Analysis: Baseball has become a prisoner of technology

NEW YORK (AP) — Technology unleashed baseball's Analytics Era, and now it's holding the sport prisoner.

AJ Hinch, Alex Cora and Carlos Beltrán are casualties, a triple play of hubris. At the cutting edge with the Houston Astros, now they have been cut. Their sign-stealing system exposed, all three managers were deposed within a whirlwind 72 hours this week that raised questions about the prevalence of the sport's rule breakers.

What's next in a game grappling with innovation and plagued by paranoia?

Video rooms and dugouts are now monitored by Major League Baseball, like proctors pacing an exam room to stifle students' temptation to cheat. Bench and bullpen telephones are monitored, Big Brother in the commissioner's office listening in to assure compliance. Television feeds in clubhouses were ordered to be delayed by a minimum 8 seconds last year to prevent prying eyes from decoding signals in real time.

Should hitters be blocked from reviewing their plate appearances between at-bats? Sure, it helps them detect flaws in their approach. But they also might see a sequence of the catcher's fingers that tip pitches.

These are the types of questions MLB executives in the sport's new Rockefeller Center offices are thinking about as spring training approaches. Commissioner Rob Manfred's one-season suspensions of Hinch and Houston general manager Jeff Luhnow signaled the harsh repercussions.

"It's a serious problem for baseball, the merging of technology and an ancient game. It seems to me that cheating — and this was clearly cheating — had to be stepped on very firmly," former Commissioner Fay Vincent said. "Technology presents a challenge as well as an opportunity, and it also seems to me that cheating has become endemic throughout our culture, and this is a very...