Cardinals Scouting Director, Fired for Astros Hack

On July 2nd, 2015 the St. Louis Cardinal have fired their director of scouting, Chris Correa.  This is the first domino has fallen in the hacking scandal which has the FBI investigating the St. Louis Cardinals organization.  He and others in the scouting department in the Cardinals organization claims that Luhnow stole player data on his way out of the door.  But how would data taken on his way out of the Cardinals’ organization in 2011 be of any use now in 2015?  Something else is going on here so I would expect more to come from his.  So far all we have is a prepared statement from his lawyer, Nicholas Williams:

“Mr. Correa denies any illegal conduct. The relevant inquiry should be what information did former St. Louis Cardinals employees steal from the St. Louis Cardinals organization prior to joining the Houston Astros, and who in the Houston Astros organization authorized, consented to, or benefited from that roguish behavior?”

Going back in the resume of Jeff Luhnow he originally joined the Cardinals in 2003 at the behest of the owner, William DeWitt, Jr.  He was brought in to work on player scouting and development by being a sabermetrician who, like Bill James, uses empirical analysis to determine the future success of the players on the field or determine which players to try to acquire.  He also developed a baseball academy in the Dominican Republic and expanded the scouting to include Venezuela.  Also he is responsible for a key portion of the organization’s home grown talent that was on their 2011 championship roster.  So this guy most likely developed the information or at least a good portion of it, does not clear him if he took this on his way out, but it does make it conceivable that he recreated some of it in Houston.

So we have a disgraced guy in Correa who is the new face of this scandal and at this time.  Who gives an excuse of I admit no wrong because we think Mr. Luhnow stole some data from us that he had a significant hand in creating in the first place.  I think we can agree that two wrongs don’t make a right.  If you suspect that a former employee stole company secrets you do what every other organization does, you take them to court, not break a bunch of really good laws that protect all of us.

But now the public has its pound of flesh and someone front and center of this sordid tale.  For now we must drag this incident up each time the Cardinals are mentioned for their stellar play this year and if they do win it all maybe put a big fat asterisk on the record of achievement this year.  We expect this in football with the New England Patriots who has scandal after scandal, but not in our national pastime.

Other than a corking the bat or the scuffing a baseball you hear nothing else.  Because the other incidents have been so bad for the sport like the 1919 World Series and Pete Rose’s gambling have been so damming, the league had to give the ultimate in penalties to those who participated in these in these incidents.  So when the FBI has finished with their investigation MLB will begin theirs and maybe when it is all over we should expect the perpetrators, all of them, to atone for their sins against the game.