The St. Louis Cardinals have been working with lawyers for a while now on the alleged hacking of information from the Houston Astros, and their higher ups released a statement distancing themselves and the organization from whatever happened:
DeWitt and Mozeliak statements regarding investigation: pic.twitter.com/8EKkZndfQh
— St. Louis Cardinals (@Cardinals) June 17, 2015
GM John Mozeliak also conducted an interview with Bob Nightengale to further emphasize that the Cardinals are, themselves, trying to get to the bottom of what happened, and that he absolutely was not involved. The interview was conducted with counsel for Mozeliak and Bill DeWitt on the line, and he also emphasized that neither man is currently being targeted by the FBI investigation. The lawyer limited what Mozeliak could respond to, according to Nightengale. (Former lawyer in me says … well, yeah. There’s a very serious criminal investigation ongoing, and anyone even tangentially involved should avoid commenting publicly to the extent possible.)
For his part, Astros GM Jeff Luhnow, the apparent target of the hack, spoke exclusively to Sports Illustrated, and denied that he’d simply failed to change his passwords (or change them enough) when he left the Cardinals and came to the Astros. He also added that he’d believed his departure from the Cardinals was an amicable one.
You can read the SI piece for much more from Luhnow, but those two comments, alone, throw cold water on the notion that the perpetrators simply plugged in some old Luhnow passwords, and did what they did to seek revenge on a guy they didn’t like.
That said, while this is still a very, very serious matter, I remain of the mind that it’s highly unlikely that the highest levels of Cardinals executives were aware of – let alone endorsed – whatever went on with the Astros’ computer systems last year. We’ll see what the federal investigation reveals (it could come soon), and how MLB responds.