Delta Assault
Member
You might say this was... a Cardinal sin.
St. Louis Cardinals Investigated by F.B.I. for Hacking Astros
- Thread starter ElectricBlanketFire
- Start date
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The word on the local St Louis sports radio is that some of the Cardinals front office felt that Jeff Luhnow took organizational notes and secrets with him after he was fired from the Cards and that they were trying to find out what exactly he took and/or sabotage him. Luhnow had some enemies here.
BFIB
Member
Pretty sure that happens quite often. Something here is not adding up. The Astros aren't even in the same league, this makes no sense.
I laughed way too hard at this.
kame-sennin
Member
I'm interested in what this "hacking" consisted of. Right now I'm thinking someone just guessed the Astros password.
BigJonsson
Member
What doesn't make sense? They hate Luhnow, felt he stole confidential information, and wanted to sabotage him. This was a personal attack and not directed at the Astros as an organization. Again, this is what's being reported here in St. Louis. It's been known for years that Luhnow was public enemy number one to some people in the Cards front office but was protected by Walt Jocketty. I'm not surprised in the least.
Little Green Yoda
Member
Pretty sure Jocketty and Luhnow were not the best of friends. The power struggle between the old school guys like Jocketty and the new school guys like Luhnow is what partially led to Walt's departure.
They just guessed by using the same passwords he used while with the Cards. Hope it was worth the jail time and / or huge fine. Not to mention being ridiculed worse than the Patriots have ever been. This isn't a good look!
BFIB
Member
The Cards fired Jocketty because they backed Lunhow and Mozealik, who opposed Jocketty emptying the farm. So saying Lunhow was public enemy #1, that makes no sense. DeWitt went in another direction with Mo at the helm from '08 on.
There could be some dissension between Lunhow and the Cardinals FO somewhere along the line. Still doesn't make sense to hack into his records though.
welp I guess the FBI is wrong then. Call off the investigation!
BFIB
Member
Don't need the FBI. Just put whoever in a locked room with Chris Carpenter. He'll get to the bottom of this.
I came here to say this. If you need help beating the Astros, you should just quit.
Give it time.
Sarcasm detector/personality fail.
I guess there are a lot of teams that should quit, considering they are in first place.
By that definition 85% of the league is "below average."
But go ahead and move the goal posts. You said "historically bad" they have actually been historically good, which is a verifiable, quantifiable fact. Whether or not they have won the world series doesn't mean they are good or not. They have only been bad the last five years in which they were purposefully tanking.
brianjones
Member
knew those dirty ass cardinals were up to no good
BossLackey
Gold Member
My brother in law isn't going to be too happy.
BFIB
Member
Makes me wonder what hacking the Giants have done to the Cards then.
Probably something way worse I'd imagine. Black voodoo magic.
TheRedSnifit
Member
Gonna need a citation for that.
Little Green Yoda
Member
The tanking in the past few years aside, they aren't what I'd call a historically good franchise lol. More like a historically mediocre franchise. They were good if you're only looking at the late 90s and mid 00s.
lastflowers
Banned
To quantify this, we should look at overall win percentage in modern baseball.
Look also at win percentage per money spent.
Look also at win percentage per average difficult of opponent faced.
There are probably four or five other pieces of information to look at when evaluating the success of a club relative to its counterparts. I imagine some blogger has already done this, too, though the data might be from 2010 or something.
Etc etc. the stats are there, all we need is someone that actually cares to back up their claim to do the research and math.
BFIB
Member
I kind of wish the Blues would have hacked into the Wild's database.
ElectricBlanketFire
Member
So what happens in terms of a team punishment? Massive fine? Loss of draft picks?
Astros have been amazing this year. Go figure.
The Cardinals are being investigated for corporate espionage by the FBI.
The Patriots may have intentionally taken some air out of the footballs despite what the science says.
Don't even try to compare scandals. This is far worse and won't blow up because it's not the Patriots.
BFIB
Member
In the NFL, a loss of draft picks is immediate impact. In the MLB, it takes usually around 1500 at-bats before you could even consider moving a player up to the bigs. This is going to be interesting to see what kind of punishment is handed out.
Interesting that this came out right after the draft too.
need to go further. blow up busch stadium. put the entire team up for a draft.
foxuzamaki
Doesn't read OPs, especially not his own
say it ain't so, Cardinals
jk - suck it, St. Louis. an old boss was a die-hard cards fan so this is pretty nice.
We can take this outside
chicagocubsfan
Member
The only reasonable punishment I can think of is that they could make them play with Dan Uggla at 2B batting 2nd for the rest of the season.
Fenderputty
Banned
Opiate you can be a Dodgers fan with me and the rest. We accept your cardinal fan resignation.
Carpe Libertatem
Member
I think a couple random employees who hated Luhnow when he was with the Cardinals or because they think he took org secrets with him is far more likely than the Cardinals doing this to gain any type of competitive advantage. If they wanted a competitive advantage they wouldn't have leaked all the information publicly
I probably got the names mixed up. I'm from St. Louis but don't follow the Cards like I do the Blues, but the gist was that Luhnow was hated and that whoever did this was trying to see if Luhnow took information with him and they also were trying to sabotage him.
The Dodgers are under consideration if the Cardinals prove as despicable as this suggests.
Elwood Blues
Member
I bet the Cardinals also paid off the ump in the wildcard playoff game on that "infield fly". Remove them from the league and replace them with the expos.
lastflowers
Banned
Time to root for the Astros. We are the chosen one. The years of questioning why I was spending so much time and money watching them has proven its worth. They are so fantastically fun to watch with all the rookies and young duders.
My first thought: "The Astros? Really? You hack the Astros of all teams?"
My second thought: "Who else did they hack?"
Third thought: I need to read some funny puns
Fourth thought: I don't really know what can be done, because it's been so long that something like this has happened.
My second thought: "Who else did they hack?"
Third thought: I need to read some funny puns
Fourth thought: I don't really know what can be done, because it's been so long that something like this has happened.
Just going to say, and I know this sounds silly, but real fans stick to their team through good times and bad. Bailing on your team so easily says you were never really a fan in the first place.
It's sports, it shouldn't be taken so seriously. We'd be naive to assume this stuff hasn't been going on for a few years now.
It's sports, it shouldn't be taken so seriously. We'd be naive to assume this stuff hasn't been going on for a few years now.
RumblingRosco
Member
The Astros have had one World Series appearance which they did not win. Twenty-two teams have had at least two WS wins. Two additional teams have had two appearances one of which was a win. Only six teams have had one or fewer appearances (no wins among any of them). The Astros are one of those 6 teams and are therefore below average historically based on exactly the criteria I listed in my post.
Stop trying to make this more than it is - the Astros have appeared in and won fewer WS than 80% of teams in MLB. They are below average based on that metric which is the only comparison I was trying to make.
If your goal post is based on seasons over 0.500 and mine is based on WS appearances/wins, then we need to end this here. Anyway, the original post I made was a tongue-in-cheek "Astros so bad why hack them" comment.
RumblingRosco
Member
It's the principle of the entire act for me more so than the possibility the Cardinal's gained any competitive edge (whether vs. the Astros or in regards to tips on scouting upcoming players). We should definitely be pissed that a sports team would condone or commit hacking to gain any edge... Or possibly even worse, cash-in on some obscure vendetta against a former employee.
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