Well this is a wild one. And I suspect there will be differing opinions on who should’ve done what.
Here’s the story:
Spoke w/ Kiermaier. These are his comments.
Around 5:20 pm, Kevin Cash came out to speak with Charlie Montoyo about it.
The Jays are pissed. As a team source told me, “if there’s one card we wouldn’t want any opponent to have, it’s that one”
More at 6:30 pm on @Sportsnet pic.twitter.com/Rp6iaGNPwM
— Arash Madani (@ArashMadani) September 21, 2021
That’s just crazy. The card falls out of Alejandro Kirk’s wrist band, and, after looking at the card for a moment – considering his options, perhaps? – Kiermaier picks it up and trots off.
At first blush, you might think it was bad form for Kevin Kiermaier to snag the Blue Jays’ plan of attack just because it was on the ground. His explanation – that he thought it might be his own positioning card – is at least plausible. You’re in the moment. There’s a card on the ground. You snag it and go. Maybe he’s totally full of it. But it’s plausible.
From there, though, I think it gets a little dicier. You would figure out pretty quickly what the card was, and then you’d have a moral decision to make: you are in possession of a competitive advantage that you shouldn’t have. Do you … give it back? Try to forget what you saw? Not look at it, as Kiermaier claims? Give it to someone else – as Kiermaier did – and then play silent about what info you gleaned from it?
Another factor here? The Jays’ catcher does have to do a good job securing his card, right? I mean, that’s at least partly on him.
The Rays, for the record, are 8.5 games up on the Blue Jays in the East, and 7.0 games up on the Red Sox. They’re very likely going to win the AL East. But then again, these teams have two games left against each other, and the Rays are trying not only to clinch the division, but also lock up the best overall record in the AL. They’re still going to want every possible edge to win these games.
The question is whether it was OK to snake that card in the first place, and then maybe learn a little from it. What do you think? I kinda have mixed thoughts. Sportsmanship says give the card back as soon as you realize what it is. Gamesmanship, however, says it’s not YOUR fault that the card was on the ground, just sitting there, waiting for you to take it …