THE HACK

Author

Matthew Garringer
October 29, 2023

Today’s story is about a rogue Cardinals employee that committed corporate espionage and ended up going to federal prison.

We all know about the sign-stealing scandal that made the Houston Astros the villains of baseball a few years back.

But before that, they were the VICTIMS of a hacking scandal perpetrated by a member of the St. Louis Cardinals organization.

His name is Chris Correa, and he was the scouting director for the Cardinals back in 2012.

His link to the Astros was GM Jeff Luhnow.

Luhnow was a former Cardinals exec who left for Houston in December of 2011 and brought a few employees from the organization with him.

Correa, who remained with St. Louis, used passwords from his Cardinals co-workers to access the Astros databases.

And this wasn’t a one-time thing.

Correa hacked into the Astros’ “Ground Control” database 48 times and accessed the accounts of five different Astros employees.

He knew what projects the Astros’ analytics department was researching, had access to amateur scouting reports, internal player rankings, and even medical reports on players that Houston was looking to draft.

He could essentially "copy their homework" and supplement his own ideas by cross-referencing them against what Houston’s team was working on.

This went on for 2.5 years before Correa learned that the FBI was investigating the matter.

He didn't even view what he was doing as a crime, but when agents knocked on his door and started questioning him, he knew it was time to lawyer up.

Clearly, he never learned this valuable equation.

Correa's guilty plea came on January 8, 2016.

Only seven months after he'd run his first draft for the Cardinals.

Turns out, he made some pretty good picks too — Harrison Bader, Jordan Hicks, and shortstop Paul DeJong — all of whom are big leaguers now.

He signed a deal stating that he could do up to five years in prison and acknowledged that he had caused $1.7 million worth of losses to the Astros.

The court sentenced him to 46 months in federal prison for five counts of unauthorized access to a protected computer.

Additionally, he was ordered to pay $279,037 in restitution.

Rob Manfred also banned him from MLB for life.

No one else was implicated in the investigation; Correa was just an employee who went rogue, but because he worked for St. Louis, and they benefitted from his cheating, the Cards were on the hook as well.

The Cardinals organization had to pay $2 million to Houston and give them their top two draft picks for the 2017 draft (#56 and #75).

It's a tough pill to swallow, but nothing even close to the $5 million the Astros had to pay when they got caught cheating.

Nothing will level up your home bar faster than Dugout Mugs products.

And they just dropped something new: Home Plate Coasters.

These bad boys are made with real wood and engraved with your team’s logo; all 30 MLB teams are available.

They also include a lifetime warranty.

Use the code SUNDAYDEAL to get 30% off — today only!

WHAT TO WATCH

Streams on: Netflix

Why it’s awesome: This documentary tells the story of the Portland Mavericks, an independent minor league baseball team that played in the ‘70s.

The organization was founded by Bing Russell, a former actor best known for his role as Deputy Clem Foster on the TV show, "Bonanza."

It’s an underdog story about a team of misfits who challenged the organized baseball establishment and brought an unconventional and fun-loving spirit to the game.

Great watch, and for what it’s worth, the film got a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, which is pretty rare.

STRANGE NAMES

If you're just joining us, we play this game every day where we try to find the weirdest names throughout baseball history.

Why? Don't ask us, it's just something we like to do.

If you've been rocking with us for awhile now, you know what time it is.

Today's winner is:

You can tell that Tommy’s parents weren’t very creative.

Toms never won a game at the big league level, and he only threw 23 innings over the course of three years.

He did, however, have pretty good numbers in the minor leagues.

Over six seasons, he went 31–20 with a 3.08 ERA in 261 games.

THE DEAD LEGENDS ARCHIVE

If you like this story, check out some of our past favorites: