The St. Louis Cardinals are being investigated by the FBI in connection with the hacking of the Houston Astros organization according to a report from the New York Times and if the team is found to be at fault for the hack, there is a chance they could face punishment from MLB commissioner Rob Manfred.
The New York Times reported that the FBI is investigating the Cardinals for allegedly hacking into networks and possibly stealing information about the Astros from an internal system. The investigation reportedly started last year when some of the correspondence from the Astros internal communications system was printed online.
Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow was a former executive with the Cardinals and the report hints that part of the motivation may have been to target Luhnow. Luhnow previously was with the Cardinals from 2003 through 2011 and after that he took over as general manager for the Astros. Luhnow has been known as a prickly personality and someone that uses sabermetrics extensively and that has caused some dustups in the past, including with former Astros manager Bo Porter.
The report says that the "FBI and Justice Department officials have evidence" that Cardinals officials were able to get into the team database and had "access to statistics, scouting reports and internal discussions about players, trades and other proprietary information." Jeff Passan of Yahoo! Reported later on Tuesday that the hack was traced to an address where Cardinals employees had stayed in spring training in Jupiter, Florida. Following that, David Barron and Evan Drellich of the Houston Chronicle reported that "four to five individuals" are being looked at in connection with the investigation.
More answers likely will be coming and the charges could be stemming from the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, according to Hardball Talk. Discipline likely will come out after the investigation is finished and Manfred will have his first major challenge on his hands. The Cardinals are a premiere organization and with the Astros having lost 100 games and then bouncing into first place, the whole story has irony streaming through it. The Luhnow connection makes it even more unique and details likely will continue filtering out about the story.
"One of the things I have been talking to my counterparts about with other clubs is recommending that everybody take a look at their own security systems and make sure they don't get hacked the way that we were," Luhnow said last year, according to ESPN.com. The Times report says that "subpoenas have been served" to the Cardinals and to Major League Baseball in the case.
Check here for more on the Cardinals/Astros situation and the NY Times story.