The New York Times  broke news today that the St. Louis Cardinals are being investigated for hacking into the Houston Astros internal database. If this is true, this will be one of the biggest scandals in baseball this century, going along with steroids. This is unchartered territory for Major League Baseball and if found guilty the legal consequences will be major. MLB released a statement saying they have, “been aware of and [have] fully cooperated with the federal investigation into the illegal breach of the Astros’ baseball operations database. Once the investigative process has been completed by federal law enforcement officials, we will evaluate the next steps and will make decisions promptly.” If found guilty, the new commissioner, Rob Manfred, will have his first major problem to deal with.

Background Information

Jeff Luhnow, General Manger of the Astros, was a scouting director for the Cardinals up until after the 2011 season then went to Houston to take the GM job. Last year, a Deadspin article reported that the Astros had been hacked and their trade talks with other teams had been posted for the world to see. If you have not seen the trade discussions I highly suggest you do so because it gives you an inside look into how trade talks work. This caused major issues in Houston and added another problem to what was a bad 2014 for Houston. They were playing poorly again, the 2014 draft was about to fall apart, and they were hacked. It is safe to say 2014 was not good for Houston.

What to Expect

What the proper punishment for the Cardinals is unknown now, but having the FBI involved is very serious and if found guilty the punishment should deal a significant blow to an organization that has been talked about as the best in baseball. The Astros on the other hand continue to change their perception across baseball. David Coleman, a writer for Fan Graphs, explained this perfectly on twitter saying, “a year ago, [the] Astros were [a] terrible team, botched draft, didn’t protect their servers. Now? Good team, right about Aiken [2014 draft], robbery victims. Amazing how the perception of the franchise has changed in 12 months time.” Coleman is absolutely correct, but what will be an interesting development will be how the Cardinals and MLB handle this and most importantly what the FBI finds.

Sources

New York Times

Twitter: Chandler Rome, David Coleman

Deadspin