TORONTO – Accusations of sign stealing at the Rogers Centre resurfaced Tuesday when Kansas City Royals right-hander Edinson Volquez said that teammate Johnny Cueto believed the Toronto Blue Jays knew what was coming in their Game 3 win.
Cueto was blasted for eight runs on six hits and four walks over two-plus innings in Monday’s 11-8 thumping. He and catcher Salavador Perez kept meeting on the mound whenever the Blue Jays had a man on second base.
“Johnny said last night, but that’s your fault,” Volquez, the Game 1 winner slated to start Game 5 on Wednesday, said Tuesday when asked about sign stealing. “You’ve got to hide the ball and have better communication with the catcher giving you signs when you’re pitching. So there’s nothing wrong with it. We just have to hide the ball and give multiple signs to hide it from them.”
Manager John Gibbons once again denied any wrongdoing in an oft-levelled accusation hurled at the Blue Jays by visiting teams. The New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox both use multiple sets of signs whenever they play in Toronto.
“We don’t do any of that. We’re here to play baseball,” said Gibbons. “We’ve had guys come and go over the years and even when guys have come back and they’ve had an axe to grind that’s never been an issue.”
In 2011, an ESPN story accused the Blue Jays of having a man in white in centre field that relayed signs and locations to hitters. At the time, GM Alex Anthopoulos said the staff at ESPN “don’t have their facts.”
That hasn’t prevented the suspicion from becoming baseball’s Loch Ness Monster, an enduring myth some simply won’t let go. According to Volquez, Cueto certainly believes in the beast.
“He said last night they got a guy in centre field,” relayed Volquez, who is skeptical about the practice. “You see how hard it is, he looks to centre field and he sees somebody do this or do that – it’s really hard to do that. I don’t know, he said that. But when a guy gets on second base, he said something about that, too, they were giving signs to the hitter. But I don’t know.”
Sign-stealing has been a part of the game forever, which is part of the reasons teams go to such lengths to disguise their signals. Some of the best players in the game also happen to be most adept at picking up signs.
Still, Volquez feels sign stealing is more of a concern at the Rogers Centre than any other park.
“That’s what I hear,” he said. “Most of the teams come here – we’ve got a lot of friends on different teams – they always say that, they give the signs or whatever it is, but I don’t go crazy with it. I just want to pitch my own game. You can tell if you’re good or not when you’re pitching, the way they take the pitches, and maybe the guy moving to second base or whatever it is, but I don’t keep that in my mind.”
