Nick Pivetta was tipping his pitches against the Giants in the opening game of the recent home stand. As many noted at the time, it seemed likely that Pivetta had become aware of Patrick Bailey relaying Pivetta’s pitches during Mike Yastrzemski’s at bat. Pivetta corrected the tell after a mid-at-bat Ruben Niebla mound visit. A wonderful breakdown was published Tuesday by Jomboy Media. The interesting thing about how Patrick Bailey was relaying pitches is that he appears to have been using two different signs to relay fastball versus off-speed pitch. It’s much more common for a team to only use one sign, and only relay when it is an off-speed pitch. When the hitter doesn’t see (or in some cases hear) the relay sign the pitch is presumed to be a fastball. Famously, when the Astros were caught using technology to steal signs, they would only bang the trash can when it was an off-speed pitch. This is because all teams watch out for idiosyncrasies from their opponents that may indicate they are relaying the pitch calls to the hitter. And the more signals you use to relay information, the more likely you are to be detected as Patrick Bailey was. His relay signals were:
Tugging his jersey to indicate a fastball.
Rubbing his helmet to indicate an off-speed pitch.
Both of these are well known classics from the baseball semaphore. And he was detected midway through the very first at bat in which he attempted to relay signs. In April, benches cleared between the Blue Jays and Mariners when Jose Berrios confronted Cal Raleigh about relaying his pitches. In that instance Raleigh was dangling an arm, left for off-speed, right for fastball. Much more subtle — but here too he was discovered after the first hitter he tried to relay to.
Teams try to relay signs all-the time. Sign stealing and pitch tipping are as old as the game itself, and it’s perfectly legal to steal signs or relay tipped pitches so long as there is no use of technology to get an unfair advantage in real time. But it is legal to use technology asynchronously to, say, watch every pitch Wandy Peralta has thrown this season a hundred times to try to pick up tells. Or perhaps to inventory what you know about Wandy Peralta from the three seasons he spent playing for your team.
So with that framing, take a look at a sequence during the Padres bullpen meltdown in the bottom of the 7th Tuesday. To preface, the Yankees had already scored six runs in the inning, so clearly it was not relaying Wandy Peralta’s pitches that led to most of the production of the inning. But when Austin Wells came up to bat with the bases loaded, Cody Bellinger repeated the same idiosyncratic motion, rubbing his helmet, every time Peralta was coming set to deliver an off-speed pitch. It was in fact the same signal Bailey was using last Tuesday for fastballs, but Bellinger appeared to be using it only to indicate when an off-speed pitch was coming. The classic single-signal system:
Now maybe Bellinger was just trying to polish his helmet to a mirror sheen, and it was pure coincidence he did this only before off-speed pitches. Or maybe he’s just a fidgety guy. Although on Monday Bellinger reached second base and was there for over eight minutes as four different Yankees hitters came to the plate and he never rubbed his helmet. It’s also interesting to note that Austin Wells put a ridiculously hard swing on the two-strike changeup, staying back on it perfectly and teeing off for his first dead-pull home run of the season. His bat speed of 78.7 MPH was faster than any other Yankee except Aaron Judge.
None of this proves anything. And it certainly wasn’t the reason why the Yankees won on Tuesday. But it sure was interesting.
Much was made about the Padres bullpen, supposedly the best in the league, giving up 10 runs in an inning. Two important points to consider are:
A Bullpen is not a monolith. Wandy Peralta and Adrian Morejon got lit up. None of the other bullpen arms gave up a run. Ryan Bergert actually pitched his fourth straight scoreless inning Tuesday.
When a bullpen is as good as the Padres’ has been, it is going to be relentlessly studied by opponents trying to find any possible edge. So if there are tells in the posturing, grip, mound positioning etc., the league is going to find and exploit them.
And so, while all of this is probably nothing, it’s worth a Padres staffer doing an audit of Wells’ at bat. Just to make sure. If there’s nothing there, then great. Wells got lucky. Bellinger likes a shiny helmet. But if Wandy Peralta was tipping his pitches, and the Padres can fix that, then perhaps a small amount of good will have come from the worst inning of baseball of the season.
Here’s the full sequence start to finish. You be the judge:
They also need someone on the bench to watch the runner on 2B like a hawk and recognize when this is happening so they can nip it in the bud before an inning gets out of control.