New yankee sign stealing info?

Due to the Yankees stealing signs in 2015, they will be stripped of their Wild Card loss to the Astros.

 

Spoiler

In public statements Tuesday, the Yankees and Major League Baseball both tried to remind fans that commissioner Rob Manfred did not find that the 2015-16 Yankees broke the sport’s sign-stealing rules.

This determination has been repeated over and over by the team and league — including in court, as they tried and failed to block the release of the “Yankees letter” — as though it were a decision handed down from heaven on high. As though it were so obvious that the commissioner could not have ruled otherwise.

In reality, the commissioner made a crucial choice in 2017. He chose to find that the Yankees (and the Red Sox, whom his office also investigated at the time) had not broken the sport’s rules by decoding signs in their video rooms. And as it was a choice, a different outcome was possible.

Players and staff used the video equipment in place for the sport’s new replay challenge system to figure out what opponent sign sequences were. Then, players would get that information to the dugout and to runners, who could then easily crack the catcher’s code and tell the hitter at the plate what was coming.

Yet, this behavior unto itself, Manfred decided, was not illegal.

The letter of the law in 2017 could and should have been more specific; Manfred and his people ushered in expanded replay in the sport, and should have also updated the rules prior to a problem arising. But he and his office did not anticipate the problem (and that lack of foresight in turn helped grow the issue).

Nonetheless, a rule was already on the books in 2017. It read: “The use of electronic equipment during a game is restricted. … No equipment may be used for the purpose of stealing signs or conveying information designed to give a Club an advantage.”

Video replay equipment, last we checked, draws electricity. It would not have been a stretch to say that the Yankees and Red Sox were using electronic equipment well beyond intended means and for illicit gain, and had done so in violation of the rule. It might even have been the obvious, correct evaluation.

What Manfred instead decided was that it would be a violation if the information learned in those rooms was subsequently communicated via electronics. If a wearable device got involved, such as the one the Red Sox used, or a dugout phone, such as the Yankees used.

“At that time, use of the replay room to decode signs was not expressly prohibited by MLB rules as long as the information was not communicated electronically to the dugout,” MLB said in its statement on Tuesday.

But that specificity wasn’t actually written in the rule then, either. These are all interpretations Manfred chose.

Now, Manfred could have thought it would be unfair to tell players some uses of replay video are legal, and others are not, without delineating them ahead of time. But most any device you imagine would have reasonable uses and illicit uses, and to think every single one would have to be so specifically spelled out ahead of time is a stretch. Just because a rule is broad, doesn’t mean it can’t be enforced.

Manfred’s concerns might have been more practical. This was September 2017, and the playoffs were approaching. Manfred would not have wanted to suspend players or personnel from not one, but two soon-to-be playoff teams. If he went after players, he’d be in a fight with the players’ union over punishments. And the Red Sox and Yankees have always been, let’s say, important franchises in the sport.

But don’t overlook the convenience of the decision, either. It avoids precedent. If other teams are caught doing the same thing up until September 2017, Manfred doesn’t have to punish them. And because Manfred determined that the video room behavior was not grounds for punishment, he then didn’t have to detail publicly what was going on in those rooms. He could be vague.

So in his 2017 publicly released statement, Manfred wrote that “the prevalence of technology, especially the technology used in the replay process, has made it increasingly difficult to monitor appropriate and inappropriate uses of electronic equipment.”

The commissioner said too that “our investigation revealed that Clubs have employed various strategies to decode signs that do not violate our rules.”

That hardly explained the extent of what was happening.

The Yankees letter did not reveal more than the public already knew about what the Yankees did. The Athletic reported on the Yankees’ video-room behavior in 2020. But ask a different question: How did the letter line up with what Manfred and MLB had told the world?

The commissioner’s public statement in 2017, issued at the same time as the letter, does not make clear what was going on to nearly the same extent. It was a jumbled word soup that left the reader guessing about a dugout phone, and tried to suggest that the dugout phone was just some minor matter.

“In the course of our investigation, however,” said the statement, “we learned that during an earlier championship season (prior to 2017) the Yankees had violated a rule governing the use of the dugout phone. No Club complained about the conduct in question at the time and, without prompting from another Club or my Office, the Yankees halted the conduct in question. Moreover, 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. Rather, the violation occurred because the dugout phone technically cannot be used for such a communication.”

Think about how different it would have sounded had Manfred stepped out back in 2017 and said something along the lines of, well, what he said privately in the Yankees Letter (read it in full here), which was sent to general manager Brian Cashman.

“The Yankees’ use of the dugout phone to relay information about an opposing Club’s signs during the 2015 season, and part of the 2016 season, constitutes a material violation of the Replay Review Regulations,” Manfred wrote in the letter that went public Tuesday. “By using the phone in the video review room to instantaneously transmit information regarding signs to the dugout in violation of the Regulations, the Yankees were able to provide real-time information to their players regarding an opposing Club’s sign sequence — the same objective of the Red Sox’s scheme that was the subject of the Yankees’ complaint.”

Manfred’s goal when he fined the Red Sox and Yankees was to end the behavior, and in the end, that might be where his choice to clear the Red Sox and Yankees of using the video room improperly stings the most.

Players and teams did not take Manfred’s punishment of the Yankees and Red Sox seriously. The very next year, the Red Sox used the video room to decode signs again, after they hired a manager who had come over from the 2017 Houston Astros. Inside of 2017, those Astros kept stealing signs electronically, even after the Yankees and Red Sox were fined — and continued to do so in a way that was even more egregious than video-room decoding.

Manfred’s September 2017 decision-making was a major juncture in the sport’s history, and creates an interesting what-if: Had he found the Sox and Yankees guilty for using the video rooms, and punished them more aggressively, could he have scared off other teams? Might even the Astros have knocked it off?

Above all, the Yankees letter is a reminder of a commissioner’s process. Manfred confronted a growing problem for the first time and found that two teams using their video rooms to decode signs had done so legally. That doesn’t mean the commissioner was right.

 

His assessment about the Astros method "as more egregious" doesn't make any sense especially given his whole argument. All 3 teams cheated by using video to steal signs. The exact methods differed but that shouldn't really matter.

 

I don’t believe for a second that the bench coach, manager, someone wasn’t relaying signals from the bench to the hitter. It makes zero sense to have that info on hand but ONLY using it when a runner was on 2nd base, that’s BS but the media will never even go there.

 

All I can think of is that the Astros didn't have to wait for a runner to be on 2nd base and could take advantage of the technology at any time, making it "more egregious"...

 

In home games, yes. But the Yankees were doing this on the road. The Astros weren't.

And putting aside the "egregiousness" argument...who cares anyways? CHEATING is the issue, now how you cheat. It's like saying you're a little bit pregnant.

 

It’s like having all the answers to a test in school or leaning over and getting a peek of someone’s else’s answer, both equally punishable for cheating but alas leave it to the media to define the thin line that doesn’t exist

 

Yeah, to me the biggest reveal here was the Yankees doing this at home and on the road. Writers and fans can twist themselves all up however they want in order to justify how the Astros use of technology is somehow way worse than the Yankees/Red Sox use of technology, but the reality is the Astros were cheating half the time (at least using the camera system that everyone gets so worked up about). The Yankees/Red Sox scheme was 100%.

Edit: I would also add that the "this has all already been reported previously - nothing to see here" bit is also pretty irritating. We are STILL hearing crap about what the Astros did 4-5 years ago. That's already been reported as much as anything I've ever seen in this sport (maybe with the exception of the steroid issue). But guys like Passan aren't pulling out the "this has already been reported. Let's stop talking about the Astros cheating" card.

 

One point that I feel is missed a lot by the talking heads is that Manfred, in all of his vagueness and ambiguity regarding what is prohibited and what is allowed, did seem to make a distinction that the line is drawn once electronics are actually used to relay signs to the batter (whether via a man on second, coach, whatever). The Astros NEVER used electronics to relay a sign, they used auditory tells only. I would bet that Beltran and Cora thought what they were doing was legal given Beltran's Yankee tenure where he saw "as long as we don't relay the signs with electronics, we're ok"

This is why above all else, it was Manfred that failed. Half measures, ambiguity, and inconsistency is what caused this whole damn mess. Then he has the nerve to over-punish one team and not others. Man f*** him.

 

The other failure (and in the sense of general day to day baseball operations - more egregious) is why was this a 'secret' punishment?
What other secrets are being kept with the marquee teams. The secrecy should be a huge story.

 

We weren't doing anything earliest man didn't do.

 

Heyman is hack suck up. So when its NY "hey everyone was doing it so....." but the Astros aren't allowed the same. F**k that guy and all these A hole kiss asses

 

Oh hell no, got to protect the golden goose. (geese) Nothing to see here.....move on folks...look over there, next.

 

They didn't use electronics? Then why did Hinch break those TVs?

 

Jesus not one peep about this. And the one's that do mention go out of the way to brainwash everyone the Astros were worse. BullShit east coast bias

 

Electronics were not used to relay signs.

 

Cheating Begins...

 

Astros were scapegoated, and that will never be admitted by MLB and the Media. Period.

 

While this is Manfred's justification, the letter to the Yankees clearly states that the Yankees used a phone line in visiting dugouts that were not close to the replay room. As phones lines carry electricity to power the phones (though not enough charge to power a fridge) and to contain electric signals that can be converted back to sound, phones and phone lines are electronic equipment.