Veteran catcher Jonathan Lucroy said Thursday he knew the Astros were stealing signs a couple of years ago and explained the lengths he had to go to try to fool Houston.
“I knew about that two years ago, that it was going on,” Lucroy, who played for three AL West teams from 2016-2019, told reporters. “I know it just recently came out, but everybody in baseball, especially in that division who played against them, we were all aware of the Astros doing those things. It was up to us to outsmart them, I guess you could say, which is kind of hard when you have a computer program that breaks your signs.”
Lucroy, who had stints with the Oakland Athletics, Texas Rangers and Los Angeles Angels during that time period, said the teams he played on were forced to change signs on “almost every pitch.”
“We actively changed signs,” said Lucroy, who signed a one-year deal with the Boston Red Sox earlier this week. “You had to because they had them — they would relay them to second base. They were stealing them from first, too, from between your legs. They had a very intricate system going on. We were well aware of it. It was a challenge. It was a mental challenge to really overcome that. It’s easier said than done. It’s a shame.”
Lucroy said he was glad this came to light because it was “getting out of hand,” but added that once they were able to figure out how the Astros were cheating, they were able to use it against them.
Jonathan LucroyGetty Images“There were times they were on every single pitch, and you’re like, ‘How are they doing this? How is this happening?’ ” said Lucroy, who added he never heard the banging of a trash can during the times he played the Astros. “When we found out how, it was like, we got to change up signs a lot, and we did, and the swings actually got worse whenever we started to change the signs up all the time.”
Lucroy also said Mike Fiers, who blew the whistle in November to The Athletic regarding the Astros’ sign stealing, informed him of Houston’s tactics once they became teammates in Oakland in 2018.
That inside information Fiers provided led Lucroy to create even more intricate sign-calling patterns to preemptively fight off any cheating tactics used by the Astros. Working with different pitchers called for different tactics as well.
Lucroy said all the extra sign protections placed a heavy burden on the pitchers.
“[Pitchers] don’t want to sit there and try to think about decoding your signs and thinking about your indicators and all the different things that you’re doing,” said Lucroy, a 10-year veteran. “They want to sit there and just worry about executing. Some guys can handle it and some guys can’t. It was very difficult to do.”
Lucroy said the A’s reported their concerns about the Astros to Major League Baseball, adding the league talked with Houston about Oakland’s concerns, but didn’t look at it “real hard” until Fiers blew the whistle.
Lucroy’s memory of the action by the A’s is backed up by what Oakland general manager David Forst told The Mercury News about team complaining to the league before the scandal broke.
Lucroy also told reporters there is no easy fix to stop teams from trying to gain an edge by stealing signs and is skeptical new technology that would allow pitchers and catchers to communicate wouldn’t be breached by an opposing team.
“[MLB has] talked about the earpieces, the radio transmitters, but the thing is, someone is going to hack into that, too,” Lucroy said. “There’s some kind of CIA-spy thing out there where someone will figure something out. I don’t know. We’ve talked about it as a union, amongst ourselves as players, and there’s got to be something we can do to make it easier. The NFL does it with their quarterbacks. There must be something we can do.”
