It also was incredibly stupid for whoever did it to leak this info. Because the Astros then knew they had a leak, and that led to them turning it over to the FBI.

I think you're underestimating how much the Mo people hate the Luhnow people.

I once had a Cards scout refuse to talk to me because I mentioned something SABRE-ish. Was told "You want to talk about made-up bullshit like that, you go talk to one of Luhnow's nerds."

ROFL so going down a list of old passwords is hacking?

Theoretically it could give you a pretty big advantage depending on what you found.

If you're the Cardinals and you hack the Cubs, for instance. You'll get to look into Epstein's brain and see what player development/analysis tools he has. You also get an edge on a division rival that you'll likely be competing with for players. You'll know exactly what they'd be willing to pay so you can price enforce in FA negotiations or not overbid if it's someone you want.

The benefits could be enormous if they yield a new set of eyes/minds and/or provide a way to undermine your direct competition.

In this particular instance, however, they got to Luhnow's system - a system he developed over his 8 years in STL. There was no new information there. Moreover, there's very little benefit to price enforcing as they're in separate leagues. It could be helpful when pursuing players but near as I can remember, the Cards/Astros have not been in on the same guys since Luhnow went out there because they've been in different places on the competitive cycle.

In the end, it almost certainly yielded next to no competitive advantage for STL, which is supported by the fact that they leaked the intel and thus cooked that golden goose.

I mean shit, if you're going to make the organization look TERRIBLE, at least do it in pursuit of actually benefiting your squad instead of just trying to make a former co-worker look like a tool.

St. Louis is a festering shithole. Baseball is all they have. Cut me some slack, FBI, dang.

using them is.
bad deal.
sec

List of key words being looked for.

unless it was a honeypot trap. If so, Luhnow is an even greater genius knowing the acrimony between some of the front office on the way out might result in former coworkers might attempt to see him flame out.

Do I think that's what happend? No.
I do expect the Cards to find a patsy to fall on their sword in an attempt to do damage control. I hope they show them no quarter.

actually yes

It's basically a form of brute force hacking.


There are hacking programs that use "dictionaries" of sorts and a automated log-in app to try every password possible.

Exactly - that's why I don't think this was a known organizational thing.

One or two jackasses thinking like frat boys would leak the information because they thought it was funny. But at the upper levels, someone's going to realize 'holy shit folks, Luhnow's gonna come hard for whoever did this...how 'bout we not EVER let it be known that we have it....'

Like I said, we'll find out. The FBI's not gonna just hang out there. There are gonna be high level Cardinal officials in courtrooms for a very long time answering some pretty nasty questions under oath. But with some background on the parties involved and with at least some knowledge as to how that information was eventually used/leaked, a face level reading suggests something very stupid and not ultimately very beneficial.

TEX needs to get in here.

HA!

Damn, you have a fair amount of nice information. I knew you worked in sports, but how closely/long did you work with folks within the Cards organization?

Yeah, it's incredibly important to know the parties involved here. Walt Jocketty got fired a mere 10 months after winning a World Series, culminating a 3 year stretch where they won 2 pennants and had 2 100 win seasons. He was fired for a mediocre, but not awful, 78 win season where the whole team broke down.

The problem was that the organization had become so friggen toxic that guys in the front office simply weren't speaking to each other for months at a time.

Everything about this goes back to the absolute hatred between the Luhnow and Jocketty people and the fact that Jocketty still has loyal lieutenants in that front office via John Mozeliak.

Better just hope the Cardinals didn't nab a guy the Astros were extremely high on in the draft or something, with a paper trail. That would be the most egregious thing that could happen, IMO.

For example, if there is an email chain in the Cardinals files (which the FBI now has reason to go after) about a player (Say, Michael Wacha) and how the Cards should jump up their evaluation of him based on info from the Astros database, I imagine that would draw attention from the FBI and MLB...

Just one for example that shows the intellectual genius on full display.


]Kathryn Waellner ‏@KatWaellner 50m
50 minutes ago

The FBI is just jealous of the Cardinals success

dur??

I wasn't aware that the FBI was deep in a pennant chase...