Inside MLB’s Astros cheating investigation: GM Jeff Luhnow deleted phone data
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The following is an excerpt from “Winning Fixes Everything: How Baseball’s Brightest Minds Created Sports’ Biggest Mess,” to be published by HarperCollins, © 2023 by Evan Drellich. The book details the evolution of the Houston Astros’ franchise and their electronic sign-stealing scandal, which resulted in multiple suspensions and firings, including for general manager Jeff Luhnow and manager A.J. Hinch.
The shine around the Astros had disappeared, and according to an investigative letter commissioner Rob Manfred sent to Jeff Luhnow, data on Luhnow’s cell phone disappeared as well, erased by Luhnow.
Following The Athletic’s story, Major League Baseball’s investigators sprung into action with full force. MLB had not always been eager to send in its detectives, but this time, they descended immediately. The outcry over the scandal was just as rapid, as star players and average fans alike took their shock to Twitter.
Speaking at the winter meetings in mid-December 2019, commissioner Manfred called the review of the Astros “probably the most thorough investigation that the commissioner’s office has ever undertaken.”
In a span of two months, the league’s department of investigations would interview 68 people, including 23 Astros players, and collect more than 76,000 emails. MLB’s forensic capability extended to Slack messages and cell phones, as well.
In any investigation, the league notifies people of interest in writing that they need to preserve their cell phones. Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow, investigators learned, had instructed one of his lieutenants, Bill Firkus, to give a personal heads up to others with the team that MLB might collect their devices, a person with direct knowledge of the league’s investigation said.
That source said that MLB interviewed several Astros employees in an attempt to figure out what message Luhnow delivered to Firkus and what Firkus subsequently relayed to others. The following bullet points are that source’s recounting of the league’s interviews:
• Speaking to investigators, Firkus’ initial recollection of Luhnow’s request is said to have been that Luhnow had called in a quick and hurried manner, and that Luhnow had asked him to tell others to delete information from their phone. Firkus, however, is said to have later clarified to the league he didn’t think Luhnow had used the word ‘delete:’ it was more that Luhnow had told him to contact a bunch of individuals and let them know their phone might be confiscated, and that they should be comfortable with what was on there. (Another source with knowledge of the matter said Firkus had only one conversation about this topic and did not change his story or provide two different versions.) Investigators ultimately did not consider Firkus to have changed his story.
• Derek Vigoa, then senior manager of team operations, is said to have told investigators he remembered Firkus saying that Luhnow wanted him to know the phone might be confiscated, and that he should tell the truth.
Two things struck Vigoa as odd, he’s said to have told investigators: one, that Luhnow would ask that he tell the truth — because Vigoa felt it should have been obvious he would. And, two that Luhnow would funnel the message through Firkus in the first place, because Vigoa had a direct relationship with the Astros’ GM.
• The source said that Matt Hogan, then manager of pro scouting analysis, described Firkus’ message differently: that MLB is coming, and that there’s a chance they can take your phone, so if you have things you don’t want anyone to see, I would get rid of them.
• Tom Koch-Weser, meanwhile, then director of advance information, is said to have told investigators he couldn’t remember the exact message Firkus delivered, but had taken it to be a hint to do what was necessary, although Koch-Weser told the league Firkus had not used those words.
“I cooperated fully in the investigation and never discouraged anyone from doing the same,” Luhnow said in a statement.
While the exact message Luhnow told Firkus to deliver, and the message delivered, remain unknown, in the end, MLB believes it found only one person who had deleted material off their phone after the time when the league had instructed Astros to preserve their phones, a person with knowledge of the investigation said: Luhnow himself.
In a letter dated Jan. 2, 2020, Manfred outlined evidence the league had compiled against Luhnow. Many, but not all of the specific allegations included in the letter, were first published in the Wall Street Journal. Luhnow’s phone deletion was not among those previously published.
“Your credibility is further impacted by the fact that you permanently deleted information from your phone and its backups in anticipation that my investigators would seek to search your phone,” Manfred wrote to Luhnow. “You did not tell my investigators that you had done this until they confronted you about it in your second interview. While you explained that you were simply deleting sensitive personal photographs, I have no way to confirm that you did not delete incriminating evidence.”
According to people with knowledge of the league’s investigation, the GM of the Astros had wiped every back-up from his phone, besides one, and other data was missing as well.
When Luhnow went for his interview with MLB in November 2019, he is said to have handed over his phone to be imaged. Investigators determined that at about 10:15 central time the morning of his interview that he had backed up the phone. His Apple iCloud account had no other backups.
But backups are snapshots of data — they don’t affect what’s currently on the device. Yet, MLB found Luhnow had deleted source data on the phone as well, people with knowledge of the investigation said. Investigators found that Luhnow’s phone had no standard call logs, even though Luhnow had known phone calls with A.J. Hinch that should have been there. MLB also could not locate known email exchanges that should have been on his phone that were found on others’ devices. But as MLB’s investigators saw it, if Luhnow had been trying to delete a large amount of information, he didn’t do a perfect job: the phone had Skype and WhatsApp call logs dating back to 2009.
MLB confronted Luhnow about the deletions in his second interview. According to sources with knowledge of the league’s investigation, Luhnow admitted to MLB that he deleted photos of his wife the night before his interview, and acknowledged he backed up the device the next morning. He then deleted prior backups, he is said to have told MLB investigators, so that MLB would not get those photos.
Luhnow is said to have told MLB he did this despite correctly understanding the league’s requirement that he preserve his phone for the investigation. Luhnow told MLB he deleted the data because he didn’t trust MLB, a person with knowledge of the investigation said.
“I had pictures on my phone of my wife giving birth to our son, and I deleted those at her request prior to handing over my phone,” Luhnow said in a statement. “When asked by the investigators, I told them about this. Not one work related item was deleted and every email and text I ever sent was available to MLB and the Astros through my work computer.”
Luhnow is not known to have asked for permission to delete the backups, and likely, he wouldn’t have received it, a person with knowledge of the investigation said. But, it was at least possible MLB could have offered to have a third party process the phone to keep MLB from viewing the photos, had Luhnow raised the issue.
“In addition to submitting to two interviews by the Commissioner’s Office, the Astros and MLB had complete unfettered access to every text message I sent or received during the relevant time period,” Luhnow said. “MLB never identified a single text that suggested I had any involvement in the matter — and the League had plenty of texts to make its case. In fact, the investigation uncovered 22,000 text messages from the alleged actual participants in the sign stealing. The alleged participants openly texted in real time about sign stealing activity — and not a single communication implicated me, directly or indirectly, in any way, shape or form. I was not mentioned in these contemporaneous texts because I was not party to sign stealing activities.”
A person with knowledge of the investigation said that Luhnow told MLB he hadn’t deleted anything else on the phone. Yet, when the league looked at the hex of the SMS database, MLB also found traces of nine messages between Luhnow and Koch-Weser, from March and August of 2019, a person with knowledge of the investigation said. MLB couldn’t recover those texts on either device, however.
“I never deleted any messages between myself and Tom,” Luhnow said. “I have them all and the Astros and MLB had access to all of them from my work computer.”
To the league’s determination, the photos accounted for only a very small percentage of the data that was removed when Luhnow deleted the backups.
(Top photo: Scott Halleran / Getty Images)
Evan Drellich
Evan Drellich is a senior writer who covers the business of baseball for The Athletic. He was previously a reporter for the Boston Herald, the Houston Chronicle, MassLive.com and MLB.com. He lived the television and radio life at NBC Sports Boston and WEEI. Follow Evan on Twitter @EvanDrellich
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