NEW YORK — The letter below details a 2017 investigation in to the New York YankeesIt will become public two years after a Federal Judge declared it to be unsealed.
Plaintiffs in a lawsuit alleging daily fantasy ramifications to electronic sign-stealing baseball allege that a 2017 release from Rob Manfred covered the full findings of MLB’s investigation. The impending release of the letter will show any differences between Manfred’s public statements and what was made in private.
Manfred sent the letter to Brian Cashman, Yankees general manager. It is believed to be proof of sign-stealing by the team from 2017, when New York was caught for using a dugout telephone and the Boston Red Soxthey were found using Apple Watches for receiving signals from opposing teams.
ESPN has been told by a source that it will take at least two more weeks for the letter to be made public.
Randy Levine, Yankees team president, opposed the release of the December 2020 letter. Levine claimed that the release would create “serious” privacy concerns and that letters filed as confidential in a suit by the court. Houston AstrosRed Sox and weren’t being made publicly. Levine said that the letter would damage the Yankees’ image.
The Yankees claim that the Yankees Letter’s unsealing will cause harm because it contains a distorted content that would falsely and unfairly create the confusion that the Yankees had somehow broken MLB’s sign-stealing rules. In fact, the Yankees did not.” the court wrote. This argument is however of little weight. The public will be able to evaluate MLB’s internal investigation (as presented to the Yankees), and the Yankees will be fully capable of disclosing their views on the Yankees letter’s actual content.
Major League Baseball, and the Yankees did no immediate respond to inquiries for comment.
A $5 million lawsuit was also dismissed by the court. It concerns the illegal sign-stealing scandal which rocked baseball between 2019 and 2020. The lawsuit was filed by Kristopher Olson, a DraftKings player, and 100 other plaintiffs against MLB and the Astros.