Very odd to "hack" the system of a non rival, non division team. Like has been mentioned some idiot probably had the password and used it without higher level consent or knowledge.

Ridiculous shit and going to look bad regardless.

Maybe, but it also could have just been the one team with a formal Cardinals exec with bad password security.

Not really that odd, when you consider how much the front offices dislike each other.

The teams may not really be rivals anymore, but the people working in the front offices certainly are.

Who's to say they didn't do something similar with other teams, too?

-I have no dog in this fight-

I will agree, though, because I remember when they posted the Astros hack on deadspin everyone was like, "lol what a moron."

So, competitive advantage or no, it does seem like a move made out of spite. So I'll let DJ have that one.

As for Amnorix steering the thread towards NE's cheating ... once your owner accepts penalties levied down for cheating, arguing that your team didn't actually cheat is about the most ridiculous thing you could do, well, unless you're a total idiot homer.

Could be, if this was authorized on a remotely high level. The difference would be opportunity, I would think.

The Black Squaks?

Yes, actually, hacking into other peoples computers is something that the government has rules about

Well, unless other teams have former cardinal executives who don't change their passwords and put information on an extremely vulnerable platform, I'd say it's highly unlikely.

Why is a conservative political thinktank doing research on footballs?

Anyway, remember how I was talking a few weeks ago about how you have to assume an extremely specific timeline (invented out of thin air by a Patriots fan) of what happened during the halftime measurements to come to this conclusion? These guys don't just assume it, they state it as fact in their report with no evidence.

Also, to reach their conclusion, they're assuming that a football is a rigid vessel. I don't think it is, do you?

Actually, he accepted it because there is really no way to fight it. The teams aren't subject to the collective bargaining agreement, and the bylaws give all power to the commissioner. His options were accept it or go full rogue and bring a lawsuit against Goodell and the League. Basically, the full Al Davis route.

And even then it's not clear how he could win. The NFL bylaws vest all power to adjudicate these types of things to the Commissioner.

Basically, the NFL clubs, long before Kraft or pretty much any of the current owners were involved, gave authority to the Commissioner to decide issues like this. Doesn't matter if any given club doesn't like it or not, there's very little recourse for them.

I'd just give it up, man. It's like arguing Kobe/LeBron with Arrow 2. You can post 1500 statistics that all point 1 way and it doesn't matter.

The owner of the team accepted the penalties levied for being caught cheating. He accepted them. That is not what innocent people do. It wasn't a plea bargain, it wasn't anything. The NFL said, "this is what we fine you. This is what you lose." And Kraft accepted that as is.

Anyone arguing that they didn't cheat, at this point, is a total ****ing idiot.

A football can be rigid enough a vessel to resist deformation at a certain pressure, which is all that matters in this case.

No, a rigid vessel means that the container has the same volume regardless of pressure, not that it resists deformation when at pressure. A football is not a rigid vessel.

ROFL

Yeah, right. It's all about choices and options. If your options/choices suck, then you do what you have to, even if it means swallowing a bitter pill.

There are millions of examples, from innocent people who can't afford to fight the charges so they plead guilty to something that doesn't carry jail time, to someone who decides to settle a discrimination claim because their choices are paying $5,000 to the shitty employee they fired or paying $25,000+ to lawyers to defend the claim, with an uncertain outcome, that will take a year or three to reach.

Or the person/company who got ****ed when the other side breached the contract, or didn't perform, who let them get away with it because they didn't want to deal with it, or couldn't afford the lawyers to sue them, or whatever. They paid someone else to do it instead, paying 1.5 or double the amount necessary (or more) even though they shouldn't have had to.

Here in the real world, it's all about options and choices.

Do you mean measuring the Colts footballs last? No evidence? They said they ran out of time when doing the Colts footballs. What does that suggest? That they did the Pats balls first, and THEN the Colts balls. Heck, "suggest" is too weak a word. What other possible conclusion could there be.

And bottom line is the Wells report should have included the timeline, and should have factored it in, or ELIMINATED IT, but they didn't.

First - short of Hamas, I'm almost certainly the most critical Cardinal fan on this board and I'm gonna guess anybody in the Cardinals thread would echo that. Fan? Yes. Homer? Get the **** outta here with that.

Second - as a fan of the team, I can actually speak intelligently to the background of some of the parties involved here - you cannot. If nothing else, Duncan's corroboration supports that point and he does have insider contacts that I do not. It provides a very feasible alternative motive for the Luhnow data hack. As the latter NYT article pointed out - why would they bother breaking into the system of the worst team in baseball who's data they already had if it wasn't expressly to spite Jeff Luhnow?

If you believe that there was a substantial competitive advantage gained here - please expound. The Cardinals almost certainly have the systems that Luhnow was incorporating at the time of the data breach. They have any of the information they would have been able to get. There's no new insight to be gleaned here had there been had they hacked any other team in baseball. This one particular GM simply had no new insight to offer them as he was running the Cardinals player procurement system for 5 years or so before he left.

There's no benefit to price enforcing on a team outside the division and again, if they used it to get a FA to sign with them, it could have only been Peralta - the only key FA signing they made in that time period. The only major trades they made were for guys like Mujica. The Astros, being in a complete rebuild, would not have been in on guys like Mujica and Peralta. They could have found out some intel on how other teams value their players but guess how else they could have found that out? Call the other teams. Those teams are going to be just as likely to feed misinformation to the Astros as they are the Cardinals. The only true 'trustworthy' intel would have been internal.

I also acknowledged that as the dust settles it could turn out that they did use this to their advantage in some instances, in which case I'll view it differently. However, right now, based on the timelines of the data leaked, this appears almost certainly to have occurred in the Spring of 2013 and maybe have impacted 2 drafts, no trades and no FA signings.

Explain how I'm being a homer here.

Had this been the Cubs, Dodgers, Yankees, Angels, D-Rays....literally ANY other team, then the motive would have been clearly competitive and the takeaway could have been far more substantial. It wasn't. My analysis is specific to this instance and the particular GM/System that was compromised. How is that hard to digest?

so the NFL really had a lot to gain by suspending the face of the league and docking the Patriots more picks and money for a cheating scandal that never existed

yeah man

totally

that is way more likely than ... THE PATRIOTS CHEATED. AGAIN.

way, way more likely

God you're dumb.

Did you see how they got in?

They literally used the list of his past passwords to access his system. Because of his experience with the Cards, they'd have probably been able to find whatever external server he housed in on pretty easily. This looks like they just logged into a cloud-based system.

This wouldn't be applicable to any other team. The only other possibility would be Oakland where their former director of scouting, Dan Kantrovitz, is now the assistant GM. I'm pretty sure Dan Kantrovitz isn't controlling Billy Beane's player procurement software.

No, they couldn't come up with any temperature coefficients that made sense with that scenario, so they had to invent a different one to try to fit their explanation into the data: there was a significant break in between measuring the last Patriot ball and the first Colt ball. The made up scenario states that the officials measured all of the Patriot balls, stopped measuring to re-inflate all of the Patriot balls, and then proceeded to measure all of the Colt balls. Basically, the first Colt ball should have warmed up just about the same amount as the last Patriot ball in any scenario other than this specific one, and the data does not support this.

Whoever leaked the initial hacking information a while back could have been upset that they were being forced to do it. It just as easily could have been orders from the higher ups just as it could have been a bit lower person going rogue.

One question: How many scouts did Luhnow take with him? I could see the value of having another team's scouting reports on prospects/players/advanced scouting/shift data/etc.

The only real value I could have seen the Cardinals gleaning from this hack is related to that type of scout info.

If that were the case, they'd have leaked that the Cardinals ordered it. If they were that upset, they'd have burned the house down. It's possible, sure, but "just as easily"...nah.

But here's the thing - the FBI has the house that the system was accessed from and they know the former Cardinals employee(s) that resided there at the time. They have the names and the names will come out.

There's not gonna be a hell of a lot that doesn't get found out here. If Mozeliak sanctioned it, heads will definitely roll and that sucks a great deal because Mozeliak was kicking some substantial ass well before Luhnow even left. Now I've always been of the mind that our best talent evaluater went out the door with Luhnow but Mozeliak is a damn shrewd GM in his own right. He's not as good at finding the hitters that Luhnow was, but he's developed a damn good system for pitching and has largely been aces in fishing/cutting bait on veteran players.

We have, at worst, a top 10 MLB GM in St. Louis and almost certainly a top 5 front office overall in terms of a common culture and organizational stability. If this petty horseshit from a schism that occurred a decade ago implodes that, it's going to be damn disappointing.

But if Moe sanctioned it, there's no alternative. In the end, I guess it would be karmic justice. The Cards do seem to have some Devilmagic that leads to their success. I have no idea how a squad with their 1 and 2 starters, 3 and 4 hitters and setup man (now closer as well) all injured has the best record in baseball by 4 games, especially with the worst manager at the helm I've ever seen. It makes no sense. But it would figure that something like this is what takes them down.

I'm not going to pretend to know much about Mike Matheny and his managing. I assume it would drive me about as crazy as Ned Yost and Ned Yost's bullpen management.

I will, however, point out that a manager, in the regular season, is basically +-2 wins for his team, tops.

The Cardinals were the same fan base that hated Tony LaRussa.

In the regular season that may be true but once you get into the playoffs, the manager can have a much greater effect so giving or taking 1 game in a series due to managing can have a gigantic impact. Plus, decisions made by a manager can have lasting effects that go into the playoffs. For example, Matheny has always been a guy to grind his starting pitchers into dust during the regular season so way too many of them have tired arms or get hurt before the postseason. All in all, he is an absolutely god awful manager that has been gifted with a consistently great roster roster and a great front office.

The problem with Matheny is the bizarre loyalty and the fact that he flogs his top 3 bullpen arms.

Look at every team he's run and he's lost either his setup man, primary lefty or closer for at least 1/2 the season. It's because he refuses to use anyone else. We have a thirteen man pitching staff right now and Kevin Siegrist has pitched 4 times in the last five games, the same Siegrist that lost 5 mph off his fastball and missed almost all of 2014 (after making 45 appearances in 100 games as a 23 yr old rook) and is only just now getting healthy again. He's been in 32 of the Cardinals 63 games so far. Care to guess how long he'll last? He broke down after appearing in 32 of 68 last season. I'm giving him another month. Walden appeared in 12 of the first 20 and has now missed 2 months.

Motte, Boggs, Rzepczynski, Mujica, Siegrist, Rosenthal, Walden - 1 pitcher over 3 years of managing this club has made it through multiple seasons unscathed and it's probably because he's never quite been one of Matheny's favorite 3: Seth Maness. Otherwise you can count on either his closer, setup man or #1 lefty missing months of the season every single year.

And again, the man feels compelled to utilize a 13 man pitching staff so he can play with a short bench (that is presently 2 catchers, Pete Kozma - worst player in baseball, and Peter Bourjos) and still go more than a week without even using a hot reliever like Villanueva.

And lets not even discuss the fact that for the 2nd consecutive season our cleanup hitter's been removed from the lineup and the team has actually improved because Matheny wouldn't bench a struggling Craig or Adams. Instead he'd just keep sending them out there to kill rallies. It took a trade and an injury to get two negative WAR hitters out of the cleanup spot.

Ultimately I think tactics sway anywhere from 3-5 games/season personally. Not a huge number, but not insignificant. But they matter more in the playoffs and they matter if they're getting your guys injured due to overuse.

Personally, I think that damaging the competitive advantage of another team out of spite is just as bad for baseball as cheating for you own gain. I mean, when the leak came out it was a big embarrassment for the Astros and seemed to hurt them when it came to trade discussions. As it stands right now, barring significant new info coming to light, I think anyone who authorized/performed these invasions should be banned from the sport for life.

Tisk tisk.

this is a contradiction

a great front office doesn't hire a god awful manager -- unless, of course, your great front office realizes managing is no longer about X's and O's as much as it is about managing the clubhouse

so you can't have it both ways

why would a great front office hire a 'god awful manager'?

To maintain "the Cardinal way" rabble, rabble, rabble.

I suspect that's exactly what will happen. With the emphasis on baseball analytics, data security is incredibly important. I figure MLB will look to make an example of the parties involved here. Like I said, I hope it's a rogue operator or I expect the entire Cardinals front office is detonated.

As to its impact on the Astros - well it came to light in June of 2014 when they were openly tanking. You're welcome to comb that roster for anyone with substantial trade value if you'd like. They weren't going to trade anyone that was part of their rebuilding process so you're pretty much just looking at guys like Chad Qualls, who they liked enough to bring back. They got a very nice return for Jarrod Cosart - way more than I thought they should get. Scott Feldman? His contract guaranteed him $20 million...for a 31 yr old 5th starter. He has no value to speak of.

It was embarrassing for Luhnow, but I think it's pretty unlikely that it had an impact on his dealings. Hell, if anything had teams mad at him at the time, it was the Aiken debacle. He really lost a lot of face there (wholly unfairly, IMO).

Well I hope for y'all's sake this isn't as bad as it looks and it was some rogue dipshit. I know STL fans get tons of hate, but some of my best friends live and die with this team. This would be about the only thing that could make this Royals fans feel bad for them. :)

I'm good with Banning the Cardinal Franchise from post-season play for the next 5 years and reinstating Pete Rose back into baseball.:evil:

Because he's a fan favorite. And an argument could be made that there was no obvious reason that he'd be a god-awful manager at the time he was hired. Then again, there was no reason that he'd be a good one either - he had precisely zero games of managing experience above the little league level.

But because he inherited a WS winner that was loaded to the gills with cost-controlled arms, not to mention an entire top of the order at below market value, he's won ballgames. He got lucky that he took over a team that has a seemingly unending supply of major league quality hurlers right at the time that offense plummeted and that style of game became en vogue again.

As a consequence, he's untouchable. It's not because of his merits but rather a happy coincidence of roster construction and timing that he fell ass-backwards into.

The Cardinals would have won another WS and another pennant had LaRussa still been running the team over the last 3 seasons, IMO. I don't know what this means, really, but it's interesting to note that Matheny's teams have led post-season series only to lose 3 straight games to end their season in every year Matheny's managed the squad. As I see it, you're looking at a manager that simply doesn't have a Plan B. Once his opponent zigged, Matheny just sat there like a cow staring at a new gate and his team would implode.

Problem is, the "rogue dipshit" explanation doesn't usually fly. Even if true the public won't buy it. Cards fans will be assaulted with this story for years if not decades. It will be a giant media shadow for the remainder of this great season they are having right now.

That's true. I'll be honest, I'd pull it out in a pinch if a baseball discussion got heated. Of course I'm a terrible friend.

FMP

Yes but y'see, I don't precisely give a wet shit about what the public will buy. Just as I wouldn't were I in Amnorix's shoes w/r/t the Patriots.

The public is a fickle beast that generally does resent sustained success - period. I understand that and I don't mind that. The Cardinals were nobody's darlings even before this so I don't care that this will further sully them in the eyes of the national public.

What I care about is that a front office that has excelled over the last decade or so largely because of its stability remains intact. If the rogue dipshit explanation is true, my front office remains in place and the wheels keep spinning...at least until that never-ending mass of !@#$ing Cubs premier hitting prospects runs us down. That happens regardless of whether or not 'the public will buy it'.

If 'rogue dipshit' isn't true...well damn, why couldn't this have happened a year ago so we could blow it up and steal Joe Maddon?

Besides - is there ANY outcome that's going to sate the public bloodlust here? Jesus, they could have emails from Mozeliak directing it, he could be fired on the spot and then kill himself and the national public would still laugh at the Cards misery. The Cards aren't coming out of this clear regardless of what happens so my druther's are that they at least come out of it with their front office largely intact.

Favorite tweet so far:

The Cardinals hacked into the Phillies network first, but only found a game of Solitaire.

-DJ Short

LMAO

Uh no.

The Pats had to hear about Spygate for approximately 2 years before everyone forgot and stopped caring. It was literally dead until this latest cheating scandal.

This will be a big deal for about 6 months after the conclusion and then everyone will stop caring.

The public has the attention span that can only be measured in nano seconds.

http://dkonpittsburghsports.com/2015...d-for-hacking/

I know the vast majority of you hate the Cardinals, but this is a little less knee jerk and echos what DJ was saying.

Siap

of course we would laugh at the Cards misery ... every team deserves to have some misery that isn't simply losing in game 5 of the NLCS every year they don't win a god damn World Series

Right up until they perform again.

The public forgot about Spygate...until the Pats were in another Super Bowl. Then they had to go through the wringer again. It'll be the same way with the Cards. The public will excoriate them every time they make the post-season. There's pretty much a cottage industry of trolling 'the BFIB' at this point - this will only get it spun up a little more.

Like I said - I don't really care about public reaction. I'd just really prefer see a good front office not get broken up. Baseball is the most rewarding sport there is when you have a good team, IMO. You get nightly content and if it's a bad outcome then you get a chance to wash it out the next night. Even when the Chiefs are good, it's one day a week with Monday as an afterglow and Friday as a gear up. Hockey and basketball are just so beholden to their playoffs that I don't give a shit during the regular season at all.

I'm not terribly interested in 90 loss seasons if we can avoid them.

I understand this. Hence that being my first post in this thread.

as a guy who has spent his entire life hating the Cardinals ... I just can't figure out why I should care about this one?

I truly don't give a shit if they were stealing scouting reports from the Astros or if they were trying to embarrass them or what not

this one might be the most serious because they are actually committing a true crime here ... but it's the "cheating" scandal that I simply don't give a **** about

I didn't care about steroids, either. Hell, I wish players were still juicing. Not killing me, and I dig the long ball (and it made fantasy baseball more fun, too).

Is Mizzou still going to want to do the Cardinals hat?

What a disaster...

http://stlouis.cardinals.mlb.com/stl...at_300x200.png

What they gained will make zero impact. Assuming the report is true, the mere fact Cardinal personnel hacked into an opponents system is all that matters. That is a crime, a federal crime I believe. The Cardinals are going to get whacked pretty hard for this one.

I see it differently. The Cards are a proud franchise and part of that pride isn't just from winning, but from a rich culture that has always been generally admired around the country. A hit to their integrity of this magnitude is painful. Even as a Royals fan I don't want to see it. You don't want to become the Patriots. There is a lot more at stake here than just a few more good years.

Rumor on MLB Radio is it was 2 disgruntled Cards employees pissed at Lunhow for not bringing them to Houston and were trying to make him look bad.

Not sure if they are current or ex employees or where they got that info.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/F6ySNAA_2Iw" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

So they try and make someone who works for the Astros "look bad" and end up screwing their own employer?

Sounds about right, haha

And that may be the case; but that's going to be the case either way. The damage there is done.

I'd prefer avoid the shot to the organization's prestige but I just don't see it as avoidable at this point. The Cards have combined the mortal sins of success and percieved hypocrisy. Regardless of whether or not the Cards and their fans hold themselves out as a higher, more 'pure' form of the game, there's definitely a perception that they do. And when something like this falls on their heads...well there's just not a good way to rebound without losing some shine.

This is not a turn. At best the Cards have been John Cena for years: a megahero to their fans but in practice not only gets booed for being stale (albeit ultra-successful too) but also acts like a classic heel (i.e. a bully, a sore loser, etc).

Don't care, at this point I'll just embrace the hate. Wear it like a badge of honor.

Not much else to do.

Guess I should be like Amnorix and continue denying any wrong doing of a team I support.

that's the honorable thing to do

I blame the Chinese.

now you're buying into the Patriots way!

I mean if you believe something didn't happen, even though there's evidence that something happened, your belief is ultimately correct, right?

The Patriots violated the new rules handed down by the NFL in connection with Spygate. I have never denied that. I have seen internet chatter that the NFL could not unilaterally change those rules as it didn't go through the Competition Committee or otherwise (the NFL just sent a letter changing the rules), but I haven't delved much into that.

There's tremendous confusion over what Spygate was and wasn't, however, and I try to clarify that for those who are confused. :D

Deflategate seems to me to be mostly an unbelievably harsh penalty for sloppy procedures and very questionable science underlying the decision that rules were broken. Even if rules were broken, it seems to be me to the equivalent of jaywalking.

Neither are remotely on par with hacking the computer network of a rival team. Like not remotely in the same stratosphere.

I'm not disagreeing about Deflategate. The entire thing is dumb.

However, Belichick should have been punished at least as much as Payton was. And, assuming the allegations are true against the Cardinals, whoever is responsible needs to be given the ax by the Cardinals or banned by MLB for life.

So that's where Rosenthal went. He is on the run from the Feds.

the Patriots lost a 1st and 4th and were fined double the league maximum (2nd offense) for "jaywalking."

for sure

Forearm tightness Lynn had was from sitting at a computer all night every night hacking MLB data bases.

As a Patriot hater, this is the most stupidest ****ing suspension in the history of sports. getting Suspended because the ball was deflated a little bit. ****ing really?


Lets be real he was only suspended because he told the NFL **** you im not handing over my cell phone.

And lying to them during the investigation...

Guilty as charged!

Violating a league rule and doing things that land people in prison, more or less industrial espionage that entailed committing felonies, are indeed not even close to one another.

This is not close to what Pete Rose did, betting on games his team was in. This is not what favorite son Mark McGwire did, even though he was the second worst offender in history in that regard, that was only individual cheating.

This is an integrity of the game issue really. If teams can't run scouting organizations and correspond with each other without fear of some other team spying on them or stealing their information, what pretense of fair play is there?

What kind of punishment could MLB possibly do here if guilty?

The people involved must be banned for life. People who knew or should have known need some other sort of ban. Don't know what you could do to a team as a whole in MLB

People that should have known? Commissioner or maybe Obama?

Live PPV execution of 100,000 random fans.

@demonpenz David Glass never gets hacked because to save money he had all files on players saved on re-formated AOL disks retweeted 104 favorites 250

Simmer down, Danny Parkins.

I wish they would all die

:shrug:

I was only suggesting a fair and rational punishment.

Oh, and I'm no Parkins. That dude has a xzytop chin.

LMAO