Remember when the FBI got involved with the Houston Astros database breach investigation and it turned out that – whoopsies – the Cardinals front-office was involved?
Rob Manfred (and about 29 owners) does.
Turns out that the Cardinals still haven’t been properly punished by MLB for their snooping transgressions. But it looks like we won’t have to wait much longer to see just how bad it’s going to be.
STLToday.com is reporting that the Commissioner is about ready to bring the boom:
“I expect, hope, that it will play out before the start of spring training,” Cardinals chairman Bill DeWitt Jr. said Monday. “I know the goal is, for the commissioner, to get things completed by late January, hopefully early February at the latest.”
There’s going to be a fine. There are going to be draft picks lost.
How much and how many are still up for debate. It’s hard to see how this isn’t real bad, though. Espionage – at least in the baseball world, if not the real world – is about as sure a way to rally sentiment against yourself as there is.
Toss in a little jealousy from teams the Cardinals have dismantled over the past 20 years and you’ve got yourself a recipe for ‘wait, the punishment is WHAT?’ level headlines sometime in the next three weeks,
The Cardinals former Scouting Director got almost 4 YEARS in prison for this!
Like real prison. From ESPN:
Christopher Correa had pleaded guilty in January to five counts of unauthorized access of a protected computer from 2013 to at least 2014, the same year he was promoted to director of baseball development in St. Louis. He was fired last summer and now faces 46 months behind bars and a court order to pay $279,038 in restitution. He had faced up to five years in prison on each count.
I’m not sure how it was calculated, but federal prosecutors estimated that the Cardinals cost the Astros 1.7M dollars through this whole sordid ordeal. So if you’re looking for a baseline fine…
There’s no way of telling just how much the specter of this decision hung over Cardinals management in 2016. Maybe it was out of sight, out of mind? Maybe it was a bigger deal than we’ll ever know and deals were or were not made because of what they expect to happen?
Closure, though? It’ll be good for everyone. And it’s coming soon.
Just don’t expect it to be cheap.
Photo: LA Times
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