I mean that makes sense, but didn't they find some pretty incriminating emails and text messages when they went on that witch hunt in Houston back in early 2020? Not that I'm expecting any great, vindicating revelation from this letter.
For me, I expect the letter to only confirm what smart baseball people already knew, which was the Yankees (along with several other teams) implemented some sort of tech based sign stealing system, and that Manfred zeroed in on the Astros in order to protect his big market cash cows. ESPN and other media will immediately use their best efforts bury the story or push the narrative that the Yankees system "wasn't as egregious" as what the Astros did, just as they did with the Red Sox investigation which was released on the eve of the NFL draft (what a coincidence, the NFL draft is coming up now too) and pinned on a rogue replay manager. The very notion that some form of tech based sign stealing is worse than other tech based sign stealing is flat out absurd. What Manfed should've done was roll out gradual safeguards on a league wide level once he learned tech based sign stealing was becoming popular, kind of like how they check for spidertack now. That would've been a much more graceful approach.
He's happy to run his mouth about the significant reputational harm that came to the Astros. If he's so afraid of it for his yankees, he shouldn't run his mouth about anyone else.
The only thing that disappointed me was that Hinch couldn't get them to stop but I never felt it 'tainted' anything because it's a long season players get bored, spidey tack this, syringe needle that, sneak in a juiced baseball here. Every single time there is a scandal in baseball it's always league wide pandemic.
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 ruling was in a letter that Manfred sent to Yankees general manager Brian Cashman on Sept. 14, 2017. A copy of the letter was obtained by the Chronicle. The letter’s revelation came after the 2nd US Court of Appeals last week denied to rehear an appeal from the Yankees to keep it sealed. The letter was obtained during the discovery phase of a $5 million class-action lawsuit brought by DraftKings players against Major League Baseball, the Astros and Boston Red Sox in the wake of the sign-stealing revelations in early 2020. 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.” The Astros continued to use their electronic sign-stealing scheme and trashcan banging at Minute Maid Park despite the warnings. Owner Jim Crane fired manager A.J. Hinch and general manager Jeff Luhnow after the system became public in Jan. 2020. The league also fined the franchise $5 million and took away its first and second-round draft picks in 2020 and 2021. Manfred’s letter to Cashman helped to reinforce two long-held beliefs: electronic sign-stealing predated the Astros’ infamous trashcan banging scheme and ran rampant throughout the sport before stricter enforcement arrived in Sept. 2017. Multiple players across baseball have acknowledged it since the Astros’ punishments were levied and they became pariahs. "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." Sale joined the Red Sox in 2017, the same season the Yankees alleged Boston had violated the league’s electronic sign-stealing rules by illegally using an Apple Watch. In a letter dated Sept. 14, 2017, Manfred wrote to Cashman that, within the course of the league’s investigation into the Red Sox, an unnamed Boston player told investigators the Yankees used a similar scheme to decode signs. 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. The staffer’s name is redacted in the letter. The Boston player, who had played for the Yankees earlier in his career, is also not named. 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.” In his public statement on Sept. 15, 2017, Manfred acknowledged that the Yankees “had violated a rule governing the use of the dugout phone” during a season prior to 2017. “The substance of the communications that took place on the dugout phone was not a violation of any rule or regulation in and of itself,” Manfred said in that announcement. “Rather, the violation occurred because the dugout phone technically cannot be used for such a communication.” Both the 2017 Astros and 2018 Red Sox were cited for sign-stealing schemes that originated in the team’s replay room. The Astros ran a far more egregious operation: positioning a camera in center field at Minute Maid Park, pointing it at the catcher and banging trashcans to relay the signs he flashed to Houston hitters. The 2018 Red Sox scheme was “far more limited in scope and impact,” according to the league’s findings. Alex Cora, Boston’s manager that season, incurred a one-year suspension for only his actions as the Astros’ bench coach in 2017. Cora returned to manage the Red Sox in 2021. Following the 2018 season, in response to concerns permeating the game, Major League Baseball implemented a stricter sign-stealing policy and protocols at all of its ballparks. The league put video room monitors to patrol areas around the clubhouse, replay room and dugout in search of any nefarious activity.
We've long reached the point where Boston's scheme is considered by the media to be consistent with MLB norms and thus a nonissue. There are acceptable and unacceptable ways to break the same rule, and unfortunately the Astros fall into the latter category. Interesting though that the letter confirms Beltran's assertion regarding being "behind the times."
Uhh... maybe because what the Astros were caught doing WAS more egregious than what the Yankees and Red Sox were caught doing?
The letter indicates the Yankees were doing it on the road and there's zero evidence the Astros ever stole signs on the road. How can you say one way is more egregious than the other?
It's what we expected. BSPN takes an indisputable rules violation by the Yankees and turns it into a hit piece against the Astros. Absolute garbage reporting.
