Former Cardinals scouting director Chris Correa, who was dismissed by the organization earlier this year for his role in the Cardinals’ unauthorized accessing of the Astros’ proprietary computer network, is scheduled to plead guilty to criminal charges today, report Brian Costa and Devlin Barrett of the Wall Street Journal. Per the report, Correa has tentatively agreed to plead guilty to five of 12 charges against him. It’s unclear at this time if further St. Louis employees will be implicated or if any further legal repercussions will stem from Correa’s plea.
For those unfamiliar with the situation, the Cardinals were reported to be the subject of a federal investigation in connection with an unauthorized entry into Houston’s proprietary network, named Ground Control, back in June. Roughly a year prior to the report, a large amount of Astros’ trade notes and discussions were leaked and became public knowledge, bringing considerable scrutiny on the Astros organization. Then-and-current Houston GM Jeff Luhnow previously worked for the Cardinals, and it later emerged that one or more members of the St. Louis organization had been involved in the database breach.
Correa, at the time of his firing, denied any illegal activity via a statement from his lawyer. Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported at the time that Correa claimed to access the database only to verify that Luhnow did not take any proprietary information with him when leaving the Cardinals organization. Of course, it’s not clear that such a defense would hold much water from a legal perspective. And Evan Drellich of the Houston Chronicle reported shortly after the Cardinals’ involvement first came to light that the team’s employees had accessed Ground Control on multiple occasions, with separate instances reportedly occurring in 2012, 2013 and again in 2014.
Make the cardinals be ineligible for the post season for the next decade. That will teach those cheating turds!
That would be nice, but it’s not the players who hacked
That’s absurd. Players had nothing to do with it, and there were a few rogue idiots in the organization that did something stupid. This isn’t college sports, you can’t just make someone ineligible for the playoffs.
I 100% agree
So you want to punish the players, coaches and fanbase for something that one guy did? Solid logic there.
I would love for that to happen
Greatest hackers in baseball.
Maybe so, but I found this story much more interesting when the early reports stated the database was breached using Luhnow’s old passwords.
Multiple reports have since said there was more at play than simply plugging in Luhnow’s old passwords.
Thus the story became less interesting. At least in the Jerry Springer-goofy kind of way.
Coming from a Yanks fan? Lol. I Remember when Girardi tried to move the tv camera off of Michael Pineda’s neck.
Name one organization that has zero history of cheating/ped/fraud. Check your own skeletons before you judge.
@broth.
Broth isn’t a Yankees fan. He bashes them constantly.
Right, because a pine tar incident is SO comparable to breaching another team’s system and leaking private discussions regarding players.
Did you hear that slow, sickening slicing sound? That was Chris Correa falling on his sword. Ouch.
wow.
Could this lead to the Cards being hit with a fine or draft pick loss?
Not unless it was proven that Tom Brady and Bill Belichick were involved.
Ground Control to Major Tom!!
Finally! I’m surprised it took that long to mention Major Tom, bravo.
So…is this, “The Cardinal Way’?
Mozeliak must have bribed this guy Correa a couple million to take the blame for Mo’s hacking.
He “must” have?
Why does all this matter when Luhnow said that those items which were hacked into had literally zero benefit to the hackers?
Finally…someone found a bigger hacker than Vladimir Guerrero.
The Astros didn’t change their password for three years. They deserved it.
The guy pleaded guilty to 5 charges
Fine the team and make them forfeit a couple of draft picks
“Further St. Louis employees”
Interesting grammar lol
Hacking a system is a crime. Passwords previously used to hack said system is partially how the system was hacked. Using old passwords to hack a system is not a defense, it’s an admission of guilt to hacking the system. The Cardinals organization, through Correa and others, cheated multiple times over the course of three years.. Correa may face jail time. To dismiss any penalty handed down to the cardinals lacks the understanding of the significance of the infraction. The cardinals should be fined and lose draft picks but should still be allowed to participate in the playoffs.
Not exactly a low level employee.. Multiple occasions. Cardinals likely obtained some overall organizational benefit from the illegal data access. Losing a 1st round pick would be appropriate.
While the owners may claim to have not known about it, they still have a responsibility for their employees actions, especially when such actions benefit the organization at the expense of the other team
I think that the 1st round draft pick of the cards should be forfeited in 2016-2018 1 draft pick for each year that they hacked into “Ground Control”. If the cards sign someone with a QO (they can not sign 2 QO players in 1 year until the penalty is fully served) they should forfeit there 2nd and 3rd round draft picks to discourage them from trying that route to minimalize the penalty.The picks should then be given to the Astro’s. Chris Correa should have to banned from baseball and any other American professional sports teams for his lifetime after prison. If any other member of the front office other than the GM, assistant GM, or president of baseball ops is implicated then the penalty should not increase that would send a clear message to not hack a database. If one or more FO exec’s other than Correa is involved in any way the penalty should be re accessed and made even more harsh.
after reading this post Roger Goodell has suspended Tom Brady for the playoffs because it was “more probable than not” that Tom Brady was “generally aware” of wrongdoing.
The Astros lost 310 games between 2012 and 2014. Correa was just trying to figure out how a team could average 103 losses a year, and make sure the Cardinals did not follow the Astros approach in evaluating players.
Sarcasm aside, I did read that Luhnow was using the same passwords he used when he was in the Cardinals organization. But hacking is hacking and some punishment will and should be levied.
Losing intentionally for a few years seems to be the new baseball model. Houston, and the Cubs are the best examples. Atlanta is in the process of doing it. Credit must go to the Cardinals for putting a winning team on the field every year.
Haters gonna hate. Cardinals gonna card.