The Houston Astros and Boston Red Sox had their public reckonings. The New York Yankees might be next.
A New York judge's ruling Friday will allow a 2017 letter from Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred to the Yankees detailing the team's sign-stealing to be unsealed, The Athletic's Evan Drellich reported Friday.
MLB fined the Red Sox in September 2017 for illegally using Apple Watches to steal signs from the Yankees after New York lodged a complaint. But the league also fined the Yankees a lesser amount at the time for the vague transgression of "violat(ing) a rule governing the use of the dugout phone."
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This letter should reveal more about New York's 2017 sign-stealing, and apparently there are some juicy details: The Yankees are arguing the letter "would cause 'significant reputational injury' " to the team if unsealed.
The Astros should be particularly interested in the contents of this letter. Several Yankees players ripped Houston after MLB uncovered its 2017 sign-stealing plot, with Giancarlo Stanton suggesting New York was cheated out of chance to play in the World Series after losing to the Astros in the 2017 American League Championship Series.
But now it appears the Yankees were doing their own illegal sign-stealing during the 2017 season, and the plaintiffs pushing for the letter to be unsealed allege it details a "more serious" sign-stealing scheme than MLB originally revealed in 2017.
MLB's letter won't be unsealed until June 19, per Drellich, and New York may try to appeal to keep it under wraps. If the letter becomes public, though, Astros and Red Sox fans will read it eagerly -- and happily return the favor of lampooning their American League rival.