Former Cardinals Exec to Be Sentenced April 18 for Hacking, MLB Punishment to Follow
A slight update to the Cardinals hacking scandal – can’t let that fall entirely off your radar, you know – as the court that accepted Chris Correa’s guilty plea for his role in the criminal activity will sentence him April 18, per the Houston Chronicle. The former Cardinals scouting director was previously going to be sentenced on April 11, but that is the home opener for both the Astros and the Cardinals. This way, there won’t be quite the same cloud over their otherwise happy days.
If you recall, we learned a great deal more about the depths of Correa’s hacking back when he pled guilty on January 8, and it was much worse than the limited incursion searching for stolen information we’d previously been led to believe. For example, Correa accessed the Astros’ internal database multiple times over the course of more than a year, including accessing and filtering Astros player evaluations during the 2013 draft and on Trade Deadline day in 2013.
Correa went on to confirm that by “colleagues” he meant people he worked with in the St. Louis Cardinals organization. That seems like a very important revelation, because, if true, Correa just testified that at least some other Cardinals’ employees were 1) aware of the hack and 2) did nothing to stop, prevent or acknowledge the crime Correa committed. In other words, even if Correa did in fact act entirely alone, others in the Cardinals organization knew what he was doing.
That could have implications as MLB takes over the investigation for its own punitive purposes.
It is not known what kind of punishment MLB will levy, but it could involve the loss of draft picks and/or bonus pool money in the upcoming draft. I won’t reiterate what I’ve written before, but MLB cannot let this kind of activity go un-punished.
