The infamous Yankees letter, soon to be unsealed, was revealed by SNY’s Andy Martino on Tuesday, and Yankee fans can let out a sigh of relief.
The letter revealed little to implicate the Yankees in any sign-stealing or cheating maneuvers that hadn’t yet been known already, as the letter doesn’t address any tactics the Yankees used that would be anywhere close to what the Astros infamously did with their trash-banging scheme in 2017, nor were the Yankees accused of any sign stealing during that 2017 campaign, when the team came one win short of a World Series berth.
What the letter did reveal was that the Yanks used their video replay room during te 2015 and 2016 seasons to crack sequences and relay those signs to a runner on second base, which, as ESPN’s Jeff Passan pointed out, was being used as a tactic across the league. But the letter revealed no indication that the Yanks used any sign-stealing tactics in real time.
The letter states that an individual redacted from the letter, who “initially noticed that the Red Sox were using a smartwatch to pass information to their players,” admitted that the Yankees used a “similar scheme” to the Red Sox, which included the use of the video replay room during the 2015 season and the first half of the 2016 season. The team, according to the letter, physically relayed the information they found through video replay to the Yankee dugout. When on the road, when able, the team used a phone to relay the information to Yankee coaches on the bench.
As expected, the Yankees were disciplined for using the phones to relay information, and were fined $100,000.
The full letter can be read via Martino’s report here.
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