The New York Yankees lost a crucial appeal regarding the team’s surreptitious letter involving MLB commissioner Rob Manfred. The letter concerns an array of accusations regarding dishonest conduct dating as far back as 2017 and concerns the New York Yankees as well as the Boston Red Sox.
We are now finding out why the New York Yankees fought so hard to not have this letter released.
According to the Houston Chronicle, the Yankees stole signs in 2015-2016 and were fined $100,000.
Via the report:
“Major League Baseball fined the New York Yankees $100,000 in 2017 for using their replay room and dugout phone to steal their opponent’s signs during the 2015 and 2016 seasons in what commissioner Rob Manfred described as a “material violation” of rules governing the replay room.
The two-page document provided few specifics and rehashed much of what Manfred already acknowledged in a Sept. 15, 2017 statement, one in which he disciplined the Red Sox for using their replay room to decode signs and warned “future violations of this type will be subject to more serious sanctions, including the possible loss of draft picks.”
According to the letter, a Yankees baseball operations assistant admitted to league investigators that he provided information about opponent’s signs to members of the team’s replay room during the 2015 and 2016 seasons.
Click on ‘Follow Us’ and get notified of the most viral MLB stories via Google! Follow Us
“The staff in the replay room “physically relayed the information” to the Yankees dugout, but the letter did not specify how it happened. The team also tried its tactics during road games, according to the letter. At ballparks where the dugout was farther from the replay room, the Yankees sometimes used a dugout phone line to “orally provide real-time information” about the opponent’s signs, the letter said.
Manfred wrote that the Yankees’ wrongdoing “constitutes a material violation of the replay review regulations” and had “the same objective of the Red Sox’s scheme that was the subject of the Yankees complaint.”
Manfred’s letter basically revealed electronic sign-stealing predated the Astros’ infamous trashcan banging scheme and many players have since confirmed that, which is why not many of them are upset about it.
“If the Astros were the only team doing it, then yeah, give (the 2017 World Series championship) back — take it back. I know for a fact they weren’t,” Red Sox ace Chris Sale said earlier this month. “All these people pointing fingers: Well, hey, take a check in the mirror real quick. Make sure that you and your team weren’t doing something.”
Both the 2017 Astros and 2018 Red Sox were cited for sign-stealing schemes that originated in the team’s replay room.
Manfred ruled in January 2020 that the Houston Astros violated rules against electronic sign-stealing during home games en route to their World Series title in 2017 and again in 2018. He suspended manager A.J. Hinch and general manager Jeff Luhnow for one season each, and both were fired by the team.
Manfred fined the Red Sox in 2017 for using Apple Watches to pass along signals and fined the Yankees a lesser amount for improper use of a dugout telephone in an earlier year.
