Depends on where you are looking at. In baseball circles this is a massive deal. Deadspin had a great “Eat Shit, Cardinals” article for one ;). Maybe folks who are just into football are shrugging at this, but definitely not baseball fans.
This story is odd. As one Post-Dispatch writer points out, there is not a lot of reason for the Cards to break into the Astros’ system. According to the NYT, some of the information was posted to AnonBin last year. If the hack happened last year, it was at the end of three straight years of 100+ losses for the Astros, who by that time were in the AL. What do the Cards gain by beating up on those guys?
The best scenario for the Cards at this point (and the one that kind of makes the most sense to me) is that “Bob in IT” came across the old list of passwords Luhnow used for the Redbird system he set up in St. Louis. Luhnow was a polarizing guy, and Bob in IT hated him. So Bob decides to see if Luhnow’s password works in the Astros’ system, finds that it does, and posts a bunch of data on AnonBin. Stickin it to the Man! Bob is discovered and flogged in a special pre-game ceremony next time the Astros come to Busch, Bob Gibson throws out the first pitch, handshakes all around, and we all go about our day. I can dream, right?
Why are you assuming they are likely to shrug at it?
I think both of them point to shitty behavior. I’m more upset about something in MLB than the NFL because I don’t give a damn about the NFL.
I also think that some folks who aren’t super avid baseball fans (or AL fans, even worse ;)) don’t realize how much folks hate the Cardinals and their “Cardinals Way” crap. So there is a lot of glee in NL cities right now.
You don’t want to know my pet name for the Cardinals. And I’m an AL fan!
Oops! No disrespect to Stan!
That’s a good article. I agree that if the feds can find the guy who did it, they will probably throw the book at him. Hopefully it is just one or two guys acting independently, rather than one or two poor bastards being scapegoated for something orchestrated at a higher level.
What I find funny is that I spent the first half of my life in New England, rooting for New England teams (who are still my primary teams, although I don’t really care about the Celtics), then moved to St. Louis. I’ve never been able to bring myself to care about the Rams or Blues, but the Cardinals are my NL team and I’ll root for them except against the Red Sox. The Patriots, independent of cheating scandals, are probably the most consistently despised team outside of their fan base. The Cardinal, along with the Sox and the Yankees, are pretty well hated outside their fan base. Now they’re both caught up in cheating scandals.
The only conclusion I can reach is that it’s all my fault.
Yours and Obama’s.
There’s also the consideration that it gives the Cards a huge potential advantage in any possible trade talks with the Astros.
Someone also made the mistake of using the wires do do their hacking. If the Feds want they can level some serious charges here. And fed time is serving a minimum of 80% of your sentence.
Anyone shrugging should think again. Deflating footballs is cheating, at even a comical level, but this involves a potential FBI crime. Depending on how high level this is, were talking potential jail time for some Cardinals office personnel. If MLB wants to keep its anti-trust immunity, I imagine lifetime bans, massive fines and loss of draft picks could be in order for the Cardinals if it turns out to be real bad.
Someone joked what would St Louis get by hacking the computers of a 100 loss team. Thats NOT the point. They could have hacked into the Lehigh Valley IronPigs lone Apple 2 and it would still be a Federal crime.
The story I heard from baseball expert Jayson Stark is former Cards employee now Houston GM Jeff Luhnow burnt a lot of bridges when he jumped, and someone in the Cardinals organization hacked in to see if he stole any secrets from Cardinals. YO Chief you can’t do that!!!:smack::smack::smack:
To give you an idea of how bad this is, local Philly TV anchor Larry Mente suspected that his co-anchor Alycia Layne was conspiring against her, and broke into her email to find out. He got caught and went to trial for FEDERAL CHARGES.
I also have a friend of mine who was CEO of a local company and suspected one of his underlings was trying to cut him off at the legs; he stupidly got access to his inbox and started reading his emails. He got caught, got fired, and ALMOST had charges brought against him but he basically signed his life away to avoid that.
That was one employee snooping another at the same company, imagine what the Feds would think of you if broke into a competitor’s email???
I think it’s been discussed, but as far as I know, the MLB cannot remove draft picks as punishment per their CBA with the players.
This story makes no sense. If he was the CEO then he is authorized to access work emails. The courts have ruled repeatedly that employees have no expectation of privacy when using company-owned equipment. Almost every company I know specifically states this in their employee manual. My company can look at my (company-operated) email account whenever they want without informing me and they are entirely within their rights. Where’s the crime?
None of the above mitigates the fact that, in the Cardinal’s case, there certainly do appear to have been crimes committed.
If this results in any prison time, it would be an excellent opportunity to arrange a prisoner-guard baseball game.
Who would they even want besides maybe Altuve, who isn’t going anywhere?
Now that sounds familiar. 
While I live in Houston, I’ve always had a lot of respect for the Cards’ teams over the years and organization on the whole. Therefore, I find this really disappointing in that it’s yet another example of taking cheating to a new level, something that demeans the game overall.
I would agree with those that think this is not going to end well for the Cardinals, that it will result in some significant penalties either from a criminal standpoint or through action by MLB. And yes, it will also be an interesting study in the relative strengths wielded by the commissioners of MLB and the NFL.
Indeed. Just because a team is terrible (and the Astros were), that doesn’t mean that all of their trade pieces are terrible. And it’s hard to know what’s in the farm system as well as the team does. So, if you can go look at what the team knows, and how they rank player X, you can get a huge leg up.
Of course, if that were the goal, I wouldn’t have expected the anonymous leak last year putting the Astros on alert.
Yeah, this is one of the factors that make me think it wasn’t something ordered by the executive level. If you go to the trouble of stealing important data from the other team, why give it away? Unless, maybe they idea was to dump some of it on AnonBin as a way to try to pin the blame on Anonymous-type hackers. Which would not be smart, but none of this fiasco sounds like it was very smart, so who knows?
Earlier I was hoping that it would turn out to be one rogue employee. But the Post-Dispatch is reporting that the FBI seized several PCs from Cardinals’ HQ last year, and that a number of employees have hired private attorneys. That suggests to me that they’re not looking at one random doofus.
I live smack in the middle of Missouri. I guess I could start following the Royals. 
Elvis, you’d have to look beyond the immediate. Apparently the info accessed gave them info about all the levels of the Astros player development, and almost certainly what the Astros thought were their biggest holes, not just now but projected out. Knowing what the other person’s hole cards and biggest needs were would give you a great advantage, don’t you think? Maybe they’d be targeting prospects rather that current MLBers, that’s hardly the point.
Or, what** jsgoddess **said…
I understand you, I just think that’s much less susceptible to numeric analysis than some would like to believe. We all know of hotshot prospects who never learned to hit a breaking ball, or throw one, and of warm bodies who suddenly blossom. Coaching and scouting are what really make an organization, and at heart those are people skills and judgment.