like, I think they're on the right track. But

19:57

are they really going to win the World Series in 2000?

19:59

The

20:02

story, and especially the cover,

20:05

was widely questioned. But

20:09

after I had embedded with the Astros, Luna's

20:12

approach seemed to me to be the next evolution

20:14

of a winning strategy that had begun to take

20:17

hold a decade earlier. It

20:19

was known as Moneyball after

20:21

the title of a book by Michael Lewis and

20:24

later a movie about how the Oakland

20:26

A's exploited data and analytics

20:28

to get wins from overlooked and undervalued

20:31

players. From the film Moneyball. This

20:33

is the new direction of the Oakland A's. We

20:35

are card counters at the blackjack

20:37

table. We're going to turn the odds on the casino.

20:41

Baseball had been more of an art than a science and

20:44

what Moneyball did was it emphasized the

20:46

science of the game,

20:47

even the mathematics of the game. And it really

20:50

changed the way I think teams were

20:52

built.

20:53

I worked with Tom Verducci at Sports

20:55

Illustrated for 15 years. He's

20:58

been covering baseball for more than four decades

21:00

and has written a lot about the changes to the

21:02

game. It became much more scientific

21:05

where people really wanted to believe

21:08

in the numbers. We can measure things

21:10

now to say this guy is going to be good. We

21:13

know what kind of pitches can work based on

21:15

how fast they're spinning. All this math

21:17

came into the game and the owners were like,

21:19

let's get fully behind it. So

21:21

there was some impression around

21:24

the league that the Astros were taking this to an

21:26

extreme. There was a lot of pushback

21:29

against what they were doing. Listen, there

21:31

was a lot of pushback because this threatened

21:34

the long standing system in baseball.

21:38

I mean, people were worried about their jobs because now they

21:40

see if you're an old time scout

21:43

or you've been in baseball your whole

21:45

life and your wisdom is being valued based

21:47

on your experiences. Now it's being threatened

21:49

by kids who are just out of Ivy League

21:52

who have these algorithms that they're

21:54

running. What

21:57

Luna was doing was like money ball on

21:59

steroids. steroids. The Astros approach

22:02

went far beyond statistics. They

22:04

were systematically combining both human

22:06

expertise and technology to

22:09

find a winning edge.

22:11

A prime example was how they utilized

22:13

something known as the shift, repositioning

22:16

their fielders often in extreme ways

22:19

based on data that showed where opposing

22:21

batters were most likely to hit the ball. A

22:23

lot of guys punched over there in right

22:25

field. Hey, so Sartis. Trump

22:27

did it. But

22:29

the Astros were extreme in

22:31

their use of numbers and their use of positioning.

22:38

Luna's Astros were applying data to

22:40

every single thing they did. It

22:42

heavily informed how they maximized their draft

22:44

money, like

22:46

their surprise move drafting Carlos

22:48

Correa number one and shaving millions

22:51

off his signing bonus to also lure pitcher

22:53

Lance McCullers. Forbes reporter,

22:55

Maury Brown. If you look at how

22:57

you scouted a player, you

22:59

can use the numbers to really ferret out

23:02

a lot more than what subjectively I see

23:04

with my eyes. And that idea

23:06

that the numbers can be there scouting still matters. But

23:08

it was that idea that we could use numbers to

23:10

really quantify more that lowers

23:13

your risk. There's going to be some winners.

23:15

There's going to be some losers. And what you're trying to do is minimize

23:17

the number of losers that you have. So it's essentially

23:20

a

23:21

way of maximizing efficiency

23:23

of your operations. Yeah.

23:26

The Astros use of data also had the potential

23:28

to help transform players like

23:31

drastically lowering a hitter's strikeout

23:33

rate as it did with outfielder George Springer.

23:37

And it could help change a solid player into

23:39

a potential Hall of Famer. When

23:43

Jeff Luna came to Houston, one of

23:46

the players he inherited was a slap

23:48

hitting middle infielder.

23:50

The

23:52

player had trouble getting signed at all out of

23:54

Venezuela in large part

23:56

because he was five feet, five inches tall.

24:01

Most scouts, using their intuition, wrote

24:03

him off.

24:05

The guy's name was Jose Altuve.

24:10

Despite his height, the Astra's data analysts

24:12

saw that he could get his bat on everything. He

24:15

even pitches out of the strike zone.

24:19

But they wondered,

24:20

what if he didn't try to do that?

24:22

What if he became more selective, swinging

24:25

only at pitches over the heart of the plate? Pitches

24:27

the data revealed he could not only just hit,

24:30

but hit very, very hard. And

24:35

it wasn't too long before this 5'5

24:37

slap hitter transformed himself

24:40

into one of the best hitters in the game, in

24:42

the face of the Astros. Tom Verducci,

24:45

Sports Illustrated. There was a lot of

24:47

time and effort devoted to

24:49

hacking the percentages of the game from

24:52

people who did not grow up within the ethos

24:54

of baseball. But in the ethos

24:56

of the business world. Why do you think you've upset the

24:59

so-called traditionalists so much,

25:01

starting around this time? Jeff Luna. Change

25:05

is, by definition, hard for people

25:07

to accept, because

25:09

they get used to things a certain way. And

25:12

especially when change is stimulated by

25:14

an outsider

25:15

who may

25:17

not have the respect for the traditions

25:20

and the history and all of

25:22

the things that people who grew up and spent their entire lives in the game. Half.

25:26

And one of those criticisms were that

25:28

you and the Astros were turning players

25:30

into numbers, into widgets.

25:33

How do you take that criticism? It

25:35

didn't bother me that much, to be honest with

25:37

you. I mean, this idea that

25:40

if you're utilizing technology and analytics

25:43

by definition, you are a cold,

25:46

unfeeling person or management. It's

25:48

not true. When

25:50

I ask you to define something for me, it's a term

25:52

I've heard you use in the past. We

25:54

use the term the edge, right? But

25:57

there's a next level to that.

25:59

When you do sit a lot in my career, it's called the bleeding edge. What

26:02

it means is you test the boundaries

26:05

of what has been done. If

26:08

you want to excel in the world

26:10

of sports, you have to take risks

26:12

and you have to be willing to get

26:15

the cuts and bruises that come along with that.

26:18

I was like, wow, these guys are willing to do whatever it takes

26:20

to find an advantage. And

26:22

then I knew the Ash is

26:24

the team I want to work for.

26:27

Antonio Padilla became a manager

26:29

in the Astros video room. This

26:32

is the first time he's spoken publicly about

26:35

his experience with the Astros. Even

26:38

though you'd previously worked for three other teams,

26:40

this was like a whole new world. Yeah, absolutely.

26:42

There were leaps and bounds over the other teams.

26:47

Padilla and his colleagues worked on innovative

26:49

uses of data and video during

26:52

training and in real time during games.

26:55

They leaned into radar systems like

26:57

Trackman.

26:58

We had live Trackman data

27:01

where we'd be able to track pitches.

27:04

So it's like, hey, so and so Slider's not

27:06

looking that well on Trackman tonight. We

27:08

need to tell one of the coaches so we

27:10

could call down and- So it's like using real time

27:12

data to make coaching decisions,

27:15

make strategy decisions. Yeah, I mean, ultimately it's

27:17

up to the coaches, if they want to relay

27:19

that information.

27:20

We don't want to tell this guy Slider's not working

27:22

tonight because I could really look into their head.

27:26

This kind of technology was helping coaches

27:28

and players reach new levels of performance.

27:32

We had heterotronic cameras. We were the first team

27:34

to actually implement them into our video

27:36

systems. These are extremely high

27:38

frame rate cameras that can kind of break

27:40

down what a player's doing to a level

27:42

that no one's really seen before, right? Exactly.

27:45

Yeah, and they're very expensive cameras. You know,

27:47

a lot of teams probably knew about it and didn't want

27:49

to invest in it. But the Astros just

27:51

said, hey, like this is a game changer. We're

27:54

gonna put, you know, a lot of money behind us.

27:56

Be able to capture live footage for that is,

27:59

I mean, so

27:59

valuable. And VR will come at

28:02

this score as the Astros lead in the bottom

28:04

of this hour. How things have changed in just

28:07

one season. It's the first place Astros. I still

28:09

can't wait to say first place Astros. Let

28:12

the celebrations start. Astros are

28:14

the postseason for the first time

28:16

since 2005. The

28:18

Astros weren't the laughing stock of the league

28:20

anymore. And the Astros

28:23

have advanced to the division series against Kansas

28:25

City. They battled

28:28

through every option of it and made

28:30

it to the

28:32

A-B-I-E.

28:42

They're not done yet. Entering 2017, they were

28:44

actually contenders. Tom Verducci. hoping

28:47

they were that kind of team. But

28:50

the team still had a few holes.

28:55

Their extreme cost cutting had rid them of

28:57

most of their expensive veterans. And

28:59

they had developed a new generation of up and

29:01

coming stars. But that

29:03

meant they were very youth. Luno

29:06

knew their roster needed an experienced

29:08

leader to tie everything together.

29:12

They eventually landed on Carlos

29:14

Beltran.

29:20

Beltran wouldn't speak to me for this film. But

29:23

I interviewed him in early 2018 as

29:25

I was reporting my book Astro Ball.

29:49

Beltran was 40 years old in 2017. During

29:52

the end of what looked to be a Hall of Fame career.

29:56

He had a good season the year before, but based

29:59

on analytics alone. it was hard to make

30:01

a convincing case for signing the aging

30:03

slugger. But Luna

30:05

agreed to bet big on him, the $16

30:08

million contract, because of

30:10

the potential effect he could have on the clubhouse.

30:13

We were missing that kind of person

30:15

that, oh, that's how you do it if you want

30:17

to be a Hall of Famer. You have

30:19

to come in early, you have to stay late, you have to

30:21

watch video, you have to study the game, that's how

30:24

you do it. And Carlos did that

30:26

during spring training. The video room was constantly

30:28

full with young players trying to learn

30:31

from him or watch their own video and all

30:33

that. So it was, it had the desired

30:35

impact for sure. Former video manager

30:37

Antonio Padilla. Once we got Carlos

30:39

Beltran, he was a big part of

30:42

bringing the team to like the next level. Everybody

30:45

kind of felt like he was immediately like

30:47

one of the leaders of the team. What kind of stuff would

30:49

he do? What did he bring specifically?

30:52

He was just like a walking encyclopedia,

30:54

you know, he's been around so long, he'd been a

30:56

superstar for so long. And you could

30:58

just tell immediately, he just has this

31:00

like aura about him that, especially

31:02

with the land players, that was

31:04

kind of like their Michael Jordan, you know, the guy

31:06

that they looked up to for a long time. With

31:09

Beltran and a few other key acquisitions,

31:12

the 2017 Astros became one of the best teams

31:14

in baseball. Almost unrecognizable

31:17

from the last place team, Jeff Luno had inherited.

31:20

The

31:28

city is now facing an unprecedented

31:30

flood event. Thousands of

31:31

people are...

31:33

Not even the devastating Category 4

31:35

hurricane Harvey could break their momentum.

31:39

In fact, it gave them a rallying cry.

31:42

And throughout that fairytale season, no

31:45

one seemed to notice the unusual banging

31:47

sound that would sometimes happen at home games,

31:50

right before the opposing pitcher threw the ball.

31:56

Some 28 times the night they beat Baltimore.

32:01

41 times in a close win over the Yankees. 54 times

32:07

that night Mike Bolsinger and the Blue Jays

32:09

went down in the blowout that ended his career.

32:16

Then in late September, the White Sox

32:18

Danny Farquhar stepped up to the mound.

32:21

It was 10 p.m. on a weeknight and the stadium

32:23

was pretty empty and quiet. Right

32:26

away, he heard something. Every

32:29

time I would throw a change-up, the

32:32

catcher would put down a four. I

32:34

would come set and I would hear a bang.

32:36

And

32:41

then finally on the third change-up that I threw

32:43

him in my head, I said, if I

32:46

come set and I hear a bang,

32:49

I'm calling the catcher out when we're changing our

32:51

signs. Sure enough, I come

32:53

set, I hear the bang.

32:55

I

32:58

remember being really upset, staring into

33:00

their dugout. I was

33:03

absolutely sure something

33:05

was happening.

33:06

Farquhar didn't publicly complain at the

33:08

time. And the Astros actually lost that

33:11

night.

33:12

But it didn't matter. They'd already made

33:14

the playoffs. And a month later

33:16

would face the Dodgers in the World Series.

33:21

It came run in the 2017 World Series. What

33:25

was the feel heading into the 2017

33:27

World Series? I

33:30

think people thought this was going to be a pretty good series. Stephanie

33:33

Afstein was there with me, covering

33:35

the fall classic for Sports Illustrated. It

33:38

was the loudest ballpark I think I had ever been in.

33:40

Back at the water! The mother-in-law!

33:45

And the three-run lead is back! It

33:47

wasn't until game seven that it felt like one

33:51

team got out ahead in a way that the other team

33:53

couldn't match. Here's

33:56

a ground ball right side, could do it! A

34:00

world champion, the

34:02

first time in French history. Astros

34:05

fan Tony Adams. I jumped up and

34:07

I chaired.

34:08

And it was a relief. And after

34:11

all the years, obviously, of being a fan to

34:13

finally get there. The sport's

34:15

illustrated cover in 2014 in

34:18

the article by Ben Reeder. They

34:20

nailed it. It didn't quite seem

34:23

real at that moment.

34:24

And actually for several weeks after, I

34:27

didn't

34:28

quite think in. You know, that was next to my brother

34:30

and a thing. It went right. You know, I didn't

34:33

dream that. It's like, oh no, they want.

34:35

Reporter Jesus Ortiz. It gave

34:37

people a chance to celebrate

34:39

at a time when there was little to celebrate in Houston.

34:42

And all these flooded people, they

34:45

had something to rejoice for a little bit.

34:47

Any of you that's been needed there, after

34:50

Hurricane Harvey will overcome

34:53

any adversity, no matter what. But the Astros

34:55

picked us up. They gave us some hope. They

34:57

gave us something to cheer for. And now

34:59

we're champions of the world. The Astros'

35:02

Carlos Deltar. It

35:04

took me about 20 years to get to this position. But

35:06

you know what? I'm happy. I'm blessed.

35:08

And I want to give the glory and the

35:10

honor to God for this moment. Jack Nunez. As

35:12

the architect, I got to tell you, there's a lot of people

35:14

doing the drawings behind me.

35:16

This is Houston's first championship

35:18

in baseball. And I couldn't be prouder to

35:21

be a general manager of the team that delivers

35:23

it to them. That

35:25

night on the field, Jim Crane

35:27

told me, even when the heat was on them,

35:30

he'd always encouraged Luno to stick

35:32

to their plan. Our

35:35

once outlandish SI cover prediction

35:37

had actually, unbelievably, come

35:39

true. Talk show host Dan Patrick. Three

35:42

years and four months ago, the cover of Sports

35:44

Illustrated was the Astros were

35:46

going to win the World Series in 2017. And

35:49

Ben joins us. Congrats on the prediction.

35:52

How was your night, Ben? It was short, Dan.

35:54

I think I still smell like champagne

35:57

and cigar smoke from the Astros

35:59

clubhouse. But, you know, when we made that

36:01

prediction three and a half years ago, we

36:03

thought I had a chance, but to see it actually

36:05

come through, pretty amazing.

36:10

I was always mindful of the more ruthless

36:12

aspects of what Luna was doing with the Astros.

36:16

But it wasn't until the next year, when

36:18

I was on my book tour, that they did something

36:20

that really made me question their tactics,

36:22

and especially their ethics. It

36:26

started with a mid-season trade.

36:29

We have breaking news to bring you from the Rogers Center tonight. Closing

36:31

picture, Roberto Asuna has been traded to the

36:34

Houston Astros. The 24-year-old

36:36

is awaiting trial for domestic assault. He's

36:38

also serving a 75-game suspension

36:40

in accordance with MLB policy.

36:45

The fact that Jeff Luno and Jim Crane,

36:48

especially at the height of the Me Too movement,

36:51

would trade for an accused domestic abuser

36:53

made me wonder if I'd missed something. If

36:56

the Astros were willing to go to a darker

36:58

place than I imagined in their pursuit

37:00

of an edge. ESPN's Bob Lee

37:02

interviews Ben Reiner. The Osuna case,

37:05

which passed this model front office

37:08

and model organization in a different light, what do you make of that? Well,

37:11

pick your word, Bob. Problematic, questionable,

37:14

morally troubling. I

37:17

found it indefensible at the time. And

37:19

years later, I still have trouble fully

37:21

understanding it.

37:23

Roberto Asuna is suspended for 75

37:26

games for domestic assault.

37:28

Walk me through the decision to add him

37:31

to the Astros roster. Roberto

37:33

Asuna's player that we had been

37:35

watching for a long time, since he was

37:37

originally signed. Jeff Luno. I

37:40

knew the quality of him as a

37:42

reliever for sure. We

37:44

didn't have a closer, and we needed to address

37:46

that. We had asked for him the last year during

37:49

the offseason and last year at the trade deadline, and

37:52

the cost was way too high. Obviously, the cost had

37:54

come down because he was suspended and

37:56

they wanted to move him. So

37:59

I talked to...

37:59

Jim about it and we discussed it. And

38:02

he made a decision to go ahead and

38:04

execute the trade. Reporter Stephanie Epstein.

38:07

They saw Asuna as a distressed

38:09

asset. The Blue Jays were kind of looking to

38:11

unload him, and they were willing to unload him for

38:13

a lot less than it would have

38:15

taken to get a closer of his caliber.

38:18

And so where you might see another

38:20

team say, this doesn't really feel worth

38:22

it, the Astros did the

38:24

math and were like, this is great. We

38:27

get a closer for less than we would have gotten him.

38:30

I feel like the Astros at this point had been through

38:32

so much bad PR and

38:34

come out the other side

38:36

as literal champions

38:38

that I wonder if they're like, well, we can take

38:41

on more of this and we'll be fine. Memories are

38:43

short, winning lasts forever.

38:45

I think if you think you're right, you're willing

38:47

to endure a lot to get there. And I think

38:50

that sometimes

38:52

that is very beneficial to your

38:54

career because it helps

38:56

you ignore the haters,

38:59

but sometimes the haters have a point and

39:01

you miss it. Asuna

39:04

became a key part of the team's success.

39:07

His case never went to trial and the

39:09

PR debacle was largely forgotten.

39:13

But in 2019, as the team celebrated

39:15

their second World Series appearance in three

39:18

years, Luna's top assistant, a

39:20

former Wall Street valuation expert named

39:22

Brandon Taubman brought it all

39:24

back. Former video manager Antonio

39:27

Padilla. Yeah, that was definitely

39:29

a night I won't forget.

39:32

I'm

39:34

standing

39:34

like right next to him in the clubhouse celebrating

39:37

and, you know, there's obviously like champagne

39:39

flowing. Stephanie

39:42

Epstein was there that night too. I

39:45

was in the clubhouse with two other female

39:47

reporters and there was an Astros

39:50

executive whose name I did not at the time know who

39:53

started yelling toward us that he was so glad

39:55

they'd gotten those Luna. I'm so glad

39:58

that we got Osuna.

39:59

I'm so f***ing glad we got Osuna.

40:02

And I remember just being like so shocked by that.

40:05

And eventually I came to understand

40:07

that it was Astra's assistant general manager, Brenna

40:10

Taubman, who was engaged

40:12

in that outburst in part because he had been drinking, but in part

40:14

because the team felt that

40:17

they got too much grief from

40:20

writers, specifically female writers, about

40:24

having traded for a player who had

40:26

been suspended for domestic violence. And

40:28

so he was sort of making a point that,

40:31

yet again, the Astra's were right. Taubman's

40:35

ire that night was specifically focused

40:37

on one of the reporters standing with Epstein,

40:39

who had been particularly critical and persistent.

40:43

I went to Astra's PR

40:45

to request an interview with Brenna

40:47

Taubman. They said they were not going to make him available

40:49

and they had no comment.

40:53

Two days later, Epstein published a story

40:55

on SI.com about the incident. And

40:59

the Astra's PR office went

41:01

on the attack.

41:02

The Astra's responded, calling her article

41:05

misleading and completely irresponsible.

41:07

A big part of this

41:08

seems to be that the Astra's suggest that

41:10

this happened. And said that it was a fabricated

41:12

story.

41:14

I think the quote was like, fabricating a story

41:17

where there was none. Where none exists. Where none

41:19

exists. The

41:21

Astra's claimed that Taubman had just

41:23

been trying to support Asuna after

41:26

a bad outing on the mound

41:27

that night.

41:29

Fortunately for me,

41:32

unfortunately for them, there was a room full of reporters.

41:34

So pretty quickly, other reporters corroborated

41:38

what I had seen.

41:39

NPR's David Folkenflik reported

41:42

details of the exchange. I want to

41:44

be clear, it was intense. It was pointed. It

41:46

was at this cluster of three women.

41:50

By the end of the week, the incident was

41:52

threatening to overshadow the World Series.

41:56

Jim Crane issued a personal apology

41:58

to Epstein.

42:01

And Taubman was fired. Then

42:03

GM Jeff Luno at a press conference.

42:06

First of all, apologies to Stephanie

42:08

and to the rest of the people

42:10

that were involved in the incident. We

42:14

have separated

42:16

with Brandon Taubman. He's no longer an employee

42:18

of the Astros. His behavior

42:20

was inappropriate and not representative

42:23

of who the Astros are and our

42:26

culture and what we stand for.

42:28

Taubman now works in commercial real

42:30

estate. He wouldn't go on camera

42:33

or comment on anything other than to offer

42:35

that he still deeply regrets his behavior

42:38

and the pain it caused to many,

42:40

including putting the Astros

42:43

in a difficult position. He

42:45

said over the past four years he's tried

42:47

to atone for his mistakes and has volunteered

42:50

as a data scientist for a domestic

42:52

violence organization.

42:55

Taubman had helped lead the charge on many

42:57

of the Astros' cutting edge initiatives like Trackman

43:00

and Edgertronic cameras. But

43:02

he was also seen as overly assertive

43:04

and confrontational.

43:06

Somebody made a mistake and they

43:09

have paid for that and we have paid

43:11

for that and obviously everybody if we

43:13

could do it all over again, I would

43:16

have prevented that from happening but I didn't know it was happening.

43:19

Wait a second. We were talking about Taubman.

43:21

He made a mistake but it wasn't just limited

43:24

to that moment. This was like the

43:26

roots of this went back years

43:29

and involved a lot of different aspects

43:31

of the organization. But Brandon

43:33

didn't talk a lot about Osuna

43:36

and I was surprised that

43:39

this even came up and I will tell you that the

43:41

Astros did not do things correctly in handling

43:43

that situation and I think paid the price

43:46

for it. You wouldn't kind of draw

43:48

a connection between a certain aspect

43:50

of the organization's culture and that reaction

43:53

either? Well, that

43:55

reaction was

43:58

protecting the...

43:59

the Astros, but it was a completely

44:02

illogical, ridiculous reaction

44:04

to have.

44:05

And it was wrong, completely

44:08

wrong. And it was above

44:10

my pay grade. I had nothing to do

44:12

with that decision. And I had to be the one to execute

44:15

it, which made me look like the person that was

44:17

somehow involved even though I wasn't. Well, you

44:19

were in the meetings though when some of these decisions were

44:21

being made, right? There was a series

44:23

of emails going back and forth.

44:25

I was getting ready for the World Series. I

44:28

did not have an active role in those conversations

44:30

at all.

44:33

A couple of weeks later, after

44:35

a devastating game seven loss in the

44:37

World Series, things

44:39

went from bad to worse.

44:42

The article

44:43

in the athletic that has everybody talking

44:46

quotes the former Astros pitcher Mike Fiers

44:48

directly claiming that in 2017, the

44:51

World Series run, the Astros used a

44:53

camera system to steal signs and

44:55

alert their hitters in real time.

44:58

Excuse me. You know what that means? That means

45:00

the manager was aware of it. That means the bench

45:02

coach was probably aware of it. The players

45:05

certainly were aware of it. They

45:07

were in one. Very

45:08

sad implication that somehow

45:10

the Astros 2017 World

45:13

Series title is tainted. Should the Astros

45:15

be stripped of their title? Yes, they

45:17

should. The title is illegitimate.

45:22

In a stunning admission, former Astros

45:25

pitcher Mike Fiers and three other members

45:27

of the organization told reporters,

45:29

Evandrelik and Ken Rosenthal about the

45:32

sign stealing scheme the team had been using

45:34

two years earlier. They used a

45:36

camera in center field. They would

45:38

then transfer the sign

45:40

from the catcher, then use an audible

45:42

sound in the dugout. A

45:44

crash skin to alert the

45:47

hitter. If there's no bang, fastball.

45:50

If there's a bang, some salt is coming.

45:54

It was a revelation that shocked me and

45:56

it upended much of the mythology around

45:58

the Astros. which I had helped

46:00

create. The Astros are now public

46:03

enemy number one in baseball. This is

46:05

just 4-2 calculated, 4-2 cutting,

46:07

4-2 deceitful. This is

46:10

ridiculous, man.

46:12

The Astros had gone over the edge with one

46:14

of baseball's most storied traditions, decoding

46:17

the signs opposing pitchers and catchers

46:19

used to communicate. Tom Verducci is

46:21

quite so illustrated. Signs are super

46:23

important in baseball because

46:26

the pitcher can throw a variety of different

46:28

pitchers.

46:29

But the catcher needs to know what's coming.

46:32

Otherwise, you're not going to be able to catch the ball, literally.

46:35

Former pitching coach Doug White. It's basically

46:37

a way for a catcher to relay to

46:39

the pitcher a suggestion of

46:41

what pitch to throw to this

46:44

matter. Some of these sign systems,

46:46

I was like, wow, I have to be a mathematician

46:48

to figure this out. How do you do this in the middle of a

46:50

game with 50,000 fans and a

46:52

dude on second base? Some

46:56

teams and players

46:58

are better at reading sequences

47:01

and signals than others. And

47:03

some teams make it a priority and some teams

47:05

don't.

47:06

It's like poker, right? So can

47:09

I get a tell off of you or not? The teams are looking

47:11

for all this stuff. All that stuff. Yeah.

47:14

And that's absolutely 1 million percent

47:16

fair game.

47:18

What's not fair game is using technology

47:21

to help you figure out the opposing team's signs

47:23

in real time.

47:27

In the years leading up to 2017,

47:30

the league had begun allowing teams to use

47:32

cameras and monitor live video

47:34

feeds during games. But

47:37

only for the purpose of analyzing players'

47:39

performance and helping decide whether

47:41

to challenge umpire's calls.

47:42

Expanded video

47:45

replay

47:45

is coming to Major League Baseball. There

47:47

will be 12 cameras at every stadium.

47:49

Most umpire calls subject

47:51

to video review.

47:53

Tom Verducci. Having video

47:56

monitors close to the dugout proximity

47:58

was the rest of the game. for disaster.

48:01

I mean it's like if you have a child

48:03

and he's coming home from school and

48:06

you tell him you know I'm gonna leave the cookies out

48:08

you can have one cookie when you come home

48:11

come on he's gonna

48:13

have more than one. The temptation

48:16

was hard to resist.

48:19

In 2017 MLB investigated

48:21

both the Red Sox and Yankees over

48:23

sign stealing allegations.

48:25

The

48:27

team is accused tonight of cheating in the duct. MLB

48:33

commissioner Rob Manfred. I take

48:35

any issue that affects the play

48:37

of the game on the field extremely

48:40

seriously.

48:40

Between every

48:42

pitch of every game it seems but

48:44

rather

48:48

they waited for someone to be on second base and

48:50

they did that because it's very easy when you're

48:53

on second to then relay the signal to

48:55

the batter. It

48:58

would become known as the base runner system

49:01

and it would eventually come out that the Astros

49:03

had a version of that too. Antonio

49:06

Padilla admits he and his fellow video

49:08

room staffers helped run the system

49:10

to great effect. So

49:12

you could call down and say like hey the

49:15

catchers are using outs plus

49:17

one for their for their sign sequence so

49:19

relay that to the runner on second.

49:21

I think the code breaking could

49:24

definitely give an advantage

49:25

you know if you're able to tell

49:28

the runner on second what signs they're potentially

49:31

using. I think that could definitely help.

49:37

Inside the Astros clubhouse Padilla

49:39

says sign stealing became a huge focus.

49:43

It got to the point where when we were playing

49:45

certain teams that we thought were doing other

49:47

things that we would use multiple signs

49:50

even with like no runners on. Sounds like

49:52

an extremely paranoid environment.

49:54

Yeah and that's like the perfect way to describe

49:56

it. It was kind of like this paranoia where

49:59

we just like had to do everything to

50:01

protect ourselves and try to get

50:03

an advantage to

50:07

try to compete. In

50:09

September 2017, the commissioner

50:11

of baseball, Rob Manfred,

50:14

tried to contain the burgeoning sign stealing

50:16

problem without causing more of an issue.

50:20

He imposed symbolic fines on the Red Sox

50:22

and Yankees and privately warned

50:24

club personnel not to talk about the topic

50:27

to the media.

50:29

He also sent a memo on illegal

50:31

sign stealing to all 30 teams and

50:33

put managers and GMs on notice

50:36

they'd be held accountable in the future.

50:52

But after Commissioner Manfred sent

50:54

out that memo, the Astros would

50:57

not only continue to carry out a base

50:59

runner scheme similar to what the Sox

51:01

and Yankees had done, but also something

51:03

far more insidious.

51:06

Padilla told me it had begun earlier

51:08

in the season with an unusual request

51:11

from the Astros bench coach, Alex Cora.

51:14

This is probably like two months into the season. We're

51:17

like well into our way. I

51:19

get asked to put a TV monitor

51:21

down below the dugouts and

51:24

at the time we didn't have like any

51:26

TVs down there. So I thought when I was

51:28

asked to put a monitor down there, I thought they just

51:30

wanted to see like when the inning was over or

51:32

like who was batting. So I

51:34

was happy to oblige by that. What

51:37

was it actually used for? From my understanding,

51:40

it was used for

51:43

looking at the signs from the catcher

51:45

and then relaying those signs to the

51:47

batter at the plate.

51:49

How are they doing?

51:51

They would look at the TV monitor and

51:53

then be able to see the signs of the catcher

51:56

and then have some type

51:58

of

51:59

audible.

52:00

sound

52:01

or like a bang on something to

52:04

relay that to the hitter and what

52:06

type of pitch is coming. I

52:09

mean instantly I knew like it wasn't right

52:11

but what was I gonna do I was like the

52:14

lowest guy in the totem pole there you

52:16

know if the coaches knew and

52:18

the other players knew then like

52:20

you know I'm just rolling with it.

52:22

Did you feel like guilty as the season went on and this

52:25

kept happening because like I know you weren't

52:27

doing it night to night but you facilitated it.

52:30

Yeah I mean it was definitely something that's

52:32

kind of on your conscious and then you know

52:39

you're thinking that like okay like maybe

52:41

this has a part of our success so you

52:44

start to feel more guilty about that and

52:46

then obviously it's like kind of like in the back of your

52:48

mind over the years before it like gets out to the public.

52:53

There was a big incentive for guys like

52:55

Padilla to not rock the boat. It

52:58

could jeopardize what's known as their playoff

53:00

share. Stephanie Epstein Sports Illustrated.

53:03

One thing that people don't

53:04

understand or maybe don't know about is the

53:06

way that compensation

53:09

for a lot of team employees works they get paid

53:11

by the team but at the end of the year

53:13

teams that make the playoffs

53:14

are allowed to vote on who gets

53:16

a share of the gate money from the playoffs

53:19

and so especially if you make the

53:21

World Series especially if you win the World Series

53:23

that's a lot of money and so I think

53:25

that a lot of

53:27

team employees are aware that

53:30

the team

53:32

is their boss but also the players are kind of their boss

53:34

and so I think that that

53:37

leads to some difficult incentives.

53:41

So 2017

53:41

the Astros win the World Series do

53:43

they vote to give you a playoff share? Antonio

53:46

Padilla. Yeah a full-time share a full share.

53:48

And

53:48

how much was that? 450,000 I think. And

53:52

you're making $45,000 a year? Yeah I was

53:55

like 10x my salary.

53:57

Wow. Yeah I mean I was able

53:59

to. by student loans, able to pay

54:02

off my car. You know,

54:04

it just like alleviated

54:06

a lot of, you know, things I'd had

54:09

going on as far as like finances. Winning

54:11

the lottery. Oh, exactly. It is.

54:14

I mean, it's a win-fall. With the playoff

54:16

share system existing, do you feel

54:18

like this was a big incentive to always keep the

54:21

players happy and always stay

54:23

in their good graces and anything they asked

54:25

for or didn't give to you? Yeah, I wouldn't

54:27

say it's a... I wouldn't say that was like the

54:29

incentive because that was, I

54:31

guess that was like part of the job. You know,

54:35

we were there for the players. We were there for the coaches

54:37

as well.

54:38

If an influential player asks you to

54:40

do something, like you're probably

54:42

not going to say no, right?

54:45

Yeah, I don't think I've ever said no unless it

54:47

was just something that couldn't

54:49

be done. But yeah,

54:52

I always tried my best, I guess, to appease

54:55

whatever, you know, they needed me to do.

55:00

Once the Astros' banging scheme finally

55:02

became public in November 2019, the

55:05

league began investigating the team. So

55:08

did one extremely diehard Astros

55:11

fan, Tony Adams. When

55:13

you first read the reports, then there was all

55:15

this supporting video. Did

55:17

that start to change the way you had viewed that 2017

55:20

championship two years earlier?

55:23

I don't think at that point, no. I

55:26

was still kind of

55:27

waiting to get more information. Obviously,

55:30

you don't want it to be true. So you

55:33

were hoping that there was a chance that this just wasn't accurate.

55:37

But I went on

55:38

to other sites and then found some

55:40

information, and somebody had posted some

55:42

video of

55:44

some plays where there were banging on the trash

55:46

can.

55:48

Adams realized that he might be able to figure

55:50

out how widespread the banging was by watching

55:54

and listening closely to all broadcasts

55:56

of the games.

55:59

to try to solve. What led

56:01

you to make this decision though? The core

56:03

of it is I wanted to know the truth and I really wanted

56:05

to know what happened. Adams

56:08

would have to review more than 8,200 pitches

56:10

the Astros had faced at home that season,

56:13

so he developed an app. Well,

56:15

I'm a web developer,

56:17

so I went with what I do and

56:19

basically developed a web application

56:22

that would allow me to, you know, the pitches, make

56:24

a selection if there was a bang or not, and

56:27

jump to the next pitch. Tony shows Ben the

56:29

visuals on his computer monitor. So

56:31

I was able to segment each pitch into an audio

56:33

file

56:33

and the spectrogram shows the full spectrum

56:36

of the frequency, so this allows you to

56:38

see basically all the sounds.

56:40

These lines here are actually the bouncers

56:42

talking. Tell John with

56:44

just one of his 14-hole runs hitting

56:46

right-handed this year. This line

56:48

here is actually where the ball either hits the

56:50

bat or hits the catcher's mitt. Upstairs,

56:53

two and one. And you can see here in the

56:55

lower frequency, a little spike

56:58

here, a little blob here. That's actually

57:00

a bang. He's

57:03

really jumped out. Yeah, yeah. Here

57:05

I can see these. And I haven't looked at 8,200 of these.

57:09

Adams ended up logging 1,143 bangs out of those 8,200 pitches

57:11

across dozens of home games.

57:18

He also pinpointed when the banging may have

57:20

come to an end, that night when

57:22

Danny Farquhar was on the mound.

57:24

Danny Farquhar on the snooze

57:26

between Tampa. This

57:27

is the Farquhar game. Gattis

57:30

pin-shitting for Brian McCann. This was the bottom

57:32

of the 8th. Gattis was up. And

57:35

you can see here, there was a bang in this one. If

57:37

we listen to it, it's very obvious. The

57:40

crowd wasn't very loud that time. The announcers

57:42

were not talking a lot during this game. Very

57:45

clear. Very

57:48

loud. Here we go with

57:50

another change up, and there's a double bang. Man,

57:54

that sounds like thunder or something, right? Yeah,

57:57

it's very obvious. You can see

57:59

that the crowd is...

57:59

pretty

58:01

sparse, so there's not a lot of crowd noise.

58:04

At some point, Farquhar made

58:06

a connection that whenever he was throwing a breaking ball,

58:09

he was hearing this sound. He

58:11

gets a signal.

58:15

I think

58:19

they have

58:21

the signal. They're

58:24

in his list. Yeah, you can see he says,

58:26

I think they have. Right. This is the moment.

58:28

Right, right. And if you look at the game here, after

58:31

this four-seamer, they called

58:33

for a breaking ball, and they got the bang, and that's

58:35

where he stepped off. And there was no more bangs

58:37

for the rest of the game, even

58:38

though there were plenty of pitches that were breaking balls

58:40

and should have been. Essentially,

58:42

the second that Danny

58:45

Farquhar heard this, it

58:47

stopped. It stopped. At least this form of

58:50

sign stealing. Correct. No more bangs

58:52

during the regular season, and I wasn't able to hear anything

58:55

in the postseason either. We know

58:57

that the moment that happened with Farquhar,

59:00

the guys behind the dial were taking the TV down,

59:02

was hiding everything. That was a moment of panic

59:05

for the team. They panicked at that

59:07

point. After

59:09

six weeks of research, Adams was on the

59:11

brink of doing one of the hardest things he'd

59:13

ever done, making all this damning

59:16

evidence against his beloved Astros public.

59:18

It was a Wednesday,

59:21

and I had the site ready, and I had written a tweet.

59:24

And then I paused for a second, because

59:27

I don't know if I hit send. That was it. It

59:29

was out there.

59:35

I'd never been part of something that went viral.

59:37

That did. It

59:40

took off pretty quickly. Blue Jays pitcher Mike

59:42

Balsinger from the Edge podcast. One

59:45

of my buddies actually texted me. He's like, man,

59:47

have you seen this? I

59:49

remember looking back on MLB.com,

59:51

like, man, when was the last time I pitched against them? And

59:54

I thought it was, like, the highest once. It

1:00:00

was like, man, okay, this is for

1:00:02

real. Like, they really cheated

1:00:05

on my game against

1:00:07

me.

1:00:10

It was a heck of an edge of take. When

1:00:12

you know it's coming, you're taking everything away, especially

1:00:15

a guy that is not as

1:00:17

elite as a lot of people.

1:00:20

How you think it's okay would be probably

1:00:22

the number one question that I'd ask.

1:00:25

How can you not think this is wrong, what you did?

1:00:32

In the end, Adams linked at least 19 Astros

1:00:34

hitters to the scheme,

1:00:37

a few, most notably Jose Altuve,

1:00:39

showing little to no involvement. Almost

1:00:43

others were in deep.

1:00:50

But there would be very few formal consequences

1:00:53

for them because of a fateful decision

1:00:55

unknown to the public at the time by

1:00:58

the commissioner at the outset of his investigation,

1:01:00

reporter Stephanie Epstein. He decided

1:01:03

to grant them immunity to speak

1:01:05

openly to him.

1:01:06

In part, I think to avoid

1:01:09

a union grievance, in

1:01:11

part because I think he

1:01:13

felt that nobody would tell him the truth if they were

1:01:15

worried about punishment, in part

1:01:17

because he felt that it was gonna be hard to determine

1:01:20

who used the system for three

1:01:23

games versus 30 versus the

1:01:25

whole season, that it was gonna be hard to assign

1:01:27

degrees of culpability.

1:01:30

For all of those reasons, he decided to give them

1:01:32

immunity. Also probably in part because you don't

1:01:34

wanna damage his own product at a certain point. Sure,

1:01:36

I

1:01:36

mean, if you suspend the

1:01:38

Astros, are they asked

1:01:40

to field a team? Do they bring up all of their

1:01:42

triple A? That's a big, that's a big

1:01:45

decision.

1:01:46

Commissioner Manfred wouldn't talk to us

1:01:49

about the decision or answer written questions.

1:01:52

None of the 2017 Astros players

1:01:55

we approached would talk nor the players

1:01:57

union. But when it came to

1:01:59

light.

1:01:59

some players from other teams were publicly

1:02:02

critical of the immunity decision.

1:02:05

I thought Manfred's punishment was

1:02:07

weak giving him immunity. To cheat

1:02:10

like that and not get anything it's

1:02:13

sad to see for sure. You know they're gonna be able to go

1:02:15

out there and compete with no ramifications

1:02:17

at all which is wrong and I think the commissioner completely

1:02:19

handled it the wrong way.

1:02:23

Manfred went on ESPN to defend

1:02:25

the decision.

1:02:27

You could have made the

1:02:29

choice to go with the

1:02:31

management people and

1:02:34

sort of given them immunity and found

1:02:36

out how the players were involved. Whatever

1:02:40

dissatisfaction is out

1:02:42

there with the grant of immunity to players I

1:02:44

think it would have been ten times worse if

1:02:46

you let the management people off and then tried

1:02:48

to go after the players.

1:02:50

I mean I would have thrown

1:02:52

some of the ringleaders out of baseball

1:02:54

for a considerable period of time. When

1:02:57

you cheat on

1:02:59

the field telling

1:03:01

people when a fastball is coming you're really

1:03:03

playing with

1:03:05

the heart of the game.

1:03:09

Former MLB commissioner Faye Vincent

1:03:11

told me that granting the players immunity sent

1:03:14

the wrong message.

1:03:17

Baseball and Manfred decided

1:03:19

it was better to have it

1:03:21

be a minor event than a major event.

1:03:24

In other words to have it a major event

1:03:26

you were gonna have to teach players that

1:03:29

one of the problems of cheating is you can

1:03:32

get caught and if you get caught

1:03:35

it can cost you. Let me ask you it's

1:03:37

kind of like a devil's advocate position

1:03:39

that I've heard.

1:03:41

People have cheated in baseball

1:03:44

since like just after the first sign

1:03:46

was put down. What's

1:03:48

the difference? People have been doing it forever and

1:03:50

this is just the latest iteration of that.

1:03:52

The reason we have to have

1:03:56

compliance with rules is that if

1:03:58

you don't have rules you don't have of a system,

1:04:01

the rules are what make a game

1:04:04

a game.

1:04:05

So the question is, what would I have done as

1:04:07

commissioner? I'd have thrown them all out. I

1:04:10

would have said they're out for the rest of their lives.

1:04:12

And I think- But they're lives? Lifetime

1:04:14

Ben. Lifetime Ben. But

1:04:18

when it came to accountability,

1:04:20

commissioner Manfred's focus was where he

1:04:22

said it would be after the Red Sox and Yankees

1:04:24

cheating dustups back in 2017. On

1:04:28

the manager and general manager. Then

1:04:30

Astro's video manager, Antonio Padilla.

1:04:33

The one question they just kept hammering. They wanted

1:04:35

to know if Jeff knew about it and they wanted to know

1:04:37

if any of it continued into 2018. And

1:04:40

I told them, you know, for my knowledge,

1:04:43

I don't think Jeff knew. Did it feel like

1:04:45

they're kind of zeroing in on Jeff Luno's

1:04:47

responsibility here? Yeah, it

1:04:50

seemed like that from that testimony that,

1:04:53

you know, they really wanted to find out if he

1:04:55

knew or not.

1:04:56

The league ended up interviewing 68 witnesses

1:04:59

and reviewed tens of thousands of emails,

1:05:02

texts, video clips, and photos.

1:05:06

When the commissioner's investigation was finished,

1:05:09

the only Astro's sanction for the cheating

1:05:11

were Jeff Luno and the manager, A.J.

1:05:13

Hinch. Both

1:05:15

were suspended from baseball for a year.

1:05:19

The people that created it,

1:05:21

that ran it, that executed

1:05:23

it,

1:05:24

essentially those people didn't get punished.

1:05:27

And I took the

1:05:29

responsibility for the organization, as

1:05:32

did A.J.

1:05:34

While the league's investigators didn't

1:05:36

uncover evidence that Luno knew about

1:05:38

the banging scheme, they did

1:05:40

find evidence that he had, quote, some

1:05:42

knowledge of the team's other illegal

1:05:44

sign stealing efforts, a charge

1:05:47

Luno continues to deny. Manfred

1:05:50

pointed out that Luno had never circulated

1:05:53

his memo about electronic sign stealing

1:05:55

back in 2017. And as

1:05:57

GM, it was his job to make sure.

1:06:00

the team was following the rules.

1:06:02

I was punished because I was the general

1:06:04

manager overseeing

1:06:07

baseball operations of a team

1:06:09

that violated the rules.

1:06:12

And I was punished

1:06:15

for not forwarding a memo. I

1:06:19

guess if I had pressed forward to the memo

1:06:21

and forwarded it to AJ, which he already had the memo,

1:06:23

so I didn't feel there was a need to do that. And this

1:06:26

memo was well known in the industry. It's

1:06:28

not like people lack the information. Every

1:06:31

player, every person involved knew what was in

1:06:33

the memo.

1:06:36

Since the scandal, I've tried unsuccessfully

1:06:38

to talk to AJ Hinch, who's

1:06:40

now the manager of the Detroit Tigers.

1:06:44

The league's report noted that Wally didn't stop

1:06:47

the cheating. He signaled his disapproval

1:06:49

on at least two occasions by smashing

1:06:52

the video monitor used to carry it out.

1:06:55

His only extensive interview about the

1:06:57

scandal was on MLB Network

1:06:59

with Tom Verducci.

1:07:01

My mindset at that point was to

1:07:03

demonstrate that

1:07:05

I didn't like it. So what did you do? I

1:07:08

hit it. I mean, I just, a bat. I mean,

1:07:10

I didn't like it. You took a bat to it. Yeah, I didn't

1:07:12

like it. I should have done more. Antonio Padilla. I

1:07:14

remember one day I saw the monitor was

1:07:17

broken. I think he felt like it was actually hurting

1:07:19

the team at the time. And

1:07:22

I think he just got frustrated with it

1:07:24

and decided to try to end it there without

1:07:28

telling anybody, just kind of doing it on his own. In

1:07:31

your understanding, who is the driving force

1:07:34

behind wanting to implement this system?

1:07:37

Yeah, so it seemed like it was Carlos Beltran's

1:07:40

idea. You

1:07:43

know, obviously he didn't force everybody to do it, but

1:07:46

it seemed like from my perspective

1:07:48

at the time he was having, you know, one

1:07:50

of his worst seasons and he probably

1:07:52

thought, Hey, like I'm here to help. I'm

1:07:54

here to help this team win. I'm

1:07:57

having a bad season. Let me try to.

1:08:00

drum up something to get this team

1:08:02

going and get myself going as well.

1:08:05

Did anyone try to push back against him?

1:08:08

I've heard of some other players saying

1:08:10

like, hey, this isn't right. We shouldn't do this. But

1:08:13

honestly, it all ultimately came down to

1:08:15

the coaches. Like the coaches knew about

1:08:17

it. The hitting coaches are manager,

1:08:20

obviously the bench coach as well. But

1:08:23

if they didn't shut it down, then I mean.

1:08:27

Players are just going to follow their leaders.

1:08:30

In my opinion,

1:08:32

was it almost like Beltran had more power than

1:08:34

AJ Hinch?

1:08:37

Uh, that's that's tough

1:08:39

to answer. I mean, he definitely had a way

1:08:42

of having the team like go behind like anything

1:08:44

that he wanted to do. I think

1:08:46

AJ kind of bought into that as well.

1:08:49

Beltran

1:08:50

was the only player mentioned by name

1:08:52

in the commissioners report. He's

1:08:55

apologized, but also spread the blame to

1:08:58

an organizational culture that didn't exactly

1:09:00

emphasize rule following.

1:09:02

I wish I would ask

1:09:05

more questions about what we were doing. I

1:09:07

wish the organization would say to us,

1:09:11

Hey man, what you guys are doing, we

1:09:13

need to stop this. Nobody

1:09:15

really saying anything. We're winning.

1:09:18

After the report came out, Beltran lost

1:09:20

his new job as the skipper of the New York Mets

1:09:23

before managing a single team. He was a very successful game for them.

1:09:27

But now he's back with the Mets as a special assistant to their

1:09:29

general manager. The

1:09:33

report also singled out bench coach Alex Cora,

1:09:35

who was by then managing the Red Sox. Boston

1:09:39

fired Cora, and though he was later cleared of

1:09:41

wrongdoing in a sign stealing investigation

1:09:43

there, he was then

1:09:45

suspended by the league for the Astros cheating. Cora

1:09:50

apologized. Like

1:09:52

Beltran, he was rehired and

1:09:54

continues to lead the Red Sox today. For

1:09:59

Jeff Luna, the commissioner's year-long suspension

1:10:01

was only the beginning. I

1:10:03

was on a plane on the way to Cabo

1:10:06

with my wife to celebrate her

1:10:08

birthday and our anniversary. And

1:10:10

I had asked

1:10:12

Jim a few days before I said, hey, should

1:10:15

I cancel my trip? Because I know they're getting ready to make

1:10:17

a decision. He's like, no, no, no, don't worry about it. Go on

1:10:19

the trip. Enjoy yourself. I

1:10:21

got a call from Jim as we were

1:10:23

in baggage claim. And I took

1:10:26

it. And he told me what his decision

1:10:28

was as far as my employment. Very

1:10:31

short conversation. And how long was that phone call?

1:10:34

It was like 30 seconds, maybe. Astro's

1:10:36

owner, Jim Crane. I'm going above

1:10:38

and beyond MLB's penalty. Today

1:10:41

I have made the decision to dismiss

1:10:45

AJ Hinch and Jeff Lunow. We

1:10:48

need to move forward with a clean slate.

1:10:53

And the Astro's will become stronger, a stronger

1:10:57

organization because of this today.

1:11:01

As for Jim Crane, Manfred

1:11:04

went out of his way to make it clear in his report

1:11:06

that he'd had nothing to do with the scandal,

1:11:09

noting he'd instructed Lunow to make sure

1:11:11

his team abided by the rules. Ben

1:11:14

Ritter with former MLB commissioner Fay

1:11:16

Vincent. My question is, why would the commissioner go

1:11:18

to such pains so prominently

1:11:21

to clear the owner of

1:11:23

the team of any responsibility for the

1:11:25

scandal? Because the commissioner

1:11:28

works for the owner.

1:11:29

And

1:11:31

the most difficult thing in the world

1:11:34

is to be working for people

1:11:36

in

1:11:37

a situation where you

1:11:40

also have to discipline them. In

1:11:42

baseball, the commissioner

1:11:45

has the duty, the obligation,

1:11:48

to police the very people he works

1:11:51

for. That's a relationship

1:11:53

that is totally all

1:11:55

by itself. That's a conflict.

1:11:57

That's a challenge. That's an impossibility.

1:12:02

As commissioner, Faye Vincent was

1:12:04

famous for his clashes with owners and

1:12:06

was ousted after just three years.

1:12:10

He recalled something one of the owners once told

1:12:12

him.

1:12:13

They said, your job is to make us money.

1:12:16

We can

1:12:18

run the baseball part. We understand

1:12:20

baseball. We don't need you. All we

1:12:22

want you to do is think of ways

1:12:24

to expand our

1:12:26

revenue base and make money for

1:12:28

us. If you're taking money for us, you're

1:12:31

getting in the way. The commissioner is there

1:12:33

to serve the interests of

1:12:36

the owners. Higher percent.

1:12:39

In the end, Commissioner Manfred

1:12:41

took away four of the Astros draft picks

1:12:44

and fined the team $5 million,

1:12:47

the largest allowable by the league, but

1:12:49

a drop in the bucket for Crane's roughly $2 billion

1:12:51

business.

1:12:53

Then with Forbes reporter, Maury Brown.

1:12:56

The fallout from the sign stealing scandal

1:12:58

materially affect Jim Crane

1:13:00

or the Astros in the long

1:13:03

run. No,

1:13:04

in the long run, it didn't affect them at all.

1:13:07

I mean, look, you know, there's

1:13:09

this report in the

1:13:11

eyes of fans outside of, you

1:13:13

know, Houston or fans of the Astros.

1:13:16

They're vilified. They're going to get booed,

1:13:19

you know, in

1:13:20

perpetuity due to this thing. Was Jim

1:13:22

Crane affected? No, of course not. I

1:13:24

mean, all the successes that have come along

1:13:27

with the world championships,

1:13:28

all of the money that would come in due to attendance.

1:13:34

Earlier this year, Manfred actually

1:13:36

made a surprising admission. He

1:13:40

told a reporter he now regretted giving

1:13:42

the players immunity, that

1:13:44

it was, quote, maybe not my best

1:13:46

decision ever. A

1:13:50

month later, the league's owners voted

1:13:52

to extend him as commissioner

1:13:54

through 2029.

1:13:59

the first place Houston Astros

1:14:02

for the first time in 2023. Astros

1:14:04

get the win. We have the team working on time

1:14:07

with Seattle Mariners for the first place. What a

1:14:09

victory. And they have their biggest lead

1:14:12

of the season out.

1:14:20

With the Astros battling for the 2023

1:14:23

playoffs and having won the World

1:14:25

Series again last year, I

1:14:27

returned to Houston to try to talk to Jim

1:14:29

Crane and others in the organization about

1:14:32

the legacy of the scandal and how they'd moved

1:14:34

forward. No one inside

1:14:36

the team would speak to me or answer written

1:14:38

questions. Other than to say

1:14:41

that Crane doesn't do interviews about things

1:14:43

from the past and to point out the

1:14:45

team was on pace to draw 3 million

1:14:47

fans in 2023.

1:14:50

But for an issue that team and league

1:14:52

have tried to put behind them, there's a

1:14:54

lingering sense of injustice on

1:14:56

all sides. Reactions from fans.

1:14:59

I understand where they're coming from. I'm

1:15:01

not saying it's right, but every team does

1:15:03

it. We just happen to be the ones to get caught. I

1:15:06

would just ignore them. They say where they want

1:15:08

to stay. It's all talk. I

1:15:10

think they dispelled any thoughts that

1:15:12

they were bad after that, right?

1:15:15

They just won. So in 22. Well,

1:15:17

they kept and they didn't win the World

1:15:19

Series every year, but they were dominant

1:15:22

over since then. They've been dominant since

1:15:24

then and then they won last year. So so

1:15:27

people would say that World Series ring

1:15:29

is not legitimate. You're not buying what they say. Yeah,

1:15:32

I mean, this last one is pretty.

1:15:35

Despite their success, the asterisk

1:15:38

on the Astros continues to feed conspiracy

1:15:40

theories about cheating beyond the banging.

1:15:44

Like the persistent accusation that

1:15:46

Jose Altuve knew what pitches were

1:15:48

coming the night he lifted the Astros

1:15:50

to the 2019 World Series. Thanks

1:15:53

to a buzzer hidden under his jersey.

1:15:59

taped to their bodies

1:16:01

electronic device business really takes

1:16:04

it in a different direction at least

1:16:05

one player had heard from multiple

1:16:07

sources about a buzzer system

1:16:10

and when he's asked about it I

1:16:12

don't know, I'm too shy,

1:16:14

last time they did that I got involved with

1:16:16

my wife in this case, there

1:16:19

is a villain

1:16:21

was Jose Altuve wearing a buzzer? Antonio

1:16:24

Padilla no,

1:16:25

no there's absolutely like zero

1:16:28

truth to any of that you

1:16:30

just hate to see like the media try to run some

1:16:33

really like good people into the ground with that and even

1:16:36

some other players around the league just buy into

1:16:38

the conspiracy theory of that and

1:16:42

that just like absolutely was like never even

1:16:44

discussed obviously

1:16:46

the bad stuff is gonna get more clicks and more

1:16:48

headlines but I

1:16:51

think the good stuff needs to be talked about a lot more just because

1:16:54

they're doing things that teams are still trying to

1:16:56

catch up with today that they

1:16:58

were doing years ago

1:17:27

Milwaukee when they took sterns people

1:17:30

started hiring folks away from the Astros

1:17:32

because everybody wanted to do what the

1:17:35

Astros were doing the

1:17:37

baseball world's been against them from day one

1:17:40

because these weren't baseball guys

1:17:44

and now you

1:17:46

know in 2023 people realized the Astros

1:17:49

are the standard for building

1:17:52

winning baseball reporter

1:17:53

Tom Verducci about

1:18:00

leveraging technology in

1:18:02

terms of evaluation, training.

1:18:06

What really I think got the Azeras

1:18:08

in trouble is they didn't know where to stop.

1:18:11

But who ultimately benefits from

1:18:14

maximizing efficiency in a baseball context?

1:18:18

The benefit of it is not for the

1:18:20

benefit of the fan. We didn't wind

1:18:22

up with a better game. We wound up

1:18:24

with a more boring game. To

1:18:27

me, we lost some of the reason

1:18:29

why we're fans, and that is the

1:18:31

mystique and the chemistry and

1:18:33

the magic and the things that don't

1:18:35

matter to a technocrat. Baseball has always

1:18:37

been a business, but it became more

1:18:40

a business like any other business in a certain

1:18:42

way. Yeah, I mean, listen, you don't want to be naive

1:18:44

and think baseball was always just a game. It was

1:18:46

always just a business. But it became

1:18:49

just a brutally efficient business.

1:18:52

I don't think it's gonna be one of the proud moments for baseball

1:18:54

to what happened during that era. When

1:18:56

technology outpaced

1:18:59

baseball's ability to deal with it.

1:19:02

Over the past several seasons, Major

1:19:04

League Baseball's clamped down.

1:19:07

They've strictly limited the availability

1:19:09

of in-game video and hired

1:19:11

an outside security firm to police

1:19:13

the replay rooms. And

1:19:16

this season, they put heavy restrictions

1:19:18

on the infamous shift.

1:19:21

The dark art of science dealing was

1:19:23

also dealt a blow with new technology

1:19:25

called PitchCom that allows the

1:19:27

pitcher and catcher to communicate via

1:19:29

transmitters. Something

1:19:32

that's yet to be hacked as far as

1:19:34

we know.

1:19:36

What do you think is the lasting legacy

1:19:39

of the Houston Astros of the past

1:19:41

decade?

1:19:43

Well, it is a lasting legacy, first of all.

1:19:46

It's too big of a sin in baseball to be

1:19:48

washed away ever. And we'll

1:19:50

be talking about the Astros 50 years from now as

1:19:52

a team that stole science. And the

1:19:54

second paragraph will be about how talented they

1:19:56

were and they won their first world championship. But

1:19:58

I think in a...

1:19:59

The Rotter says what they did was they defined

1:20:03

in its own way a dirty era

1:20:06

at baseball.

1:20:17

In exile from baseball in Spain,

1:20:20

Jeff Luno remains defiant.

1:20:23

Here in Spain, I've never

1:20:25

even been asked a question about it. I've never even been asked

1:20:27

a question about baseball. They don't care. He says

1:20:30

at a press conference, Ms. Roster

1:20:32

gives us a chance to compete with every team

1:20:34

in the league.

1:20:36

The second division soccer team he purchased

1:20:39

here with investors after being fired from

1:20:41

the Astros is in first place, and

1:20:44

he's not stopping there. We're

1:20:46

buying and operating second, third and fourth division

1:20:48

clubs in key strategic markets. My

1:20:51

motto in the Astros was find and develop

1:20:53

the best young talent in baseball and build a sustainable winner.

1:20:57

We're doing exactly the same strategy here at football

1:21:00

that we did in baseball.

1:21:10

I still have questions about some of the

1:21:12

results of that strategy, including

1:21:15

the degree to which the Astros continued

1:21:17

to steal signs in the 2017 playoffs.

1:21:21

Between Tony Adams' research, the

1:21:24

league's investigation, and all the reporting,

1:21:27

it's just not clear. Of course,

1:21:29

it's also unclear how many of their opponents

1:21:32

were also cheating, and to what extent.

1:21:34

But

1:21:36

in a game of razor-thin differentials,

1:21:39

we'll never know if the cheating was

1:21:41

what had given the Astros the ultimate edge. Former

1:21:45

pitching coach Doug White. The scandal

1:21:47

is like 5% of the story. 95%

1:21:49

of the story is, how did we create

1:21:51

a system that has proven

1:21:54

to be pretty dang good over

1:21:56

a long period of time?

1:21:59

that has anything to do with one

1:22:02

cheating scandal. When did

1:22:04

the cheating help? And when did

1:22:06

the cheating not help? And who wanted

1:22:08

to get the cheating? And who didn't want to get... I mean,

1:22:10

you could go down a million different roads

1:22:13

on that.

1:22:13

And so that's why I'm saying, like, it's not just,

1:22:16

we cheated, we won,

1:22:18

game over. That's not how this works. To

1:22:20

me, that's almost like the biggest tragedy, is

1:22:22

that, like, we don't know. And we never

1:22:25

will. Stephanie Epstein. That's the

1:22:27

deal that they made. They

1:22:29

get to have their title questioned forever.

1:22:32

I think that is the outcome,

1:22:34

that people are allowed to say whatever they want about

1:22:37

you. And there's nothing you can

1:22:39

do about it.

1:22:40

What

1:22:42

the Greeks would call a tragedy, right? The thing that made you

1:22:44

great is the thing that brought you down.

1:22:46

Fan

1:22:50

Tony Adams. They

1:22:54

made that decision. That's on them.

1:22:58

It's the fans' team, you

1:23:00

know. And so I will always

1:23:02

be an Astros fan. I think most Astros fans feel the

1:23:04

same

1:23:05

way. He is two hours ahead of Major League Baseball's

1:23:07

trade deadline. The Met deal, Justin

1:23:09

Verlander back

1:23:10

to Houston. Bromberg, all dead.

1:23:13

The first leftie in franchise history to

1:23:15

throw a note. This team is about

1:23:17

October. This team is about another

1:23:19

wing.

1:23:19

I feel great about the players that we

1:23:21

have now, the team that we have in the health organization. They

1:23:25

will go away at some point.

1:23:28

The thing that remains are the

1:23:30

fans. This

1:23:32

is our team.

1:23:36

And

1:23:38

when you talk about the Astros, remember, the

1:23:40

championship had agreed. You can't

1:23:42

sleep on that. Here they are, a playoff

1:23:45

team for the seventh consecutive year. The

1:23:47

fourth longest run in Major

1:23:49

League Baseball history. You know, sky's

1:23:51

the limit. Looks like the same old Astros again.

1:23:54

Here they come. Just took them a little longer to get there.

1:24:03

Go to pbs.org slash

1:24:06

frontline for more about the history

1:24:08

of sign stealing in baseball. When

1:24:10

you cheat on the field, telling

1:24:12

people when a fastball is coming, you're really

1:24:14

playing with the heart of the game.

1:24:17

And listen to more of Ben Reiter's podcast,

1:24:19

The Edge. One of my buddies actually

1:24:21

texted me, he's like, man, have you seen this? Connect

1:24:24

with Frontline on Facebook and X, formerly

1:24:26

known as Twitter, and watch anytime on

1:24:28

the PBS app. YouTube or

1:24:31

pbs.org slash frontline. Frontline

1:24:39

is made possible by contributions to your

1:24:41

PBS station from viewers like you. Thank

1:24:44

you. And by the Corporation

1:24:47

for Public Broadcasting. Additional

1:24:50

support is provided by the Abrams Foundation,

1:24:53

committed to excellence in journalism. The

1:24:56

Clark Foundation, dedicated to heightening

1:24:58

public awareness of critical issues. The

1:25:02

John D. and Catherine G. MacArthur Foundation, committed

1:25:05

to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful

1:25:07

world.

1:25:08

More at macfound.org.

1:25:11

And by the Frontline Journalism Fund,

1:25:14

with major support from John and Joanne Hagler.

1:25:17

And additional support from Laura Dubonis.

1:25:19

And the Jarena Endowment Fund. Thank

1:25:25

you.

1:25:40

Frontline's

1:25:43

Edge was written and directed by Jonathan Clasbury.

1:25:46

Produced by Quentin Rodman,

1:25:48

Jonathan Clasbury, and Ben Reiter. And

1:25:51

narrated by Ben Reiter.

1:25:53

The Senior Producer for Screen Cueing. The

1:25:56

Managing Editor of Frontline is Andrew Lowe. The

1:26:00

Astra Edge is available on Amazon

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1:26:31

The Astra Edge is available on Amazon Prime Video.