St. Louis Cardinals front office under FBI investigation for hacking

[ReynardMuldrake]

WASHINGTON — The F.B.I. and Justice Department prosecutors are investigating front-office officials for the St. Louis Cardinals, one of the most successful teams in baseball over the past two decades, for hacking into the internal networks of a rival team to steal closely guarded information about player personnel.

Investigators have uncovered evidence that Cardinals officials broke into a network of the Houston Astros that housed special databases the team had built, according to law enforcement officials. Internal discussions about trades, proprietary statistics and scouting reports were compromised, the officials said.

The officials did not say which employees were the focus of the investigation or whether the team’s highest-ranking officials were aware of the hacking or authorized it. The investigation is being led by the F.B.I.’s Houston field office and has progressed to the point that subpoenas have been served on the Cardinals and Major League Baseball for electronic correspondence.

The Houston Astros hired Luhnow as general manager in December 2011. Before then he had been a successful and polarizing executive with the Cardinals. Credit David J. Phillip/Associated Press
The attack represents the first known case of corporate espionage in which a professional sports team has hacked the network of another team. Illegal intrusions into companies’ networks have become commonplace, but it is generally conducted by hackers operating in foreign countries, like Russia and China, who steal large tranches of data or trade secrets for military equipment and electronics.

Major League Baseball “has been aware of and has fully cooperated with the federal investigation into the illegal breach of the Astros’ baseball operations database,” a spokesman for baseball’s commissioner, Rob Manfred, said in a written statement.

The Cardinals officials under investigation have not been put on leave, suspended or fired. The commissioner’s office is likely to wait until the conclusion of the government’s investigation to determine whether to take disciplinary action against the officials or the team.

The case is a rare mark of ignominy for the Cardinals, one of the sport’s most revered and popular organizations. The team has the best record in baseball this season (42-21), regularly commands outsize television ratings and has reached the National League Championship Series nine times since 2000. The Cardinals, who last won the World Series in 2011, have 11 titles over all, second only to the Yankees.

Their owner, Bill DeWitt, is a highly regarded executive who last year was in charge of the search committee for a new commissioner to replace the retiring Bud Selig.

Law enforcement officials believe the hacking was executed by vengeful front-office employees for the Cardinals hoping to wreak havoc on the work of Jeff Luhnow, the Astros’ general manager who had been a successful and polarizing executive with the Cardinals until 2011.

From 1994 to 2012, the Astros and the Cardinals were division rivals, in the National League. For a part of that time, Mr. Luhnow was a Cardinals executive, primarily handling scouting and player development. One of many innovative thinkers drawn to the sport by the “Moneyball” phenomenon, he was credited with building baseball’s best minor league system, as well as drafting several players who would become linchpins of the Cardinals’ 2011 World Series-winning team.

The Astros hired Mr. Luhnow as general manager in December 2011, and he quickly began applying his unconventional approach to running a baseball team. In an exploration of the team’s radical transformation, Bloomberg Business called it “a project unlike anything baseball has seen before.”

Under Mr. Luhnow, the Astros have accomplished a striking turnaround; they are in first place in the American League West division. But in 2013, before their revival at the major league level, their internal deliberations about statistics and players were compromised, law enforcement officials said.

The intrusion did not appear to be sophisticated, the law enforcement officials said. When Mr. Luhnow was with the Cardinals, the organization built a computer network, called Redbird, to house all of their baseball operations information — including scouting reports and player personnel information. After leaving to join the Astros, and bringing some front-office personnel with him from the Cardinals, Houston created a similar program known as Ground Control.

Ground Control contained the Astros’ “collective baseball knowledge,” according to a Bloomberg Business article published last year. The program took a series of variables and “weights them according to the values determined by the team’s statisticians, physicist, doctors, scouts and coaches,” the article said.

Investigators believe Cardinals officials, concerned that Mr. Luhnow had taken their idea and proprietary baseball information to the Astros, examined a master list of passwords used by Mr. Luhnow and the other officials who had joined the Astros when they worked for the Cardinals. The Cardinals officials are believed to have used those passwords to gain access to the Astros’ network, law enforcement officials said.

Last year, some of the information was posted anonymously online, according to an article on Deadspin. Among the details that were exposed were trade discussions that the Astros had with other teams. Mr. Luhnow was asked at the time whether the breach would affect how he dealt with other teams. “Today I used a pencil and paper in all my conversations,” he said.

Believing that the Astros’ network had been compromised by a rogue hacker, Major League Baseball notified the F.B.I., and the authorities in Houston opened an investigation. Agents soon found that the Astros’ network had been entered from a computer at a home that some Cardinals officials had lived in. The agents then turned their attention to the team’s front office.


http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/17/sp...id=tw-bna&_r=0

[Swanman]

Originally Posted by Hootie 2.0

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.

[DJ's left nut]

Originally Posted by Hootie 2.0

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.

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.

[kysirsoze]

Originally Posted by DJ's left nut

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?

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.

[TLO]

Tisk tisk.

[Hootie]

Originally Posted by Swanman

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.

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'?

[duncan_idaho]

Originally Posted by Hootie 2.0

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.

[DJ's left nut]

Originally Posted by kysirsoze

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.

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).

[kysirsoze]

Originally Posted by DJ's left nut

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.

[ChiTown]

Originally Posted by DJ's left nut

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).

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

[DJ's left nut]

Originally Posted by Hootie 2.0

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'?

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.

[wazu]

Originally Posted by kysirsoze

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.

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.

[kysirsoze]

Originally Posted by wazu

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.

[kysirsoze]

Originally Posted by kysirsoze

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

FMP

[DJ's left nut]

Originally Posted by wazu

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.

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.

[OnTheWarpath15]

Favorite tweet so far:

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

-DJ Short