A fan of both the Red Sox and Apple said he was disappointed.

“It’s embarrassing – it’s an odd sport in that cheating is legal as long as you get away with it, but using technology is over the line,” said Seth Lieberman, a Boston resident and Red Sox fan and chief executive of SnapApp, which creates content for marketers. “Both the Red Sox and Apple Watch are striking out.”

A Yankees fan used stronger language: “Debacle,” said Richard Ting, a Brooklyn resident raised not far from Yankee Stadium in the Bronx. “It leaves a bad taste in our mouths in terms of what levels Boston teams are stooping to to win games,” he said.

But, curious about what happened, Mr. Ting spent part of Wednesday conducting an experiment with a colleague’s Apple Watch. They timed how quickly a text from an iPhone could reach the watch and be relayed to a third party.

“If they really wanted to do it right, the batter could have just had an Apple Watch on his arm with vibrations to signal a fastball or an off-speed pitch, instead of having a middle man on the bench,” said Mr. Ting, an executive at a design and advertising firm

Apple declined to comment.

The company need not worry about the latest news affecting sales, analysts said. The third iteration of the Apple Watch is expected on Sept. 12, with LTE cellular data capacity and improved battery life.