St. Louis Cardinals Receive Hacking Punishment

Major League Baseball announced that the St. Louis Cardinals will forfeit their first two draft picks in the 2017 amateur draft to the Houston Astros and have been fined $2 million for the hacking of Houston’s databases.

A federal judge unsealed details about former St. Louis Cardinals executive Chris Correa’s hacking of the Houston Astros’ email and player evaluation databases last week. Once the documents were unsealed, MLB was able to properly evaluate the case and punish the Cardinals.

As such, MLB has fined the Cardinals $2 million and revoked the Cardinals’ first two picks in the upcoming draft – nos. 56 and 75 – and given them to the Astros. The Cardinals will also lose the slot money tied to the picks, giving them one of the smallest pools of slot money in baseball after forfeiting their first round pick upon signing outfielder Dexter Fowler.

Additionally, Correa is banned from ever returning to baseball. Though MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred did not find that any current Cardinals executives shared any responsibility, the team directly benefited from Correa’s actions.

Cardinals chairman Bill DeWitt Jr. issued the following statement:

"“We respect the Commissioner’s decision and appreciate that there is now a final resolution to this matter. Commissioner Manfred’s findings are fully consistent with our own investigation’s conclusion that this activity was isolated to a single individual.”"

Correa, who was fired by the Cardinals in 2015, is currently serving a 46-month sentence in federal prison. MLB officials were waiting for more information on the case to be released by the U.S. District Court, and the documents revealed that Correa hacked into the Astros database 48 times while accessing the emails of five Astros employees over the course of two and a half years.

Beginning in January 2012, Correa had complete access to the account of Sij Mejdal, the Astros’ director of decision sciences and a former Cardinals employee. Correa worked as an analyst under Mejdal in St. Louis, and Mejdal moved to the Astros organization in 2011 with Jeff Luhnow, another former Cardinals executive.

Per the Houston Chronicle’s release of the documents:

"“(Correa) knew what projects the Astros’ analytics department was researching, what concepts were promising and what ideas to avoid,” said one of the documents, signed by Michael Chu, the assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted the case against Correa. “He had access to everything that Sig Mejdal … read and wrote.”"

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In the documents, Michael Chu, the assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted Correa, said that Correa was motivated by his jealousy of Mejdal – who was being praised for his talent acquisition work with the Astros organization.

“Mejdal was one of Correa’s rivals,” Chu wrote, “And now, this rival was being praised, even though his team had not yet begun to win.”

The documents also revealed that Correa attempted to hack into the accounts of Bo Porter, the Astros’ manager from 2013-2014.

Chu also alleged that confidential Astros information that was leaked to Deadspin “must have been Correa.” After the Deadspin leak, Chu wrote, “general managers through Major League Baseball were forced to awkwardly reassure their players. … Ultimately, the Astros were forced to issue private apologies to every team in the league. It was a humiliating episode for the Astros.”

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Chu concluded that Correa was not checking to see if the Astros took any information, but rather he was focused on information that coincided with his work for the Cardinals.