Hacking Mess v2.0

[Andy]

Damn, I kind of wish they hacked us now.

No kidding. Extra draft picks and draft money is a pretty nice outcome for Houston. I'm surprised MLB awarded them the picks instead of just removing them from the draft.

[Liam Neeson]

This pretty much sums up how I feel.

 

Honestly, this is bogus. I don't think this is "Hammers" at all. And not just because horsefeathers the Cardinals. If you want a deeper dive into what exactly he did go check out this article that came out last week. Correa accessed the Astros system over 48 times, and told other people with cardinals what he was doing. He went on draft days (Cardinals Drafts that he was helping run), and trade deadline days. Downloaded all of their trade discussions and draft information. This horsefeathers did this for years and used this info to get a promotion in 2014. And this wasn't just some guy that didn't change his passwords so its his fault. He accessed more than 5 peoples accounts and multiple employee emails. When they locked Correa out by changing passwords to the database he went into somebody's email again to retrieve the new password so he could do it again. Imagine if this was the yankees or some horsefeathers. Deflategate had nothing on this. I can't think of a more underreported sports story.

 

Of course it comes the year after the Cards had one of the best drafts (3 first round picks, Delvin Perez free falling to them) and blowing out their International budget (so they have a cap in spending now) and convenient for them they already lost their 1st round pick this year for signing Fowler. Also convenient their "competitive-balance" pick this year is after the second round. They couldn't have taken away anything if they tried. There was nothing to take. I'm not sure what they should have done as punishment but this seems light. Obviously, MLB had all this info as well and thought this punishment was appropriate, but I think this is just the MLB looking out in their self interest to not tarnish one of their best franchises. And they waited nearly 2 years after it came to light and over 1 year after Correa was sentenced to lessen public interest.

[Cubswin11]

It would be far more equitable if they had to send us Dexter back and pay his salary

[CubinNY]

This pretty much sums up how I feel.

 

Honestly, this is bogus. I don't think this is "Hammers" at all. And not just because horsefeathers the Cardinals. If you want a deeper dive into what exactly he did go check out this article that came out last week. Correa accessed the Astros system over 48 times, and told other people with cardinals what he was doing. He went on draft days (Cardinals Drafts that he was helping run), and trade deadline days. Downloaded all of their trade discussions and draft information. This horsefeathers did this for years and used this info to get a promotion in 2014. And this wasn't just some guy that didn't change his passwords so its his fault. He accessed more than 5 peoples accounts and multiple employee emails. When they locked Correa out by changing passwords to the database he went into somebody's email again to retrieve the new password so he could do it again. Imagine if this was the yankees or some horsefeathers. Deflategate had nothing on this. I can't think of a more underreported sports story.

 

Of course it comes the year after the Cards had one of the best drafts (3 first round picks, Delvin Perez free falling to them) and blowing out their International budget (so they have a cap in spending now) and convenient for them they already lost their 1st round pick this year for signing Fowler. Also convenient their "competitive-balance" pick this year is after the second round. They couldn't have taken away anything if they tried. There was nothing to take. I'm not sure what they should have done as punishment but this seems light. Obviously, MLB had all this info as well and thought this punishment was appropriate, but I think this is just the MLB looking out in their self interest to not tarnish one of their best franchises. And they waited nearly 2 years after it came to light and over 1 year after Correa was sentenced to lessen public interest.

I agree. This is a case of industrial espionage. A $2M fine is nothing those picks are not going to hurt them. They should have made a case in point of this situation and they got a slap on the wrist.

[Brian]

they should also be taken out of the competitive balance picks, but that was true before the hacking.

[Clem Fandango]

Correa apparently claims the Astros stole from the Cardinals first, which is something I've never heard of until now.

 

http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/18592311/chris-correa-maintains-allegations-houston-astros-first-stole-information-st-louis-cardinals

[Andy]

Correa apparently claims the Astros stole from the Cardinals first, which is something I've never heard of until now.

 

http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/18592311/chris-correa-maintains-allegations-houston-astros-first-stole-information-st-louis-cardinals

That would be because there is no evidence of it whatsoever other than Correa's word, and Correa is a convicted felon. So.

[javy knows my name]

Correa apparently claims the Astros stole from the Cardinals first, which is something I've never heard of until now.

 

http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/18592311/chris-correa-maintains-allegations-houston-astros-first-stole-information-st-louis-cardinals

That would be because there is no evidence of it whatsoever other than Correa's word, and Correa is a convicted felon. So.

 

Also, I feel like those allegations would further harm the plausible deniability by the Cards' front office.

[Ding Dong Johnson]

[davell]

That was mentioned by him from the start actually. But, there's no basis for it. I'm pissed that theres no proof of who he talked to. There's no way in hell Mozeliak wasn't aware of this.

[NonProfitCow]

That was mentioned by him from the start actually. But, there's no basis for it. I'm pissed that theres no proof of who he talked to. There's no way in hell Mozeliak wasn't aware of this.

I don't understand that line of thinking. If I were to knowingly break the law and hack into the competitions databases I'm sure as hell not telling my boss, I'm going to pass off their work as my own in order to try to further my career.

[Regular Show]

That was mentioned by him from the start actually. But, there's no basis for it. I'm pissed that theres no proof of who he talked to. There's no way in hell Mozeliak wasn't aware of this.

I don't understand that line of thinking. If I were to knowingly break the law and hack into the competitions databases I'm sure as hell not telling my boss, I'm going to pass off their work as my own in order to try to further my career.

 

I don't believe that Mozaliak knew about the hacking or would condone that behavior. Still, I'm pretty sure C. Correa talked to other people in the Cardinals organization and told them about what he found. Probably never told them about looking at scouting reports and draft boards because there is no way to justify that. If he told anyone anything, it would most likely be about how similar the proprietary algorithms are. I'm pretty sure Luhnow built a similar system in Houston to the one he implemented in St. Louis. I doubt Luhnow "stole" proprietary algorithms or info from the Cardinals.

[davell]

That was mentioned by him from the start actually. But, there's no basis for it. I'm pissed that theres no proof of who he talked to. There's no way in hell Mozeliak wasn't aware of this.

I don't understand that line of thinking. If I were to knowingly break the law and hack into the competitions databases I'm sure as hell not telling my boss, I'm going to pass off their work as my own in order to try to further my career.

 

Correa has said other people did know. I understand where you're coming from. But I find it very hard to believe he wouldn't find out, if others knew. Someone would have sold him out, if anything else. My feeling is that quiteca few teams would take that advantage, if they thought they'd get away with it.

[jersey cubs fan]

That was mentioned by him from the start actually. But, there's no basis for it. I'm pissed that theres no proof of who he talked to. There's no way in hell Mozeliak wasn't aware of this.

I don't understand that line of thinking. If I were to knowingly break the law and hack into the competitions databases I'm sure as hell not telling my boss, I'm going to pass off their work as my own in order to try to further my career.

 

But in this case passing off that work as your own has little to no use to the hacker. It's not like he's an inventor or trader that was using that information to look brilliant. They were specifically looking at it to see what the Astros thought of players.

[CaliforniaRaisin]

https://www.si.com/mlb/2018/10/04/chris-correa-houston-astros-hacker-former-cardinals-scouting-director-exclusive-interview

 

Correa stayed behind in St. Louis. His old coworkers became the competition—and, perhaps most significantly to him, he suspected they weren't intending to play fair. He believed Luhnow and Mejdal had taken proprietary data and algorithms with them, which he and his colleagues had spent thousands of hours to help develop. On the fateful, unremembered day on which he first pecked Mejdal's old password into the Astros' email server—where he found more passwords that gave him unfettered access to Houston's new database—he believed he found evidence of his suspicions.

 

Over the next several years, Correa insists that he found more and more evidence, although he will not specify what that was. While he knew what he was doing wasn't right, he never thought that it could be a crime. "It was all in the context of a game, to me," he says. "When a pitcher throws at a batter's chest, nobody runs to the local authorities and tries to file an assault charge. I'm not making excuses. I'm trying to explain where my head was at, as I now understand it. If another team does something wrong, you retaliate. That's the lens through which I mistakenly viewed it, and I used that to give myself permission. It was wrong."

 

There is another theory to explain Correa's actions. It is that even if his intrusions came from a feeling that the Cardinals had themselves been violated, he used that to justify behavior that turned into something like a compulsion, rooted in both voyeurism and the fact that the information he acquired by illicitly peering into a chief rival's brain—and seeing the basis for every decision it made—provided an undeniable advantage to both the Cardinals and his own career. Investigators later documented that he had accessed the Astros' database at least 48 times, although he had almost certainly done so much more often than that. He had absorbed their draft rankings, their scouting reports and notes on their trade discussions, sometimes for nearly two hours at a time, and almost always took pains to digitally mask his activities. In December 2014, the Cardinals named the former freelance analyst as their scouting director—Luhnow's old gig.