The Athletic: Inside MLB’s Astros cheating investigation: GM Jeff Luhnow deleted phone data [$]

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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.