Correa was then the Cardinals’ baseball development director, helping the team’s baseball operations department with analytics, and he became the scouting director in December 2014.
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Correa told the judge that his choices were “stupid” ones.
Each conviction for unauthorized access of a protected computer carries a maximum sentence of five years in jail and a fine of $250,000. That information included statistics and notes on recent performance and injuries.
The Astros are a team that relies on sabermetrics when evaluating players, and they have been open about their Ground Control databases. From there, he was able to infiltrate the database, which contained not only scouting dossiers on players within the Astros organization, but also amateur players being scouted by the team, information on player contracts, and correspondence the Astros had with other teams on potential trades. Correa had been with the organization since 2009 and worked under current Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow when the latter was employed by the Cardinals. Correa was sacked by the club in July after he had been on an “imposed leave of absence”.
The former scouting director for the St. Louis Cardinals admits hacking into the Houston Astros computer system to get files on players. Luhnow was a key figure in the Cardinals’ own database, called Redbird. He was working on his doctorate at MI prior to joining the Cardinals.
“I didn’t take anything, any proprietary information”, Luhnow told Sports Illustrated previous year. He established a similar computer database, “Redbird”, during his time in St. Louis. The U.S. Attorney’s claim – which came after months of FBI investigation spurred by a leak of internal documents in July 2014 – had a number of explosive details, beyond any type of drama we’re used to seeing in baseball.
In June, St. Louis Cardinals Chairman Bill Dewitt characterized the hacking as “roguish behavior” and was stunned to learn of the alleged hacking from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The Cardinals are among baseball’s most successful franchises on and off the field.
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Robert Patrick and Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported when he was let go that sources stated Correa admitted to hacking into the Astros’ network but only with the intent to see if they had any “stolen proprietary data”.
