On Monday, former Cardinals’ scouting director Chris Correa was sentenced in federal court to 46 months in prison six months after he pleaded guilty to five counts of unauthorized access to a protected computer. Correa also will be under two years’ supervised release and be on the hook for restitution payments of $279,038.65.
Meanwhile, an active investigation is still underway between Major League Baseball and the offices of the St. Louis Cardinals.
“As we did with the government during its investigation, we intend to fully cooperate with the Commissioner’s Office in connection with its investigation so that this matter can finally be resolved,” Cardinals chairman and CEO Bill DeWitt Jr. said in a statement. “Pending the outcome of the commissioner’s investigation, we will have no further comment.”
Yahoo Sports writer Jeff Passan called the sentencing a “wake-up call to baseball”.
And he is absolutely right.
Correa going into the Ground Control database 60 times by using passwords from former Cardinals colleagues, including Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow, and viewed classified information from draft reports to trade talks. Let’s just face the truth: a Cardinals scouting director led the first ever case of corporate espionage in professional sports.
Yes, a member of the Cardinals organization. One that’s that so many classy players such as Stan Musial and Lou Brock, many loyal owners such as “Gussie” Busch, now faces potential discipline by Major League Baseball and commissioner Rob Manfred.
Manfred released a statement regarding a situation in the past involving the Boston Red Sox organization, and if he sees any similarities towards the St. Louis Cardinals – Houston Astros debacle.
“I do not see a great parallel between the Red Sox situation and the St. Louis situation, principally for these reasons: The Red Sox, to their credit, accepted organization responsibility for what went on,” Manfred said. “We don’t have all of the facts in the St. Louis-Houston situation. To date, there has been no implication that this was an organizational problem but there has been an indication that it was one employee [who] did something inappropriate, the organization found out about it, and fired the employee. Those are very, very different things.”
There’s no nice way to put it: Correa has officially disgraced the organization to major extent. It’s not that every single member of the Cardinals had a halo above their head in the franchise’s 100+ year history, but this is a prime example of dirty business tactics.
Now, it’s all in the hands of the league to determine if the Cardinals as a team will be punished.
