Major League Baseball (MLB) commissioner Rob Manfred announced Wednesday, April 22, in a 15-page report that Boston Red Sox replay room operator J.T. Watkins was responsible for illegally decoding opponents’ signs and relaying them to players during the 2018 regular season. Manfred has suspended Watkins through the 2020 postseason as well as former Red Sox manager Alex Cora for his involvement in the Houston Astros 2017 sign-stealing scandal and stripped Boston of their 2020 second round draft pick.
The result comes after a three-month investigation where MLB interviewed 65 witnesses including 34 current and former Red Sox players. The Department of Investigation (DOI) also reviewed “tens of thousands of emails, text messages, video clips and photographs,” according to Manfred’s report.
The investigation began in January after Ken Rosenthal and Evan Drellich of The Athletic published an article about Boston violating MLB’s sign-stealing rules during the 2018 season. In his report, Manfred confirmed the allegations from Rosenthal and Drellich that Watkins provided information about the opposing catcher’s sign sequence prior to the game as well as sometimes during, and relayed it to a member in the Red Sox dugout.
Unlike the Astros, however. who decoded the signs prior to the pitch and communicated the information to the batter from the dugout, Boston only delivered the sign sequence to a player standing on second base, who then focused in on the catcher and signaled the incoming pitch to the batter. Manfred also revealed that “Watkins had decoded the signs in only a small percentage of those occurrences,” and that this was not nearly as extreme as the 2017 Astros.
MLB only disciplined Cora for his involvement in the Astros scandal because after the investigation, he felt that Cora, the Red Sox coaching staff and front office were unaware of Watkins’ actions during the season and that they consistently communicated MLB’s sign-stealing rules to their staff members and players.
Watkins, a former Red Sox draft pick in 2012, was also banned from returning to his position as replay room operator once his suspension is over in 2021, but will remain with the club in a different role. He retired from playing in 2016, never making it to the big leagues, and became a scouting assistant with the Red Sox in 2017. Watkins was also a key participant in the 2017 incident where Boston was fined for using an apple watch to relay signs in real time.
Photo Courtesy of Maddie Meyer
