Yankees Again Push to Seal Commissioner’s Sign-Stealing Letter

The New York Yankees asked the Second Circuit to reconsider its decision to unseal a letter from MLB commissioner Rob Manfred to Yankees general manager Brian Cashman about the league’s sign-stealing investigation.

The letter should remain sealed because it has no bearing on the claims in the case brought by DraftKings fantasy sports players against the league, the Houston Astros, and the Boston Red Sox, the team says.

The panel decision allowing the Major League Baseball commissioner’s letter to be unsealed “changes the law,” and “opens the floodgates to permit abuse of the courts,” the Yankees told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on April 1.

The ruling upends Second Circuit precedent that the determination whether a sealed document is a “judicial document” to which a presumption of public access applies depends on whether its contents could have influenced the outcome of the case, and the document’s relevance to the litigants’ legal rights, the Yankees said.

Under these principles, the commissioner’s letter was not a “judicial document” because the plaintiffs filed it in the district court docket in a motion for reconsideration after their “legal theory had been rejected,” the organization said in a motion for panel or full court rehearing.

The ruling allows a losing party to “attach any confidential document it wants to a reconsideration motion and get it unsealed, making the affected party a potential hostage, all without ever bringing a viable claim,” the team said.

The panel on March 31 ruled that the trial court properly classified the letter as a “judicial document,” and that a strong presumption of access applied because it “was a core component of plaintiffs’ motion for reconsideration.”

The plaintiffs allege the MLB—and the Houston and Boston teams—wrongfully promoted fantasy baseball wagering competitions that they “caused to be, and knew or should have known were, corrupt and dishonest.”

The proposed class members assert that the defendants represented the MLB fantasy contests would be conducted as “games of skill,” while knowing that sign stealing distorted the player statistics on which the games were based.

The panel affirmed the dismissal of the players’ claims, finding any statements the defendants made about fantasy baseball contests being “games of skill” are “not rendered plausibly false due to the existence of rules violations, including electronic sign-stealing.”

The league’s investigation originally focused on a complaint by the Yankees about the Red Sox’s use of an Apple smart watch in the dugout to relay game information during the 2017 MLB season, the Yankees said in appellate court filings.

The investigation expanded after the Red Sox complained that the Yankees made improper use of a broadcaster’s camera, “a meritless claim for which MLB found no evidence,” the Yankees said.

Despite this, the Yankees said, “the plaintiffs tried to falsely portray the Yankees as having engaged in sign stealing in violation of MLB’s rules.”

Following media reports, an MLB investigation concluded that, during the 2017 and 2018 seasons, the Astros illegally used a camera system to steal signs. A player or staff member would convey the upcoming pitch to the batter by banging on a trash can.

The league also found that the Red Sox video replay operator, on some occasions during the 2018 season, used game feeds in the replay room to revise sign sequence information he had given to players before the game.

The Astros organization was ordered to pay a $5 million fine as a penalty for the sign stealing, and to forfeit the team’s regular first and second round selections in the 2020 and 2021 first-year player drafts. The Red Sox organization forfeited its second round selection in the 2020 first-year player draft.

Randy L. Levine, the president of the Yankees, filed the petition on behalf of the organization.

The case is Olson v. Major League Baseball, 2d Cir., No. 20-1831, 20-1841, 4/1/22.