As far as experience calling pitches goes….If a radio announcer with no baseball experience besides covering the games and maybe some junior high ball can predict what pitch should be coming, then a major league manager can certainly call one.

Mr Fiorentino, just because you are having a good messageboard year doesn’t mean you have earned the right to think anything other than “I SUCKED” when your posts get down-thumbed around the internet. Enjoy your small sample sized messageboard status while it lasts…because all thumbs point downward for you moving forward.

^ of course said in jest but the fact is why is this only a concern when the team is home. The players can easily afford to have a sign stealer at away games!

The suckage factor has always been off the charts for Hammels, it’s just catching up to him now!

Note to Jason: shut up. Pitch better. That is all.

which is the whole point, if you can steal em while you are on base it is fair game.

That makes sense.

5 of the 7 home runs Hammels has allowed this season have been in Toronto.

Things that make you go hmm….

Consider that the majority of catchers have been calling games their entire careers, as far back as high school in many cases, and most coaches have never had to make such decisions. Not only that, but coaches also have to manage pitch counts, defensive alignments, substitutions, their bullpens, and any number of other scenarios that may come up in a game. Maybe adding this responsibility to coaches is a bit much to ask. Joe Torre may have been notorious for his level of control, including calling pitches, he was the exception, not the rule. But what do I know, I’m just an idiot because I didn’t read into what you insinuated properly.

So could someone explain to me how the Jays were cheating on Hammel’s breaking stuff if they only managed 2 hits (a single and a double) off his offspeed stuff? I’d really like to know how the Jays cheated on the breaking balls as Hammel claims.

The BASELINE is that teams perform better at home than away. Hell, that’s true in every sport, but particularly in baseball where the fields of play actually vary significantly from stadium to stadium (and where Toronto has one of the friendlier). That doesn’t even qualify as circumstantial evidence.

And as to the different players point, one thing that AA has noted in relation to these claims is a lot of people have passed through Toronto the last few years, coaches and players both, and you don’t hear these accusations coming from them. Just opposing players/mangers bitching when they get hit.

But for the last couple of years, every time somebody gets rocked they start making this complaint, and their evidence is SOLELY a barely-masked gut thing based on their notion that the Jays shouldn’t be good enough to knock them around as hard they did. You would never hear Hammell make that complaint against the Rangers (no matter what their swings against his breaking stuff looked like), or the Yankees make that complaint about the Tigers. Instead you’d get the normal “well, just wasn’t my night, they were seeing the ball well…” cliches. But Toronto? Well hell, if we can’t steamroll them, they must be cheating, because…well, Toronto!

I watched this game too – one would have thought if they would have been stealing signs they wouldn’t have been 0 for 12 or whatever with runners on, stranding 7. Or that the man in white would have thrown Adam Lind a bone at some point.

The truth is Toronto is a damn good team who would have been a perpetual contender in most other divisions in baseball the last decade, that regularly features a lineup most years where almost every man 1 to 9 is capable of hitting 20 HRs, and though they’re streaky they can get as hot as anybody and put up numbers or long balls fast. Sorry Hammell – they just plumb sticked you.

As for the O’s pitching staff, weeel, Tough Nuts, Hammel. Next time don’t knock down Rajai Davis and he might not take you deep, son. Every other pitcher in MLB has no trouble striking that lad out on the low away pitch. Try that, sometime.

As for the Wrestlers themselves, well they’ve been seeing nothing but breaking stuff. Arencebia KILLS breaking pitches. Davis has learned to kill them too. Lawrie has seen nothing but breaking balls. He’s waiting for them now. As for E5, well throw strikes, meat. He’ll kill whatever you leave over the plate.