BREAKING!!! St. Louis Cardinals are being investigated by the FBI..

#26
#26
I wasn't going to comment on this because I've always hated the Cardinals so I have an extreme bias towards both teams as I'm an Astros fan, but yeah... that (criminal)organization should be knocked back down into the stone age. It wouldn't have been right even if they had Luhnow's passwords(though it would make Luhnow a moron) but Luhnow said that's not true and that he had changed them. In other words, Cardinals were blatantly cheating and this is worse than deflatgate by far, and right there next to spygate.

At what point do pro sports start stripping titles or at the very least, wins? The Cardinals not only stole info from one team(at the very least) that helped their system while hurting the Astros system(the Astros system works less and less because other teams are starting to use it which counters their advantage as it becomes the norm), but they also stole free labor. Luhnow wasn't working for them and yet the Cardinals felt privy to the information the Astros pay him for. That's some straight up theft.

I don't know how much the Astros pay Luhnow but it's safe to say it's in the 6 figure range if not 7(I'm sure it is). If you went and stole an item worth that value, you'd be punished accordingly. In this case, Luhnow's labor and the information they stole was worth what the Astros were willing to pay for it. The reality of the situation, the Cardinals stole hundreds of thousands from the Astros as well as Luhnow who apparently had a 2nd job with the Cardinals but didn't know it and was never paid for it.

Seriously, it's bad enough to think they're fixing the system by stealing info from others but by doing so, they also stole money from an organization and labor from one of their employees. Guess the Astros should have just broke into the Cardinals database when Luhnow worked for them and taken his work for free instead of hiring the guy fair and square with a salary Lunhow finds fair. I'm sure getting paid nothing for his work, he'd find unfair. If the Astros were as entitled as the World Champion Mafia Cardinals, they would have just taken the info for free rather than hire the guy and pay the man for it.

Even though it still would have been wrong of the Cardinals and they still should have been punished for it, I wasn't going to bother commenting if Luhnow lacked the common sense to update his passwords with his new employer. After hearing him say now that's not the case and he did change them, I hope the WCMC organization is burnt to the ground. It's really starting to piss me off that the teams I've hated a decade(s) are the ones all coming out of the woodwork as cheaters and it's benefiting them all the way to a tittle. Like the NFL, the Cardinals will probably be stripped of a pick or something minor without any of their on field success being stripped. Such bull****.
 
#27
#27
This is way worse than spygate, I dont remember the feds kicking down doors in Foxboro. This is unprecedented. People are going to the big federal pound me in the ass. Cardinal Way.
 
#28
#28
Scotty's Flat Top said:
This is way worse than spygate, I dont remember the feds kicking down doors in Foxboro. This is unprecedented. People are going to the big federal pound me in the ass. Cardinal Way.
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True.

In terms of how the law will deal with it, this is far worse.

I was just comparing the act of stealing info from other teams and using it to their advantage to win baseball games and improve their roster.

But oh yeah, there's all sorts of hacking and theft charges that they'll be hit with I'm sure. For the people who committed the crime, the least of their concern is going to be how the Cardinals are punished but how their b-holes are punished in federal prison.
 
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#29
#29
TOP said:
I wasn't going to comment on this because I've always hated the Cardinals so I have an extreme bias towards both teams as I'm an Astros fan, but yeah... that (criminal)organization should be knocked back down into the stone age. It wouldn't have been right even if they had Luhnow's passwords(though it would make Luhnow a moron) but Luhnow said that's not true and that he had changed them. In other words, Cardinals were blatantly cheating and this is worse than deflatgate by far, and right there next to spygate.

At what point do pro sports start stripping titles or at the very least, wins? The Cardinals not only stole info from one team(at the very least) that helped their system while hurting the Astros system(the Astros system works less and less because other teams are starting to use it which counters their advantage as it becomes the norm), but they also stole free labor. Luhnow wasn't working for them and yet the Cardinals felt privy to the information the Astros pay him for. That's some straight up theft.

I don't know how much the Astros pay Luhnow but it's safe to say it's in the 6 figure range if not 7(I'm sure it is). If you went and stole an item worth that value, you'd be punished accordingly. In this case, Luhnow's labor and the information they stole was worth what the Astros were willing to pay for it. The reality of the situation, the Cardinals stole hundreds of thousands from the Astros as well as Luhnow who apparently had a 2nd job with the Cardinals but didn't know it and was never paid for it.

Seriously, it's bad enough to think they're fixing the system by stealing info from others but by doing so, they also stole money from an organization and labor from one of their employees. Guess the Astros should have just broke into the Cardinals database when Luhnow worked for them and taken his work for free instead of hiring the guy fair and square with a salary Lunhow finds fair. I'm sure getting paid nothing for his work, he'd find unfair. If the Astros were as entitled as the World Champion Mafia Cardinals, they would have just taken the info for free rather than hire the guy and pay the man for it.

Even though it still would have been wrong of the Cardinals and they still should have been punished for it, I wasn't going to bother commenting if Luhnow lacked the common sense to update his passwords with his new employer. After hearing him say now that's not the case and he did change them, I hope the WCMC organization is burnt to the ground. It's really starting to piss me off that the teams I've hated a decade(s) are the ones all coming out of the woodwork as cheaters and it's benefiting them all the way to a tittle. Like the NFL, the Cardinals will probably be stripped of a pick or something minor without any of their on field success being stripped. Such bull****.
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Except the Cardinals have gained no on-field advantage from this whatsoever, as stated by Luhnow himself. Why exactly would the organization care about stealing Luhnow's models and scouting information when he already developed them for the Cardinals (and they are still paying MAJOR dividends)? And scouting information from several years ago is utterly meaningless now. I may be biased, sure, but all the evidence points to a few morons/wannabe hackers who are bitter that they lost the man who is the best at his job in baseball doing it out of vindictive spite. If all of baseball wants to believe there's a conspiracy, that's fine. Don't really see any proof, though.

As far as the passwords go, even if we believe Luhnow, it very well could have been one of the people he brought with him.
 
#31
#31
Why Houston Astros' database would be worth hacking


What if you're a franchise that's not as good at the data crunching?

How much is that kind of info worth to you?

"Clearly it could be worth millions and millions of dollars and a significant competitive edge to the team doing the hacking," said a former big league GM who worked for one of the first teams to embrace baseball's Information Age.
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Even better than that quote itself is the rest of the story and just how much information they had access to. I know some people only look at this in terms of hacking and stealing information but I definitely saw it as blatantly stealing money as well. The Astros pay a lot of different people(namely Luhnow) a lot of money to get that information and the Cardinals just took it for themselves. I don't know what constitutes as petty theft, grand theft and so on but I'm guessing once you hit 6 or 7 figures, it's all the same really. It's a gross amount of money to most people. If you're gonna charge someone for like 20 dollars of theft, there should be no leniency for knowingly stealing something worth millions. It's the same thing as actually stealing a millions of dollars in cash. And even worse in this case, Luhnow and his info wouldn't been for sale unless he made the jump to another team. It's not like he'd sell it commercially if everyone willingly offered to pay him what the Astros did.

So the Cardinals not only stole millions of dollars but they stole millions of dollars worth of something that was never for sale in the first place even if they offered to pay for it. Kinda like a doctor, just because I pay him for my medical diagnosis doesn't mean anyone else can just come pay my doctor for my medical diagnosis. Wtf...

There really isn't any just one crime the Cardinals committed but more like handful and some of those crimes will have multiple charges stemming from them I imagine. If not, I don't see how you can charge some hungry person for stealing 10 bucks worth of food and then not given an organization worth billions the harshest penalty possible. They broke the law over a game that in the big picture is pretty irrelevant to most, it's just something fun to watch. Those greedy mofos despite being worth billions put their hand in the cookie jar anyways even though they're the ones with the fattest wallet and probably biggest gut. Billionaires are the last people that should be trying to sneak an extra piece of pie at any and all costs. Maybe if they had paid Luhnows original cost the first time around, they wouldn't have to be stealing his info because it's the only way they can get. Maggots.
 
#32
#32
This isn't a case of cheating. This is a case of sabotage and vengeance against Luhnow by some idiotic low to mid level individuals, that will soon find themselves in prison.

Whoever these individuals are should be thrown off the Arch and into the Mississippi.
 
#33
#33
UTCVol said:
Except the Cardinals have gained no on-field advantage from this whatsoever, as stated by Luhnow himself. Why exactly would the organization care about stealing Luhnow's models and scouting information when he already developed them for the Cardinals (and they are still paying MAJOR dividends)? And scouting information from several years ago is utterly meaningless now. I may be biased, sure, but all the evidence points to a few morons/wannabe hackers who are bitter that they lost the man who is the best at his job in baseball doing it out of vindictive spite. If all of baseball wants to believe there's a conspiracy, that's fine. Don't really see any proof, though.

As far as the passwords go, even if we believe Luhnow, it very well could have been one of the people he brought with him.
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Wrong.

If the Cardinals used the Astros info for even one player that contributed for the Cardinals, that's an on field advantage that they wouldn't have had otherwise. You also don't know that they weren't swiping players Astros wanted to draft as well.

Based on everything you said...

142183i9534ED73C56B65DC


Just like Pats fans.

Heck, there was less on the Pats deflategate than there is on the Cardinals hacking. If you really think nothing will come of it or it can't be proven, just... head in sand.
 
#34
#34
1) lol at "no on-field advantage was gained..."

..."we were too dumb to take advantage of this information and improve on the field" is a helluva defense.

2) "why exactly would they do this?"

...well, that's the question, isn't it? Sure, they may have been pissy toward someone that used to work for them. But the other answer to 'why' is the aforementioned "to gain an advantage on the field."

3) the beginning of the post points to Lunhow as, essentially, a witness on the Cardinals' behalf... the end of the posts suggest we shouldn't even believe Lunhow.
 
#35
#35
Fwiw, if you want to say the Cardinals didn't have an on field advantage now because of it, their minor league system is still an extension of them and would be an on field advantage going forward. Future players that will see the field or have value in trade because they used Luhnow's info to help stack their farm system.

Basically, like other people are saying, this is hands down the worst thing any team has ever done both within the game and outside of the game(of any sport).

Why is Luhnow's time and info not as valuable as the car sitting in your driveway or the tv sitting in your house? Just because Luhnow's time and info isn't a material object doesn't make it any different than someone just walking into your house and stealing your stuff. Bet you'd be pretty pissed if that happened to you.
 
#36
#36
005 said:
1) lol at "no on-field advantage was gained..."

..."we were too dumb to take advantage of this information and improve on the field" is a helluva defense.

2) "why exactly would they do this?"

...well, that's the question, isn't it? Sure, they may have been pissy toward someone that used to work for them. But the other answer to 'why' is the aforementioned "to gain an advantage on the field."

3) the beginning of the post points to Lunhow as, essentially, a witness on the Cardinals' behalf... the end of the posts suggest we shouldn't even believe Lunhow.
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I've seen people claim just because Luhnow claims to have changed his password, doesn't mean it's true. And they're right.... but if the FBI is investigating it, the FBI would know and would seem odd for Luhnhow to lie while the FBI knows the truth on it.

I was annoyed this happened but wasn't going to say anything if Luhnow did in fact continue using the same passwords because that would make him a sucker. Now that he said he changed them and the FBI is investigating it, I'm inclined to take his word. But like Cards fans, I'm also bias. Seems odd to lie though publicly when the FBI can shut that ish down.
 
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#37
#37
TOP said:
Wrong.

If the Cardinals used the Astros info for even one player that contributed for the Cardinals, that's an on field advantage that they wouldn't have had otherwise. You also don't know that they weren't swiping players Astros wanted to draft as well.

Based on everything you said...

142183i9534ED73C56B65DC


Just like Pats fans.

Heck, there was less on the Pats deflategate than there is on the Cardinals hacking. If you really think nothing will come of it or it can't be proven, just... head in sand.
Click to expand...

Again, you're assuming that the Cardinals made use of outdated scouting information when nothing suggests that executives even knew about this until several months ago. How exactly do we prove that this occurred and the organization is implicit unless the executives left tracks? If they did, the FBI will find it and there will be a s***storm. If not, the Cardinals won't be getting destroyed like so many are hoping.
 
#38
#38
If the trails leading to reports on how good a prospect's glove will be doesn't fit, you must acquit.
 
#39
#39
TOP said:
I've seen people claim just because Luhnow claims to have changed his password, doesn't mean it's true. And they're right.... but if the FBI is investigating it, the FBI would know and would seem odd for Luhnhow to lie while the FBI knows the truth on it.

I was annoyed this happened but wasn't going to say anything if Luhnow did in fact continue using the same passwords because that would make him a sucker. Now that he said he changed them and the FBI is investigating it, I'm inclined to take his word. But like Cards fans, I'm also bias. Seems odd to lie though publicly when the FBI can shut that ish down.
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I wasn't trying to say Luhnow was lying, but can see that it came across that way. The people who did this clearly weren't savvy enough to cover their tracks beyond the basics, so I can believe that someone in Luhnow's camp ****ed up and didn't enact proper security measures.
 
#42
#42
005 said:
2) "why exactly would they do this?"

...well, that's the question, isn't it? Sure, they may have been pissy toward someone that used to work for them. But the other answer to 'why' is the aforementioned "to gain an advantage on the field."

3) the beginning of the post points to Lunhow as, essentially, a witness on the Cardinals' behalf... the end of the posts suggest we shouldn't even believe Lunhow.
Click to expand...

But the thing is, the organization as a whole has no reason to do this unless they're not confident in their own scouting process (which from my understanding is heavily influenced by what Luhnow did in STL). In that case, we have problems beyond this controversy. A few rogue employees looking to do it out of spite or even to pass the information off as their own? Totally feasible, and absolutely deserving of whatever sentence they receive. If I have my "head in the sand", it's because I highly doubt the executives are dumb enough to allow this.

Also, Luhnow's lack of outrage seems very odd to me considering he is the victim of the crime. Not saying that absolves the Cardinals of wrongdoing.
 
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#43
#43
I think we can all agree that the St. Louis Cardinals are cheaters, all the way from dangling on McGwire's shrunken balls to hacking other organizations scouting reports. Honestly not sure why this news come as a surprise to anyone tbh.

I am almost CERTAIN they have MLB umpires on the payroll as well.
 
#44
#44
A few rogue employees sounds a lot like one rogue referee..

Which is to say...

It sounds stupid.
 
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