Sign stealing is almost as old as baseball itself, and has been part of the sport for a long time. It appears that the Astros might have taken things a bit too far.

A report from Ken Rosenthal and Evan Drellich at The Athletic details rampant sign stealing by the Astros at Minute Maid Park in 2017, the year they won the World Series said the Astros used a camera positioned in the outfield to relay opposing catcher signs to the home dugout. They had a screen in the dugout and the players would bang on a garbage can to alert the batter...one bang for a fastball, two for a curve, etc.

What's interesting is that from sign stealing to spitballs to PEDs and pine tar, baseball has long been a game rooted in the question of how much can you get away with.

But sign stealing in and of itself is playing the game the right way — technically. There is no rule, against a runner on second base signaling to the batter what pitch to expect. As a result, sign stealing is a sort of gray area; it's allowed, but done stealthily and rarely admitted to.

MLB says that sign stealing, like analyzing pitch tipping, is okay, so long as it's restricted to the field.

Have the Astros taken it too far?