Yankees, MLB Want Sign-Stealing Investigation Letter Suppressed

The New York Yankees and Major League Baseball want the Second Circuit to keep sealed a letter from MLB commissioner Robert Manfred to Yankees general manager Brian Cashman about the league’s sign-stealing investigation.

The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York ordered the letter unsealed in June after dismissing claims over the scandal by fantasy sports players against the league, the Houston Astros, and the Boston Red Sox.

The investigation originally focused on a complaint by the Yankees about the Boston Red Sox’s use of an Apple smart watch in the dugout to relay game information during the 2017 MLB season, the Yankees say in their filings to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

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

The league’s rules about using smart watches and video replay for transmitting signing and other information during games were highly unclear when the two teams were complaining about each other, the Yankees say.

That was the context in which the MLB conducted the internal investigation and sent the confidential letter to the Yankees on Sept. 14, 2017, the team says.

The commissioner issued a press release the next day saying the MLB found that the Red Sox violated league rules by using the Apple smart watch, and that the Yankees committed a technical violation of league rules by misusing the dugout phone, it says.

“Significantly, MLB did not find that the Yankees violated any sign stealing rule,” the Yankees say.

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

Allowing the letter to be unsealed “would aid in continuing plaintiffs’ false narrative that irreparably injures the innocent, third-party Yankees,” the team asserts in the Wednesday filings.

The league, for its part, says the letter should remain private in order to protect its investigative process.

Except for the league’s public statement, the MLB hasn’t revealed any information about the investigation, the cooperating witnesses, or the contents of the Yankees letter, to anyone outside of to the commissioner and the Yankees, it says.

The confidentiality of its investigation-related interviews and records “is critical to our investigatory work for the league and the enforcement of its rules,” the MLB argues.

"[I]t would significantly hamper the commissioner’s ability to exercise his investigatory and disciplinary powers under the MLB constitution” if that confidentiality were to be compromised, the league says.

Silver Golub & Teitell LLP represents the fantasy sports players.

Boies Schiller Flexner LLP represents the Yankees.

Sullivan & Cromwell LLP represents the league.

The case is Olson v. Major League Baseball, 2d Cir., No. 20-01841, 9/16/20.