NEWSLETTER
J’ACCUSE! WHAT KIND OF BUZZERS ARE THE YANKEES USING?!?!
Thanks to the cheating Astros – who were definitely cheating, somehow, against the Cubs last night – everyone around baseball has a heightened awareness to every possible level of sign stealing and other chicanery. It might even lead you to believe the voices coming from an opponents helmet aren’t just in your mind.
So I can understand why, when they noticed Aaron Judge glancing over toward the Yankee bench during an at bat, the Blue Jays broadcast team wondered what was going on:
To be clear, even if Judge were getting signs or hints of some kind from his bench, that wouldn’t necessarily be an indication of illegal cheating. You can still convey information to your players the old fashioned way.
All that said, you also have to keep in mind that there can be innocuous explanations for things that otherwise look strange. For example, it could just be an eye-focus technique that Judge is trying out before pitches arrive. Sometimes guys do stuff like that.
OR, as Judge later explained, it could just be that his bench was bugging him:
I’m sure folks will be watching Judge’s eyes closely from here, but I’m pretty sure there is a perfectly clean explanation for this one – probably Judge’s own explanation. Dude is just really good at hitting, and the timing of the homer was funny.
Orrrrr maybe his bench really was detecting what pitches were coming and relaying it to Judge:
