NY Times The F.B.I. and Justice Department prosecutors are investigating whether front-office officials for the St. Louis Cardinals, one of the most successful teams in baseball over the past two decades, hacked into internal networks of a rival team to steal closely guarded information about player personnel.

Investigators have uncovered evidence that Cardinals officials broke into a network of the Houston Astros that housed special databases the team had built, according to law enforcement officials. Internal discussions about trades, proprietary statistics and scouting reports were compromised, the officials said.

The officials did not say which employees were the focus of the investigation or whether the team’s highest-ranking officials were aware of the hacking or authorized it. The investigation is being led by the F.B.I.’s Houston field office and has progressed to the point that subpoenas have been served on the Cardinals and Major League Baseball for electronic correspondence.

Oh, that team that is inexplicably good with relative nobodies has been cheating?

Oh man great day to be a fan of baseball anywhere outside of the self-appointed capital of the game.

Two years ago the Cardinals bats were on fire and they were mowing down the competition.  They stood in the way of the Pirates on multiple occasions and anyone who fell victim to the red-birds were irritated their team of nobodies were doing so damn well.  Then when they traded guys away, looking at you Allen Craig, players forgot how to hit and soon found themselves in AAA.

The easily explanation was they no longer had that sweet St Louis juice (read “steroids”) but god forbid you floated that notion to a Cardinals fan.  They would only further irritate you when they countered your argument with the magical powers of vermin.

The real reason guys hit so well as a Cardinal and so shitty as a “not Cardinal” was they simply did not have the cheaters edge.  Since other teams have integrity their scouting reports solely relied on scouts, instead of some hacker in the Busch stadium server room, production declined.

In a world where leagues over-punish we need MLB to throw the book at the Cardinals and hit them with a post season ban.  The Pirates slept through April and it has become increasingly difficult to make up any ground when the Cardinals are copying the outcome of Pirate games.

https://twitter.com/franjman12/status/609917038530670592