The Ledger, every show

“There was this specific makeup of the Astros clubhouse, in which one veteran in particular, one coach in particular, Carlos Beltran and Alex Cora, had a lot of influence in there. And in most ways, that influence was exerted in really positive ways, as far as …”

“The commissioner, in the very first paragraph, actually, which stuck out like a red thumb to me, the very first paragraph of this nine-page report completely absolved the owner of the team, Jim Crane, from any responsibility or accountability whatsoever.”

“Major League Baseball, as I said, did an extensive investigation into this. Even they couldn't prove that Jeff Luno knew. You know, they looked at tens of thousands of emails and texts and They interviewed, like, dozens and dozens of witnesses, many of whom pr…”

“Sign stealing was not at all limited to the Astros, right? Nobody believes they're the only team doing it. They might've been pushing it farther than anybody else, but they weren't alone.”

“He had, the EEOC had issued a hundred page report some years earlier documenting discrimination within his companies. Hiring practices that were discriminating against minorities, that were discriminating against women.”

“There was a manager at his company who had been sent to jail for war profiteering.”

“They did this to over a hundred pitchers that year. Some of these guys, like guys with 20 years of experience, most of them didn't hear it down in the field, etc.”

“Fighting a Off the union and media who are kind of ripping him for running a payroll that was under thirty million dollars at one point, like embarrassingly low.”

“To Luno, you know, this is the sort of unquantifiable, like, grit, drive. Growth mindset type of things that they look for. So the scouting side of things really tipped that away from somebody like Byron Buxton, who was, you know, probably consensus number one…”

“Like, they do certainly select four players who they believe have that growth mindset, and in fact, one of the things they look for is good grades, funny enough, for baseball players. I think good grades are a real indicator of a willingness to learn, which I…”

“There are actually two sign stealing schemes going on at once. One was happening in the video room. One was happening among the players.”

“Bob Feller, the great Indians pitcher, Went to World War II. He interrupted his career for three years to go on a ship in the Pacific, and he brought back this high-powered telescope, and he had it installed in center field in Cleveland Stadium, and they would…”

“He was fined five million dollars, right? That's the maximum fine that an owner can receive in baseball. He lost a few draft picks, but keeps his ring, keeps his players, keeps the franchise valuation.”

“The Astros were once at the vanguard as far as a valuation slash efficiency based approach to Team building and running the organization. They're not really an outlier anymore. This is how everybody operates.”

“I mean, look at the Miami Marlins sold for a couple years ago to the group that included Derek Jeter. I forget exactly what it was. It was definitely in the mid one billions, right? For probably the worst franchise in all ways there is.”

“I do think, especially because it's at the end of the day, it's an entertainment product. I do think we'll see the commissioner trying to make some significant rule changes. Maybe it's to the strike zone. Maybe it's moving the mound back. To get more offense i…”

“I think on a labor front, baseball's in for a really rough time coming ahead, because I think that players are just seeing things as less and less equitable.”

“Jeff Luno, I think, will have a tougher road. Well, especially now that he's suing the Astros for twenty-two million dollars. That probably doesn't help his chances, but he was always somebody who never quite shed his outsider status. In a lot of ways, he embr…”

“Some say that by some metrics, he was the best scouting director in the seven years he was there of any scouting director, as far as picks he made that turned into big leaguers.”

“Like maybe computers one day will be able to see this. We're probably pretty close actually, as far as motion analysis and things like that, but they don't have those tools quite yet.”

“Turned out after people studied the exact pattern of the Astros sign stealing, he had faced them on the night of its peak, like they had banged on their trash can more times on that night than against anybody else.”

“He's currently suing the Astros for twenty two million dollars because they tore up his contract, firing him for cause in relation to this.”

“He bought them for about six hundred million dollars. Less than 10 years later, they're worth estimates between 2,000,000,002 and a half billion.”

“Baseball is a 10.7 billion dollar industry now. As far as we know, and now ownership is diversifying in all sorts of ways into cable networks, and a lot of teams have property real estate plays surrounding the stadium.”

“So in 2017, if you're the Astros and you win the World Series, it was like 450,000 dollar bonus per player. Which is actually a lot of money even for a baseball player. Minimum salary guys would double their salary based on this playoff share.”

“And who, by the way, is now like the richest owner in baseball by a factor of three”

“It was about two years ago that the Detroit Tigers, for example, had like one part-time analyst on their whole staff. Two years ago, it was like maybe 2015 or going into 2016.”

“This was the plan that Jeff Lino presented to him when he sat down with him in 2011 to interview for the job. He made like a 22 or 23 page Essentially guide to what they were going to do and why they had to do it.”

“A five foot five inch second baseman slap hitting guy who got 15,000 dollars to sign out of Venezuela only after seven teams had passed on him.”

“Correa attributes seven of his 24 home runs last year directly to Beltran, like things he showed him about tendencies that pitchers were Following and stuff like that.”

“It's not actually illegal to steal signs. It's illegal to use technology to steal signs. But the first recorded instance of sign stealing was in 1876.”