Padres deny stealing signs after suspicious man spotted in camera well
With two outs in the ninth inning of Sunday’s St. Louis Cardinals game against the San Diego Padres, catcher Yadier Molina pointed out to the centerfield camera well after the Cardinals’ dugout spotted something suspicious. Play stopped for a moment as Molina turned the attention of home-plate umpire Sean Barber to a man in a white shirt with binoculars and a walkie-talkie.
Realizing attention had been thrust in his direction, the man soon disappeared from his spot in the camera well. On the field, play continued and Brett Wallace, who represented the tying run in the game, grounded out to second base. It was a final, the Cardinals won 8-5.
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The game was over, but the questions weren’t: Who was that guy in the camera well and what was he doing? You don’t need to be a conspiracy theorist to figure what would come next, just a baseball fan: Were the Padres stealing signs?
Before we go any further, sign-stealing in baseball isn’t like spy-gate or deflate-gate or whatever -gate is coming next. In baseball, sign-stealing happens and while teams don’t like it, it usually doesn’t become the type of spectacle where appellate courts eventually get involved. But when it happens in baseball, it usually happens on the field.
Sign-stealing from other parts of the stadium is at least enough to get the conspiracy theorists humming in online comment sections. The Toronto Blue Jays have been accused of having a “Man in White” who is said to relay signs back to the team somehow.
So back to Sunday: A man in a team polo a walkie-talkie and binoculars? Sign-stealing seems like an easy assumption to jump to. The Padres, however, denied they were steal signs and explained the man was stadium security:
(“Of course, they’d say that,” Mr. Conspiracy Theorist notes!)
[Elsewhere: D-backs fan catches not just one, but two Paul Goldschmidt homers]
Two things we feel obligated to note if you’re not believing the Padres’ story:
• If the Padres are stealing signs, it hasn’t been working. They’re hitting .235 as a team and have scored 72 runs in 19 games, which is 11th worst in the league.
• If this is a new strategy for the Padres to get their offense going, they’ve hit “desperation” mode quite early in this season. A slumping team should probably watch more film on opposing pitchers and their tendencies before resorting to espionage.
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Mike Oz is the editor of Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @MikeOz
