Sign stealing didn’t start with the Houston Astros scandal. Teams have looked to get a read on an opponent’s signs for as long as baseball has been played. But the NCAA is going to extra lengths to curb that practice, and it’s already a lot to handle for the baseball traditionalists out there.

New for the 2022 college baseball season, teams are allowed to utilize one-way electronic communication to signal pitches. We saw that in action this weekend with college baseball powerhouse Vanderbilt using electronic wristbands that showed a pitch call entered in from the dugout.

The whole idea behind the new tech was to keep the game on a level playing ground. You can’t have a runner on second base relaying the catcher’s signs to the batter if the catcher no longer has to show a sign at all.

Here's the video

It’s definitely going to take some getting used to.

With Vanderbilt, all nine players were wearing the electronic wristbands to remain on the same page. But unless there’s a mechanism to shake off a pitch call, this system seemingly places full autonomy on pitch calls to the coach in the dugout. So, there are some questions about how useful the system actually will prove to be or how susceptible it is to hacking.

And it wasn’t just Vanderbilt utilizing one-way tech. Florida State had its catcher wearing an earpiece to get the pitch calls from the dugout.

Understandably, baseball fans had plenty of thoughts about the increased technology in the college game.

This was how Twitter reacted

We’ll have to see if MLB is open to this in the future, but I wouldn’t count on it.