The St. Louis Cardinals were stripped of their top two picks in this year’s amateur draft Monday and ordered to give them to Houston along with $2 million as compensation for hacking the Astros’ email system and scouting database, the final and unprecedented step in an unusual case of cybercrime involving two Major League Baseball teams.
Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred also banned former St. Louis executive Christopher Correa for life as he ruled the Cardinals must give the 56th and 75th draft choices in June to Houston. They must pay the Astros the money within 30 days.
Correa, the Cardinals’ director of baseball development until July 2015, pleaded guilty in federal court last year to five counts of unauthorized access of a protected computer. He was sentenced to 46 months in prison and ordered to pay the Astros $279,039 in restitution.
“Although Mr. Correa’s conduct was not authorized by the Cardinals, as a matter of MLB policy I am holding the Cardinals responsible for his conduct,” Manfred wrote. “A club suffers material harm when an employee of another club illegally accesses its confidential and propriety information, particularly intrusions of the nature and scope present here. In addition, as a result of Mr. Correa’s conduct, the Astros suffered substantial negative publicity and had to endure the time, expense and distraction of both a lengthy government investigation and an MLB investigation.”
Cardinals chairman Bill DeWitt Jr. said in a statement the “findings are fully consistent with our own investigation’s conclusion that this activity was isolated to a single individual.”
“This has been a long and challenging process for all of us, especially those within our baseball operations department,” St. Louis general manager John Mozeliak said. “We have learned a great deal along the way and we have taken additional steps to ensure that something like this doesn’t…