president of baseball operations Paul DePodesta<\/a> and general manager Josh Byrnes. Multiple sources briefed on the matter said that both organizations believe Prinstein acted on his own initiative and that the Angels are not facing any punishment from the league.<\/p>\nThe Rockies won the series between the two clubs, which own the worst records in their respective leagues. The Angels declined to comment on the situation, and the team\u2019s pro scouting director, Derek Watson, did not respond to a request for comment. The Rockies and MLB both declined to comment.<\/p>\n
Prinstein did not respond to multiple interview requests via phone call, text message, email and his social media accounts. The 42-year-old, who owns the handle @TheBaseballSpy on X, locked the account following The Athletic\u2019s attempt to speak with him on Friday.<\/p>\n
He spent the past two years with two different Korean Baseball Organization teams and, according to his LinkedIn profile, as a consultant for Scouts Consulting Group LLC during the same time period. When The Athletic called the consultancy, a representative said no one with Prinstein\u2019s name worked there, and a web page with his name and bio added to the group\u2019s site in May 2025 is no longer active. Multiple messages for the Scouts Consulting Group founder went unreturned.<\/p>\n
The Angels had added Prinstein\u2019s position this season. According to the team\u2019s media guide, the club employed five pro scouts in 2025, but six in 2026. Before his time with the Angels, Prinstein last worked for an MLB club in 2023 as an international scout with the Cincinnati Reds.<\/p>\n
Before that, Prinstein wrote freelance articles and had a short-lived podcast called \u201cThe Baseball Spy.\u201d The show had two episodes on iTunes, one of which talked about the Houston Astros sign-stealing scandal that rocked baseball in November 2019. Prinstein explicitly discussed the ban on recording technology, agreeing with his co-host that there was a \u201chuge difference\u201d between trying to steal signs legally with your eyes and Houston using a live camera feed and an audio cue to relay signs to players.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt seems there needs to be a line drawn. And there is. There\u2019s a (MLB) memo that went out. There\u2019s a rule that says you can\u2019t use technology,\u201d Prinstein said. \u201cTo do this, it\u2019s more like spying.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s unclear who exactly Prinstein was filming on the Rockies, or for what purpose. Colorado was, at the time, calling pitches from the dugout \u2014 a practice that requires coaches to relay signs.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey can try,\u201d Rockies pitching coach Alon Leichman told The Athletic when asked in spring about teams attempting to steal signs. \u201cIt\u2019d be absolutely hilarious if they tried.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Athletic spoke to scouts from four different organizations, all of whom said there\u2019s no legal reason to film during a game since today\u2019s televised broadcasts offer a plethora of angles and teams possess the technology to upload and analyze those as they see fit.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf a guy goes to his glove a little bit more when he\u2019s about to throw a cutter, we can see that,\u201d said one American League scout, who spoke anonymously because he was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. \u201cSo, unless you\u2019re trying to cheat, there\u2019s no good reason to have your phone out videoing. This isn\u2019t 2014. Every team, even the Angels, has the technology to upload and analyze the broadcast.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2014 Dennis Lin contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A pro scout for the Los Angeles Angels who calls himself \u201cThe Baseball Spy\u201d was fired earlier this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":814560,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,5259,5262,591,85,3276],"class_list":["post-814559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-colorado-rockies","tag-los-angeles-angels","tag-mlb","tag-sports","tag-sports-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/814559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=814559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/814559\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/814560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=814559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=814559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=814559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}