St. Louis Cardinals catcher Yadier Molina showed off a great example of legal sign stealing in Saturday’s game against the San Francisco Giants.
With runners at the corners and two out in the fifth inning of Saturday’s game, Molina pulled a veteran move and caught the Giants trying to steal. Molina could be seen casually glancing toward the Giants’ dugout, where he seemingly took note of the signs manager Gabe Kapler was relaying. Aware that something was up, Molina called for a standing pitchout and easily threw out Joc Pederson at second to end the inning.
The Giants’ TV broadcast broke down what Molina was seeing and how he reacted.
Even if Molina didn’t have the exact steal sign the Giants were using, he was probably aware that something was up just from the activity. He was also savvy enough to catch on without the Giants becoming aware that he was onto them. There is absolutely nothing illegal about that, and in this sort of scenario, it falls upon the Giants to be more careful with their signs.
Sign-stealing is enough of an issue in the game that MLB has proposed a number of actions to curb it. None of them would have deterred Molina here, though. That’s just baseball IQ.
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