OT: St. Louis Cardinals Under FBI Investigation for Hacking
This might be a bit too OT, but it is a pretty bizarre pro sports story.
The St. Louis Cardinals are currently under investigation by the FBI for hacking into the Houston Astros databases. Apparently the hackers were not too smart and left rather obvious traces of evidence that made it easy for the FBI.
While cheating/spying isn't anything new in professional sports, this seems like a particularly peculiar incident. Any speculations on what the consequences are here?
Links: NY Times, ESPN, Deadspin, Fox Sports (pick your poison)
I wonder if they're the ones who also hacked Cardale Jones' twitter?
they did deflate Brady's footballs.
WAKE UP SHEEPLE!!
Why Houston?
I'm not much of a baseball fan or expert, but do you guys think that this could mean Oakland is still in play?
The man who replaced Luhnow, Dan Kantrovinz, who was with the Cards when the alleged improprieties occured, is now the assistant GM of the A's. So...yes?
He was the director of scouting for the Cardinals before the Astros hired him to be their GM. He helped build the Cards farm system into what it is today, and is responsible for drafting a good amount of the Cards current roster.
He built the Cards' computer database system, then built a similar system in Houston when he went there. He is apparently a bit of a dick, and some people currently in the Cards organization really, really dislike him. Some are suggesting that Luhnow took some proprietary information from St. Louis when he left that he had no right to.
The Astros computer database system was hacked, and some of the information (including notes from trade discussions and scouting reports) were leaked onto the internet. When the FBI got involved, they traced the hack to an IP address at a private residence occupied by a STL front office employee. The system was hacked by using passwords that the employee knew Lunhow used when he was in St. Louis. The NYT article said that an FBI officer suggested that it was done in an effort to embarrass Lunhow.
The main question will be how much involvement the higher ups in the Cardinals organization had. Did they know about this? Sanction it? Use any of the stolen information for their benefit? If yes, then all hell will break loose. If this was the work of one or two employees working out of their hatred for Luhnow without any knowledge of anyone else in the organization, then the damage will be limited to a PR mess and a very bad day for that (those) employee(s).
Granted, I'm a Cards fan, but given how unsophisticated the "hack" was, the FBI's thoughts on the motive, the physical source of the hack, and the fact that the information was leaked onto the internet, it seems unlikely this is something orchestrated by the front office as a whole.
This was very informative, so thank you.
Not a Cards fan, but I agree that this doesn't seem like a grand conspiracy. I doubt the FBI does too much other than some small disciplinary action for the people involved, but do you think the MLB does anything? This is pretty unprecedented even if it is just a rogue employee. The MLB doesn't have a disciplinary track record for front offices as opposed to players (that I'm aware of).
Given how unprecedented this is, I don't think anyone has any idea. If this is basically just a rogue employee, I doubt there would be any of the large punishments like lost draft picks or a postseason ban that some are calling for. In that case, my guess is there would be a fairly substantial fine, and that's about it.
If this was an organizational conspiracy, then lord only knows what will happen. It will be bad though. My guess is Manfred hasn't given it much thought yet and hopes he doesn't have to.
The good thing is that this is the FBI investigating, and they have subpoena power. So unlike the NCAA or NFL, they actually have the power and resources to figure out what happened. Regardless of the outcome, I want to know what happened.
... Wake me up when they tie this back to Tom Brady.
I heard some speculation on penalties. They included giving up the shared revenue from MLB, around $60 million a year, loss of draft picks, and cleaning out the entire front office. Of all the franchises to pull something like this, I don't know why it would be St. Louis. Unless their whole run of success has been all obtained through cheating, they seemed like the franchise who this would benefit least.
No joke I was just thinking yesterday how simialr the Cards were to the Patriots (not resigning Pujlos/Wilfork and others, developing young players, etc) and then this happens. More similair than I even thought.
I think this is much worse than anything the Pats have ever did.
This is objectively worse, by a giant amount, than anything the Pats did or didn't do, including spygate. I just saw Wilbon and Kornheiser say the same thing on ESPN ("Deflategate was nothing compared to this.") and they are right. Of course, deflategate is nothing compared to almost anything, but still...
Respectfully, I think it's a bit premature to draw such a conclusion. If in fact there was a hack that originated from the private residence of one staff member without knowledge of upper management or front office, I don't think it's worse... I'm skeptical any competitive advantage was gained by the Cardinals organization in this scenario. In fact, to even compare with deflategate, shouldn't there be some assessment of how any hacked information was used by the Cards to gain a competitive edge?
Regarding the information that was leaked to the Internet, at most that harmed the Astros (I'm not aware of any other team benefiting from this information, which has been known for a while), but how severely and to whose benefit?
I am assuming there is some real fire in this smoke, and that's the basis of my comment. However, even in youyr sceanrio, a private hack from a member of the Cardinals is still a crime, and therefore much worse than deflating a football, as a matter of law.
Investigators believe Cardinals officials, concerned that Mr. Luhnow had taken their idea and proprietary baseball information to the Astros, examined a master list of passwords used by Mr. Luhnow and the other officials who had joined the Astros when they worked for the Cardinals.
The key here is to always use a special character, so instead of "Astros123" it could have been "Astros123$" or something like that. Seriously though, it's amazing that someone would work off the same list of passwords that they used elsewhere in a similar application. Still, I am rather intrigued to see if the league or the Cardinals do something here - the Deadspin article says that it was traced to the home of a Cardinals employee, which to me lends a little credence to the idea that this might be just some rather vindictive employee.
Luckily i wised up to this hacker type stuff a few months ago...now all of my "1234" passwords require me to blink 2 (or is it 3??? Oh Yeah!) times when entering them. I feel much safer.
I'm a cards fan, and I admit that I haven't read any of the details yet. But I'm not too worried. Seems unlikely that this was orchestrated by the team, as they have little to gain and lots to lose by taking part in something like this. I'll wait until all the details come out before I get worked up.
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Busch League move by the Cards employee.
But this might be the year Mike Matheny finally wins a ring as a manager after being so close the last 3 seasons. He has done a masterful job of managing the Cards through some key losses.