I’m on the Line app in a sports chat with a bunch of Yankees and Dodgers fans. I am trolling the **** out of them right now.
Yankees up in arms over release of letter allegedly showing ‘serious’ sign-stealing The details of Rob Manfred’s letter to the Yankees regarding the findings of a 2017 investigation into the club’s alleged sign-stealing program may not be much of a secret after all. While a judge ruled Friday that the letter should be unsealed, multiple industry sources confirmed it concerns the sign-stealing the Yankees did via a replay monitor — which former Yankee Mark Teixeira described to The Post’s Joel Sherman in February. Teixeira said the Yankees used modern technology for “old-school” benefits. The former first baseman, who played in pinstripes from 2009-2016, said a few Yankees players and coaches used replay monitors to decipher a sequence or indicator and would share it with teammates, though not in real time. When a runner would get to second base, he was told to check if the catcher was keeping the same signs, and if he was, the runner could then alert the hitter. “This is what every team has done over the past few years with video rooms being close to the dugout and [it is] not against the rules,” Teixiera said. Rules regarding the use of electronics to steal signs were updated after the 2017 season, which led to the Astros and Red Sox getting punished this offseason for more recent violations. The Yankees and MLB reportedly have until noon on Monday to submit a “minimally redacted version of the letter,” though the Yankees argued it would cause “significant reputational injury,” U.S. District Court Judge Jed Rakoff wrote in an order, according to The Athletic. The letter is set to be unsealed June 19 and the Yankees are expected to file an emergency appeal. Rakoff’s ruling is tied to a lawsuit filed by DraftKings players against MLB, the Astros and Red Sox for allegedly defrauding them with their respective sign-stealing programs. Rakoff dismissed the suit in April, but the plaintiffs have since appealed the case to the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals, which has suddenly dragged the Yankees into it — leading to MLB feeling that the judge has gone beyond his scope. Three years before the Astros became the face of illegal sign-stealing, MLB had investigated the Yankees and Red Sox for alleged violations. The Yankees were only fined an undisclosed amount for improper use of a dugout phone during a previous season, while the Red Sox were also fined an undisclosed amount for allegedly using Apple Watches to relay stolen signs. But the DraftKings plaintiffs are now alleging “that the 2017 Press Release falsely suggested that the investigation found that the Yankees had only engaged in a minor technical infraction, whereas, according to plaintiffs, the investigation had in fact found that the Yankees engaged in a more serious, sign-stealing scheme,” Rakoff wrote Friday, per The Athletic. In a statement to The Athletic, Yankees lawyer Jonathan Schiller wrote “there is no justification for public disclosure of the letter. The plaintiff has no case anymore, and the court held that what MLB wrote in confidence was irrelevant to the court’s dismissal of the plaintiff’s case. Under established law, this supports the Yankees’ right to confidentiality required by the Commissioner of Baseball.” “It is the Yankees’ understanding that the press release about the investigation reflects the Commissioner’s final determinations. Those determinations were that the Yankees had committed a technical violation of MLB’s rules by misusing the dugout phone. The Yankees were not found to have violated any rule involving sign stealing. The press release is accurate and states MLB’s conclusions.” A Yankees official also told The Athletic, “We’re not doing this to cover up some smoking gun.” MLB punished the Astros in January after finding the club used electronics to steal catchers’ signs in real time when they won the World Series in 2017 and parts of the next season. MLB’s second investigation into the Red Sox finally wrapped up in April, though their illegal sign-stealing was pinned on their video replay operator. After getting slammed for their cheating, current Astros players were plenty interested in Rakoff’s Friday ruling. “Wait… what? ….?” shortstop Carlos Correa tweeted, mocking what Aaron Judge tweeted when allegations about the Astros’ cheating first surfaced. –Additional reporting by Ken Davidoff https://nypost.com/2020/06/13/yanke...w&utm_source=NYPTwitter&utm_medium=SocialFlow
“The commissioner requires that confidentiality be maintained by teams that participate in baseball’s investigations, as the Yankees did here,” Schiller said Saturday afternoon. “We would be out of line by permitting a letter to the Yankees submitted in a court case under seal by the commissioner to be disclosed. That would cause issues in terms of our obligations to the league to follow its rules, which we did.” Rakoff contended any potential “embarrassment” toward the Yankees is “not particularly weighty.” “Much of the letter’s contents have already been revealed in the 2017 press release,” Rakoff wrote in his decision. “Furthermore, embarrassment on the part of MLB or the Yankees about the precise contents of the letter is not particularly weighty, and the privacy interests of any individuals mentioned in the letter may be remedied by minimal redaction.“ “We think that the press release is accurate, in terms of what the commissioner concluded in his examination of the Yankees,” Schiller said. “We believe if you call the commissioner up and ask him, he’ll confirm that.” “The press release about the investigation reflects the commissioner’s final determinations. As he said in the press release, the Yankees had committed a technical violation of his rules by misusing the dugout phone. He did not find that the Yankees had violated any rule involving sign-stealing and the press release reflects that. We have said, the Yankees have said, that the press release is accurate and reflects the commissioner’s conclusions.”
So this is like the same exact situation the Astrons found themselves in. You have a former player detailing the manner and method in which players and coaches used technology to steal signs and relay that information to the hitter. What more more do you need to see that this issue is not exclusive to the Astros alone?! Sure the team may have taken it a step further by relaying information in real-time to the batter, and they did it after the league said to stop. But cheating is still cheating. So stop with the sanctimonious bs already. I would not be surprised at all though if gets barely a mention, just like the Red Sox.
Spoiler A letter sent by MLB commissioner Rob Manfred to the Yankees in 2017 does not allege that the Yankees participated in sign stealing, because the league concluded that the team did not steal signs, sources with direct knowledge of the investigation told SNY. On Friday, Judge Jed Rakoff ordered the letter unsealed against the Yankees wishes. The Yankees were a third party in a lawsuit brought by DraftKings players against MLB, the Houston Astros and the Boston Red Sox. The plaintiffs contended that the defendants defrauded them in various sign-stealing scandals. Rakoff dismissed the suit in April, but on Friday ordered the release of a minimally redacted version of Manfred's letter addressed to Yankees GM Brian Cashman. On Sept. 15, 2017, MLB issued a news release announcing discipline for the Red Sox for using an Apple Watch to steal signs, and for the Yankees for a violation of the replay phone in the dugout. SNY reported in January that the violation came when then-pitching coach Larry Rotshchild phoned the video replay room in 2015 or 2016 to ask if a particular pitch had been a ball or a strike. As first reported by The Athletic, Rakoff wrote that the DraftKings plaintiffs alleged that the news release "falsely suggested that the investigation found that the Yankees had only engaged in a minor technical infraction, whereas, according to plaintiffs, the investigation had in fact found that the Yankees engaged in a more serious, sign-stealing scheme." That allegation by the plaintiffs is not accurate. MLB's Department of Investigations found no evidence that the Yankees cheated in 2017, according to people with direct knowledge of the investigation. The Yankees contend that because their employees took part in a confidential process during MLB's investigation, the letter should remain confidential. The proceedings were not public, the team contends, and should not become public three years after the fact. Letters from the commissioner to the Astros and Red Sox have not been made public. "MLB required the Yankees to keep the letter confidential and the Yankees did," Jonathan Schiller, an attorney representing the Yankees, said in a statement to SNY. "MLB designated the letter as Highly Confidential under the Court's protective order in the litigation, consistent with that confidentiality." "The Yankees are not a party to the case," Schiller said in the statement. "There is no basis for the confidential Yankees letter to be disclosed or reported on in a case that was dismissed with prejudice on grounds unrelated to this letter or this press release."
The sanctimonious BS coming out of the Yankees fanbase has been galling. I am here for every last drop of blood, sweat and tears coming from these a-holes and MLB, generally. Screw every last one of these MF'ers.
I don’t give a **** about the letter. I don’t need evidence of anything. The Astros didn’t act in a vacuum and the total bullshit of players and media calling them out for it already soured me. We all know this is/was a league wide thing to various degrees but the Astros took the entire hurricane. **** everyone else.
