Yankees: YES producer buries cheating allegations against NYY

For some odd reason, there are people out there trying to soften the blow on the Houston Astros for their role in the widespread sign-stealing scandal that was, by definition, cheating. Not by the fans’ definition. By Major League Baseball’s definition. Which was made official during the season they were guilty of cheating.

What’s even funnier is that there are people out there continually trying to accuse the New York Yankees of cheating, for whatever reason. Have the Yankees accomplished anything of note in the last 12 years to force the issue?

Not at all! They’re just the Yankees and everyone who isn’t a Yankees fan hates them. We get it. No offense taken.

But when you’re trying to simply nitpick stats for the sole purpose of making a specific party look bad, it’s misleading. Quite frankly, it’s a tired act. And that’s what happened when “MLB analyst” Ryan Spaeder decided to go after the Bombers (and others) on Wednesday.

According to Spaeder, the Yankees had cameras in all three outfield spots with the lens pointed at the opposing pitcher’s glove in order to see the grip in order to detect the incoming pitch.

His one stat that tried to prove the Yankees cheated was Aaron Judge’s home and road slash lines. Judge batted .312 with a 1.165 OPS at home and .254 with a .935 OPS on the road. That’s not even that big of a difference when you take into account players inherently perform better at home than on the road?

And when you consider THESE splits, you can further detect that it’s all BS.

These stats help debunk any cheating allegations against the Yankees.

Judge’s stats were a bit better at home but three other key Yankees in Didi Gregorius, Gary Sanchez and Giancarlo Stanton had better numbers on the road. The cheater’s rebuttal? “Guess they were bad at cheating then! Haha!”

Hilarious.

The fact of the matter is no team cheated as in-depth and widespread as the Astros. We don’t need to keep having these discussions about trying to show that “everybody does it.” That’s the conversation surrounding “sticky stuff,” not illegal sign stealing with the use of technology.

Plus the biggest indictment of all of this was stark difference in the postseason. Here are the Astros’ numbers:

• Home playoff games – .273/.343/.519
• Away playoff games – .208/.284/.347

The Yankees also had a lopsided slash line, but they had 50 fewer at-bats at home compared to the road since they were a wild card team. In 2018 and 2019, their splits were better on the road during the postseason. So, once again, irrelevant.

Look at any team’s regular season splits. That’s not where you’ll see the difference. Try again, though.

We have the stats already. They’re all out there for you to easily access. Others cutting and splicing stats for other teams to try and prove a point are, at this point, nothing but trolls trying to get a rise out of fans on social media.

Every fan is aware that most teams attempt to gain a competitive edge each and every night. It’s not rocket science. These are competitors attempting to reach the ultimate goal of a championship. However, it’s abundantly clear the Astros took it too far, and we’re not going to let them off the hook for it.

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