Thursday, the baseball world exploded as the Astros cheating scandal seemingly brought itself to new heights while news broke that Carlos Beltran — a key figure in the saga — learned that he would never manage a game for the New York Mets.
Ironically, the match that helped further ignite the shitstorm surrounding the sudden mess that is the Houstons Astros, was in part done by a Twitter account that claimed to be the niece of Beltran himself.
Now the account @S0_blessed1 — which no longer exists — gained a tremendous amount of credibility by accurately predicting that Beltran would be named the new manager of the Mets back on October 29. A few days later, on November 1 reporters got wind of the report and as we would eventually see, Beltran would be hired by New York to end the speculation. Strangely enough, the handle which continued to claim to be Beltran’s niece tweeded Wednesday that Beltran would step down as manager of the Mets as a result of his connections with the Astros scandal. And low and behold, Beltran did just that the following day.
So with two major predictions that ultimately came to fruition, it seemed like Twitter had a pretty credible source here to go by as the MLB offseason continued to burn. And likewise, the lastest claim that continued to throw gasoline on the fire was @S0_blessed1 making the accusation that Astros players were using buzzers tapped underneath their uniforms to help gain information on upcoming pitches in real-time.
What is this?!??! #astros #buzzergate https://t.co/3Jk4spiuJz pic.twitter.com/nTAhZ9HSJM
— JoezMcfly🇩🇴 (@JoezMcfLy) January 16, 2020
So I guess this is the next major bombshell to be dropped on the Astros, which odds are will be true given the source, right?
Well as far as @S0_blessed1 being Beltran’s niece, that has been put to bed with the actual person behind the handle being exposed.
According to Larry Brows Sports, the @S0_blessed1 was actually a burner account for an online sports gambler and “rumor monger” who goes by the name “Incarcerated Bob”.
Incarcerated Bob is a phony name for a person who is involved in running a sports gambling operation online. Bob, who is also a caller to “The Michael Kay Show,” has several different Twitter accounts and uses them for various purposes. Sometimes he uses some of his “burners” to defend his main account in an effort to make the “Incarcerated Bob” character seem more credible. Sometimes he gives out one gambling pick from one Twitter account, but the opposing team as the pick from another Twitter account. He’s a total phony and fraud, and it benefits him to spread fake news and rumors online because idiots share/retweet the information, and Bob picks up followers. Bob then can turn those idiots into customers.
Not only that, back in March, Twitter sleuths were able to unveil the @S0_blessed1 account as being another burner page for Incarcerated Bob while called him out for his bullshit.
And when you actually look back on the Beltran hiring and firing, it’s not like those claims were some major breakthrough predictions. I mean there was already speculation that the Mets were interested in Beltran and it seemed like a plausible move given the successes of young managers around the League in recent years. Nor was the prediction of his stepping down some grandiose divination considering what had already happened in Houston with the likes of A.J. Hinch and in Boston with Alex Cora.
So I guess the buzzergate was a bunch of BS right?
Well maybe not…
Unfortunately for the Astros, Incarcerated Bob wasn’t the only one making claims that Houston furthered their cheating operation to onfield buzzers. That was a major point in a Joel Sherman article back in November. Trevor Bauer even piggybacked on the Sherman notion after first suspecting the Astros cheated back in 2018.
IN any sense it’s funny to read A.J. Hinch’s response to Bauer’s 2018 accusations now as it’s aged like a bad Donald Trump tweet from before his presidency…
“I roll my eyes at it,” Hinch said in response. “But I do think people need to sweep their own front porch and deal with their own situations more than throw allegations around that are unfounded. I don’t know if it’s a personal vendetta or if he’s got a problem with things.
“In this situation, it’s time to get to baseball. We’ll have to deal with it again when he comes next week because he’s decided to make himself front and center on dealing with baseball curiosities. Our guys are pretty good. They don’t need to be thrown under the bus like that.”
