Sign stealing was a Sports and recreation good articles nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There may be suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.
Article milestones Date Process Result June 29, 2020 Good article nominee Not listed
	A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on December 30, 2019. The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that in baseball, it is not against the rules to steal signs?

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The sources about the 2017 Yankees and Chris Young back my edits, which I even quoted. The 2017 USA Today source even notes how the Yankees were fined.[1]2601:447:4100:C120:1D46:C56A:2D98:BAC2 (talk) 21:58, 4 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

This review is transcluded from Talk:Sign stealing/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Larry Hockett (talk · contribs) 04:04, 6 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I'll be glad to take this review and will begin with some section-by-section feedback. Larry Hockett (Talk) 04:04, 6 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Lead

• Early in the article you discuss two types of sign stealing (third base coach and catcher), but the lead section acknowledges only that signs can be stolen from the catcher.

Addressed. Ghinga7 (talk) 20:15, 12 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• A big chunk of the body is devoted to the history of sign stealing, but that appears not to be addressed in the lead.

Added a sentence and a source... is this enough? Ghinga7 (talk) 20:15, 12 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It's relatively weak as a summary of the article, but at least it's better. Larry Hockett (Talk) 23:57, 12 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Legality

• "may be answered with a brushback pitch" - I would state more explicitly that the pitcher will throw a brushback pitch to retaliate; "answered" is likely to be unclear to the non-fan.

Done.

• Could we reword the last sentence of this section? I don't believe in nitpicking wording to death, but the end of this sentence is not very straightforward; it sounds like replay officials and managers are chatting about ways to reduce sign stealing.

I don't see anything that suggests that... If you want, though, I could change it if you have a specific wording in mind. I just don't see how that could be uncomplicated any more. Ghinga7 (talk) 23:05, 6 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

”Before the 2019 season, in an effort to reduce illicit sign stealing, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred...” Larry Hockett (Talk) 10:22, 7 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I still don't see anything that suggests that. What would you like it changed to? Ghinga7 (talk) 20:41, 12 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure what you mean by "suggests that". If you start the sentence like I suggested a couple of lines above, I think you'll be fine. Larry Hockett (Talk) 23:57, 12 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Ah. I misunderstood what you said. I'll get right on it. Ghinga7 (talk) 01:09, 13 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

 Done Ghinga7 (talk) 02:59, 13 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

19th century

• Unlike the 21st century incidents mentioned later, these 19th century incidents are not very well fleshed out. What happened to the suspects in these incidents? How long were these practices thought to have lasted? Are there any available details?

Funny... Muboshgu said pretty much the same thing. I'll probably finish that tomorrow. Ghinga7 (talk) 20:41, 12 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Addressed. There wasn't much, but I scraped together some more information from the existing sources. What do you think?

There's still some very basic information missing here that is readily available in reliable sources. Here is a source describing the incident with the 1897 Phillies in better detail. I got right to it with a Google search for "1897 Phillies cheating" and surely there are others. Larry Hockett (Talk) 18:48, 20 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

20th century

• Much the same issue as the previous section. How many games (days, weeks, whatever...) are we talking about when we say the Giants stole signs to beat the Dodgers in the pennant race? The ESPN Classic source (ref #13 as of now) has a lot more info on this, including the names of the confessing players, the coach and player who were said to have served as relays, and the type of relay system.

Done. See above response.

I see where you added one sentence to this section, but that only addresses the very first piece of my feedback. Larry Hockett (Talk) 18:48, 20 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• "The only Brave player" - this seems odd (compared to "Braves player"). There are similar non-standard uses, like "Pittsburgh Pirate pitcher".

Addressed. Do you see any more.

• "40 years later" - better to begin a sentence with a word (Forty) and not a numeral.

Addressed.

21st century

• What is the source for the first sentence about the increased frequency?

• Under the 2017 Astros scandal - *"parted ways with Carlos Beltrán". Let's be more direct. Fired?

Actually, no, it says they mutually agreed to part ways in the source. So he wasn't fired, and that's the correct terminology. Ghinga7 (talk) 22:16, 6 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

We should update the WP prose to indicate that Beltrán and the Mets agreed to part ways (rather than a unilateral decision). Larry Hockett (Talk) 10:22, 7 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• Same sentence - there is a lowercase astros and there is a comma immediately before a parenthesis (after Carlos Beltrán).

• "to discuss sign stealing improvements" - Clarify what that means.

• I think the Astros and Red Sox headings should be formatted in a similar style. Maybe just year, city, and team name for both?

• Current ref #27 is a dead link and is even tagged as such in the reference list.

• What is the significance of "9:57 PM ET" in ref #28?

• Ref #33 - a date is listed where the author normally is.

• The discussion of Chris Young seems to assume that the reader is familiar with a previous Apple Watch scheme, but I don't think that allegations of this scheme are explicitly discussed anywhere.

• On a similar note, there is "the Red Sox were implicated in another sign stealing scandal", but this is the first we're hearing of a scandal in Boston. There are several other sign stealing incidents mentioned in the January 2020 SI source.

• The reader may wonder whether Dombrowski's dismissal was related to internal knowledge of the scandal before it was made public.

• "The same year, a phone conversation" - The section title indicates 2018, but 2017 and 2020 are mentioned in the previous paragraph, so clarify the timing of this.

• In the same sentence, it sounds like you want to say that MLB (not the Rothschild phone call) revealed the issue with the phone call. In general, on WP we focus way too much on when things were revealed though.

• Clarify that Nothing Personal is a podcast, link David Samson, and at least provide a year for the statement.

• Are there other notable reactions? Include the ones that have received multiple mentions in independent reliable sources.

Notable sign stealers

• It sounds odd to say that many players have been considered the best. If it is many, what have those three players done to warrant their names being mentioned here without further explanation?

I don't know about the other 2, but Del Baker was practically famous all throughout baseball during his time as manager because of sign stealing. Pitchers hated playing against Baker's teams because of it.

That would be good info to add for Baker if we can source it adequately, but we cannot wash our hands of the other two at a GA review. I think one of the issues is that you discuss legal and illegal means of stealing signs in the same article, so for BLP reasons, we really shouldn't just throw names out there and label them sign stealers. If you can describe what they were said to have been doing (using reliable sources), let's do that. The SI source has several paragraphs on the specific nature of Nossek's (legal) sign stealing. As it reads right now, this is one of the weakest sections of the article. It probably needs a new section heading, because more than half the content is actually about people who had objections to sign stealing. Larry Hockett (Talk) 18:48, 20 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• The New York Post (which is listed as no consensus as far as reliability at WP:RSP) suggests that Baker stole signs, but then it just mentions Baker picking up on a hesitation before a particular pitcher would throw a breaking ball. Are there other sources that speak to Baker's actual sign stealing?

I think it would be fine for something non-politics related, but I also added a reference from "The Glory of their Times."

• Worthington is described in the SI source as being deeply religious, but it doesn't explicitly state that his religious convictions were what led him to object to cheating. It also doesn't mention anything about Christianity.

• We need a source for Herzog being known to complain about this. He managed for ~28 years and it looks like the source mentions two times that he complained but it doesn't say to me that he had a reputation for doing so.

• "put a Texas Ranger or somebody out there" - usually we don't link inside a quote, but I wonder if there is some other way to clarify that he meant the law enforcement group and not a Texas Rangers player.

Since there is a relatively large amount of feedback here, I'll take another look at the entry once the above has been addressed. Good luck - and thank you for your efforts to improve baseball articles on Wikipedia. Larry Hockett (Talk) 08:07, 6 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Ghinga7 - Could you let me know what your plan is for addressing the rest of this feedback? I am okay with extending a review beyond the suggested seven-day period if there is significant progress being made, but it doesn't look like much is being done on this one, even 11 days after the feedback was posted. With the amount of work still left to do, it may make more sense to close this nomination, work on it outside the time constraints of a GA review, and then re-nominate it. Let me know what you think. I appreciate your interest in the entry either way. Larry Hockett (Talk) 13:37, 17 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hey Larry Hockett! Sorry for not responding in a while, have been kind of busy. I plan on addressing the rest of the 19th and 20th centuries today. I would like to keep this open for a couple more days, and if I don't do anything substantial, you could fail. Thanks for your patience! Ghinga7 (talk) 17:13, 18 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Also pinging Muboshgu, who created the article. They might be able to help with some of the things on this list. Ghinga7 (talk) 17:55, 18 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Ghinga7, I'll check in on this this week if I can. Haven't read through the review yet. – Muboshgu (talk) 17:54, 22 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I'm going to close this review since we have been going for more than three weeks and still have a significant amount of unaddressed feedback from the review. This is nothing personal; in fact, it's mostly out of respect for the nominators of other articles in the GAN backlog. This article is an important addition to WikiProject Baseball. I appreciate the nominator's interest in improving the coverage of baseball on WP.

Before re-nominating this for GA, I hope a potential nominator will consider my review feedback above. Some of the feedback should be simple to address, but some of it is going to require more work - rewriting certain passages to make them consistent with the references, adding some basic details (with sourcing) of the early incidents (see WP:RECENTISM), and figuring out how to organize the later sections of the article (such as the section on notable sign stealers that includes people who are said to have been opposed to sign stealing). After making such adjustments, a WP:GOCE request may be helpful before another GA review. Larry Hockett (Talk) 04:50, 29 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

In light of the Michigan Wolverines football sign-stealing scandal currently sweeping the college football headlines, this current baseball article needs to be expanded or disambiguated from the sign stealing in gridiron football and possibly other sports.

PK-WIKI (talk) 04:53, 21 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]