Judge Orders Unsealing of 2017 MLB Letter to Yankees Regarding Alleged Yankees Sign Stealing

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DennyDoyle'sBoil

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Why is it being redacted?
If people were promised confidentiality in order to participate in an investigation or something like that, you could see a court enforcing that agreement in litigation that doesn't really concern the exact identities of the people in the letter.
 

Papelbon's Poutine

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If people were promised confidentiality in order to participate in an investigation or something like that, you could see a court enforcing that agreement in litigation that doesn't really concern the exact identities of the people in the letter.
Yes, I just don't see this stuff as being an issue of national security. I don't even get why a court was involved to be 100% honest. This isn't Deepthroat. Maybe I should dig deeper, I just generally don't care as much as someone people do. Steal signs, bang trash cans, use Apple watches, knock yourself out folks.
 

DennyDoyle'sBoil

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Yes, I just don't see this stuff as being an issue of national security. I don't even get why a court was involved to be 100% honest. This isn't Deepthroat. Maybe I should dig deeper, I just generally don't care as much as someone people do. Steal signs, bang trash cans, use Apple watches, knock yourself out folks.
Stuff gets redacted every day in lawsuits. The idea is that we are not going to invade privacy or embarrass people or whatever if they have some expectation of privacy and the law suit doesn’t concern them.

The reason there is a judge involved here is because draft kings gamblers sued the league for not being honest about the sign stealing. Their contention is that because the league has entered into a partnership with draft kings, the league has an obligation not to make misleading statements to the gambling public that could impact wagers.

Usually, litigation happens in public and so most documents are public records. But there are limits to this. If a document in litigation reveals the formula to Coca Cola it will usually be sealed from public view.

Here, MLB is arguing this document is like the secret coke formula and the judge has said no. He also however said that while the content of the letter is not private there are good reasons to not identify player names. Presumably he did this as a matter of public policy. I assume that they were provided confidentiality in exchange for coming forward and the judge is willing to honor that.

Why? Well, because he knows that if any gambler can bring a lawsuit and get access to player names and make them public, players will not cooperate in the future. Maybe you don’t care about sign stealing but this has implications way beyond sign stealing. Maybe in the future the league needs confidentiality for investigation of issues you do care about. Like the player who knows his manager bet on games but is afraid to come forward because he thinks some draft king gamblers can force the league to reveal his name in a lawsuit that has nothing to do with him. Or a rookie who thinks he hears teammates acting badly in a spring training motel but is afraid he will be branded a bad teammate if he comes forward and his name is made public.

tl;dr — this is what judges do and the fact that the issue of sign stealing doesn’t move someone’s particular needle in this case doesn’t mean there aren’t compelling reasons to protect the privacy of those who cooperate.
 

Murderer's Crow

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If I read that correctly, the Yankees believe the contents of the letter are going to be taken out of context and people are going to call the Yankees cheaters. The Judge said tough, you can publicly respond and the MLB can also respond to put out that fire.

Well, guess we'll see what transpired 5 years ago. I already see Astros twitter foaming at the mouth.
 

GB5

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The question I have in all of this is why did the commissioner cover the yankees on this? He punished the Red Sox and the Astros publicly, and they arent exactly chopped liver in terms of priority of national reputation. If they let the Yanks off the hook and stuck it to say the Pirates or Royals, or would be terrible, but the thought would be that it wouldnt be as big a story with the smaller fanbases.

the only thing I can think of is was this a favor to his lieutenant, Joe Torre?
 

lexrageorge

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The question I have in all of this is why did the commissioner cover the yankees on this? He punished the Red Sox and the Astros publicly, and they arent exactly chopped liver in terms of priority of national reputation. If they let the Yanks off the hook and stuck it to say the Pirates or Royals, or would be terrible, but the thought would be that it wouldnt be as big a story with the smaller fanbases.

the only thing I can think of is was this a favor to his lieutenant, Joe Torre?
The league owners don't want internal communications between the commissioner's office and teams being unsealed at the whims of 3rd parties. And it's common knowledge that what the Yankees did was done by nearly every team (decoding signals on replay), and it wasn't explicitly verboten until Manfred issued a policy letter in 2018.
 

kartvelo

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So, it's like Spygate for NYY - nothing to see, really, but it'll lead uninformed millions to label them cheating cheaters who cheat?
 

uncannymanny

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The question I have in all of this is why did the commissioner cover the yankees on this? He punished the Red Sox and the Astros publicly, and they arent exactly chopped liver in terms of priority of national reputation. If they let the Yanks off the hook and stuck it to say the Pirates or Royals, or would be terrible, but the thought would be that it wouldnt be as big a story with the smaller fanbases.

the only thing I can think of is was this a favor to his lieutenant, Joe Torre?
Nationally and especially globally the Yankees are a much, much bigger brand than either the Astros or the Red Sox.
 

Murderer's Crow

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After seeing the NY Media attack Houston and Houston fans for years, I love it.
I'm pretty comfortable with where and how the entire planet attacked Houston for what they did. The Red Sox stuff, at least in NY, kind of passed in like no time. Nobody talks about it here or probably remembers any details all that well.

The Yankees stuff, before any of this re-escalated, had been something Astros fans have clang onto in an effort to say "THEY DID IT TOO." Which, virtually nobody agrees with. At this point before a letter is even released, their fanbase is for some reason acting vindicated.

Edit: I should add, before anything is released, that I'll be the first to rip on players like Judge if its found out that we did something similar. If I don't, you're all welcome to call me names and throw lettuce and donuts at me.
 

HowBoutDemSox

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The Yankees stuff, before any of this re-escalated, had been something Astros fans have clang onto in an effort to say "THEY DID IT TOO."
I’m not sure if this is better if it was intentional, or just an amazing autocorrect, but it’s perfect either way.
 

jtn46

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I think MLB would have loved to bury the Red Sox incident but it was so stupidly obvious that they had to issue a light punishment, so if they caught the Yankees and buried it, the Yankees were at least bright enough not to wear their sign-stealing scheme on their wrists. The Astros importantly were not caught in 2017, and not caught by MLB, but by journalists 2 years. I personally am in the "they did it too" camp because banging on trashcans is not a sophisticated scheme but it seemed to luckily for them be very effective and so they get disproportionately punished compared to teams with less effective systems.

Probably the "real-time without a man on second" distinction is at play there too, but I wonder if other teams just couldn't design a way to do that, rather than that they were deterred by a sense of sportsmanship.
 

edoug

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I'm pretty comfortable with where and how the entire planet attacked Houston for what they did. The Red Sox stuff, at least in NY, kind of passed in like no time. Nobody talks about it here or probably remembers any details all that well.

The Yankees stuff, before any of this re-escalated, had been something Astros fans have clang onto in an effort to say "THEY DID IT TOO." Which, virtually nobody agrees with. At this point before a letter is even released, their fanbase is for some reason acting vindicated.

Edit: I should add, before anything is released, that I'll be the first to rip on players like Judge if its found out that we did something similar. If I don't, you're all welcome to call me names and throw lettuce and donuts at me.
I don't think it'll be that bad. I know we Sox fans feel like the commissioner's office is biased towards the Yankees but I doubt they'd let something too damning slide. I think the letter is a warning to the Yankees that whatever they were doing won't be allowed anymore.
 

Archer1979

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The question I have in all of this is why did the commissioner cover the yankees on this? He punished the Red Sox and the Astros publicly, and they arent exactly chopped liver in terms of priority of national reputation. If they let the Yanks off the hook and stuck it to say the Pirates or Royals, or would be terrible, but the thought would be that it wouldnt be as big a story with the smaller fanbases.

the only thing I can think of is was this a favor to his lieutenant, Joe Torre?
Boston was punished more for the second offense which was the real-time scouting taking place using the replay room. NYY's first offense was analogous to the Sox getting caught for the Apple Watch scenario. Had NY been caught for a second offense, I would expect their punishment to be on par with Boston's.

As far as the "Nothing To See Here"-crowd vs irreparable harm to the NYY brand, normally I would think that something dirty happened. As a Pats fan who has had to spend hours explaining the Ideal Gas Law, I can see why the NYY org can work both sides of the street in this argument.
 

Murderer's Crow

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Popped up in my feed and found his language interesting with the release of the letter upcoming. Would be really stupid for him to speak this aggressively if he actually thought there was anything in the letter.

https://theathletic.com/news/brian-cashman-yankees-in-world-series-drought-because-of-illegal-and-horrific-actions-by-astros/CaahiodAk5tY/

"The only thing that stopped (us) was something that was so illegal and horrific," Cashman told The Athletic. "So I get offended when I start hearing we haven't been to the World Series since '09. Because I’m like, 'Well, I think we actually did it the right way.' Pulled it down, brought it back up. Drafted well, traded well, developed well, signed well. The only thing that derailed us was a cheating circumstance that threw us off."
 

JCizzle

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Popped up in my feed and found his language interesting with the release of the letter upcoming. Would be really stupid for him to speak this aggressively if he actually thought there was anything in the letter.

https://theathletic.com/news/brian-cashman-yankees-in-world-series-drought-because-of-illegal-and-horrific-actions-by-astros/CaahiodAk5tY/
"did it the right way"....yet was also cheating during the same timeframe. The lack of self awareness from the Yankees is stunning as usual.
 

Murderer's Crow

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"did it the right way"....yet was also cheating during the same timeframe. The lack of self awareness from the Yankees is stunning as usual.
Feel like this has been litigated enough on SoSH to comfortably say that your use of "cheating" is doing a lot of work. Not interested in that debate again, but I would say there's no comparison to what any team did relative to the Astros.
 

Mr. Stinky Esq.

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Feel like this has been litigated enough on SoSH to comfortably say that your use of "cheating" is doing a lot of work. Not interested in that debate again, but I would say there's no comparison to what any team did relative to the Astros.
I agree.

The one nit I would pick with Cashman on this point is that, if you assume the 2017 Astros don't beat the Yankees without the trash can, shouldn't we also assume they wouldn't have beaten the 2017 Red Sox in the ALDS? Then you would have theoretically had a Red Sox - Yankees ALCS, which would have been no walk in the park for the Yankees. The Yankees won the season series 11-8 but the Red Sox won the division by a couple games so it might have been a toss-up, maybe with a slight edge to the Yankees? Anyway, we can agree that both teams were unfairly victimized by the 2017 Astros cheating and that they were both deprived of a fair chance at a championship.
 
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Murderer's Crow

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I agree.

The one nit I would pick with Cashman on this point is that, if you assume the 2017 Astros don't beat the Yankees without the trash can, shouldn't we also assume they wouldn't have beaten the 2017 Red Sox in the ALDS? Then you would have theoretically had a Red Sox - Yankees ALCS, which would have been no walk in the park for the Yankees. The Yankees won the season series 11-8 but the Red Sox won the division by a couple games so it might have been a toss-up, maybe with a slight edge to the Yankees? Anyway, we can agree that both teams were unfairly victimized by the 2017 Astros cheating and that they were both deprived of a fair chance at a championship.
Shoulda coulda woulda. He can't call them a world series caliber team if they never make the world series. 2017 really stands out on its face for obvious reasons but you're totally right that maybe the Sox lost that series for cheating too. What's good for the goose, right?

Cashman right now, as I think Jon sort of pointed out, is probably feeling a bigger disconnect from fans than ever before. He sees this organization as finally being built properly for long term success and continued competitiveness. Many fans see this team as "could have been better but aren't because...Hal & Cashman."
 

Pablo's TB Lover

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While I see Cashman's point, he's doing a lot of yadda yadda-ing with the stretch from 2009 until they were "cheated out of" 2017. By comparison, the Sox had two relative tear-down/rebuilds between '09 and '18 but also two titles.

This comparison is not meant to be harsh or gloat because the Yankees were really in position to win any of 2010-2012 & 2017 if things broke their way. Just that Cashman is presenting things in the best light for him as any self-preserving GM would. He's done an admirable job of walking the line of staying competitive while changing over the core of the franchise, while the team to the the north has gone the bottoming out route and had several regime changes.
 

BringBackMo

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Whatever the merits of Cashman’s claims in that piece—and for reasons similar to those articulated above, I am far from convinced—it’s my opinion that he comes off very whiny and defensive, especially given that it’s four seasons later. It hasn’t been like Cashman to make comments like this in the past, so I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he simply answered a question poorly, but I think this is an embarrassing look for him.
 

jon abbey

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Yeah, I agree, makes you wonder how much pressure he is under from Hal.

I do think if the long-range Volpe/Dominguez/Arias etc. (there are six or seven of them, I’m going to start a dedicated thread soon) plan bombs, that will probably be it for him in NY, but we won’t know that for a while.
 

BringBackMo

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I didn’t want to say as much “for the record” because I don’t know the Yankees all that well, and because I generally think Cashman has been very good, but now that JA has brought it up…it did strike me as the kind of comment someone makes when they’re feeling lots of pressure, like the job-threatening kind. If the Yankees did move on from him at some point, I think he’d get scooped right up elsewhere.
 

cromulence

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So basically it's exactly the same as what the Sox got in trouble for doing. Let's all join hands and sing?
 

Murderer's Crow

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So basically it's exactly the same as what the Sox got in trouble for doing. Let's all join hands and sing?
Kind of but not really. The minor difference is the Yankees basically used traditional means to relay info to second base after the decoding happened. The Red Sox used devices.

Yankees: Decode signals from video, relay them to the dugout, dugout relays to second base.
Red Sox: Decode signals, transmit to device, players see on apple watch (I think)
 

RIrooter09

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Kind of but not really. The minor difference is the Yankees basically used traditional means to relay info to second base after the decoding happened. The Red Sox used devices.

Yankees: Decode signals from video, relay them to the dugout, dugout relays to second base.
Red Sox: Decode signals, transmit to device, players see on apple watch (I think)
No the trainers had an apple watch and then they would relay to players. Essentially the same thing.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/05/sports/baseball/boston-red-sox-stealing-signs-yankees.html
 

EvilEmpire

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Why were the Yanks fined privately and the Red Sox publicly?
Reporting from the NYT on 15 September 2017 acknowledges that both teams were fined undisclosed amounts. I don't know if Manfred released the Red Sox equivalent letter right away or something. I think that would be a legitimate complaint. I've never seen the Red Sox letter. (Edit: at least I don't remember seeing it)


https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/15/sports/baseball/red-sox-fined-stealing-signs-yankees.html

The sign-stealing confrontation between the Yankees and the Red Sox came to an apparent conclusion on Friday when Rob Manfred, the commissioner of Major League Baseball, fined the Boston team an undisclosed amount but chose not to hit it with more forceful penalties for using an Apple Watch to try to swipe signals from Yankees catchers.
Their admission, however, made it virtually certain that the Red Sox would be punished in some way, but, in the end, the Yankees did not get off without a slap on the wrist, either.

Although Manfred, in his statement, said baseball’s investigators had found “insufficient evidence” to support Boston’s counterclaim that the Yankees had used a YES Network camera to inappropriately steal signs from the Red Sox, New York was fined a lesser, undisclosed amount for a transgression from a previous season, when they violated the rules governing the use of a dugout phone.
 

AlNipper49

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The only issue is it’s been the Yankees crying far and loud about getting beat by the Astros….when every single player who has complained we’re doing the same thing. We can now all consider them spineless pieces of shit. It’s one thing to cheat and get caught. To do the same thing and put on the stage show that they have takes a really, really shitty moral compass.
 

jon abbey

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The only issue is it’s been the Yankees crying far and loud about getting beat by the Astros….when every single player who has complained we’re doing the same thing. We can now all consider them spineless pieces of shit. It’s one thing to cheat and get caught. To do the same thing and put on the stage show that they have takes a really, really shitty moral compass.
Yeah this really isn’t true, please read the Passan thread I linked.
 

lexrageorge

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Still am convinced that at least 25 other teams had schemes similar to those in NY and Boston. And am just as convinced that no team took things nearly as far as Houston, which also had a bigger impact on batter vs pitcher outcomes.
 

jtn46

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Yeah this really isn’t true, please read the Passan thread I linked.
Passan’s tweet boils down to, the Astros method was effective and was not detected by MLB therefore was more serious than the other methods that were bad and were detected. Do you think the Red Sox and Yankees opted not to relay signs in real time out of morality or were they just not clever enough on the mechanics of how to do it?
 

Remagellan

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It's BS for Passan to write that the Sox won the 2018 World Series while cheating, because the video rooms were monitored by MLB personnel during the playoffs that year. There's no evidence that they did anything illegal during the playoffs. During the season, they were doing pre-series video study to decipher signals, which was apparently a league-wide and league-approved practice, but were punished because their video coordinator was providing in-game updates to his report, which was what was deemed illegal. That's still closer to what the Yankees were doing than what the Astros had done in 2017. (As stated above, it still required a runner on base to use the info to decipher the signals and relay the sign to the batter.) But as two-time offenders (because of the previous Apple Watch chicanery), MLB had to punish them publicly.
 
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lexrageorge

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The Red Sox and Yankees schemes had their limitations: teams first needed to get a runner on 2nd, hope that the runner could accurately see and decipher the sign based on the info he got from the dugout, and then attempt to relay it to the batter in time while not getting caught. Meanwhile, the pitcher and catcher are working to prevent the runner from seeing the signs. And deciphering signs pre-game, and attempting to steal them while on 2nd base, is not "cheating"; there are no rules against either.

The Astros used their video feed to capture the sign and relay to the dugout and the the batter in real time. Huge difference in both kind and degree. Comparing the actions of the Astros to those of the Red Sox, Yankees, or any other teams is both lazy and dishonest.
 

AlNipper49

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Yeah this really isn’t true, please read the Passan thread I linked.
It’s 100% true. The Yankees cheated. Period. Then they spent years shoveling dirt on other cheaters.

I get cheating - trying to find an edge can spiral out of control. I don’t condone it but I can see how it happened without the people being garbage to the core. But complaining about cheaters at every fucking series they touched with that other team while 100% being cheaters themselves makes them objectively bad people.
 
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