The St. Louis Cardinals, owners of MLB's best record, may be about to take a hit as one of the sport's best franchises. While their success this season despite the early loss of ace Adam Wainwright has been remarkable, team officials are being investigated by the FBI for allegedly hacking the Houston Astros.
A spokesman for MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said that MLB "has been aware of and has fully cooperated with the federal investigation into the illegal breach of the Astros' baseball operations database."
Law enforcement officials said the hack, not deemed as "sophisticated," was likely perpetrated by Cardinals executives jealous of Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow, once a Cardinals executive who has spearheaded a unique rebuild in Houston. Luhnow's Astros, currently in first place in the AL West, have been MLB doormats for several seasons by design. It has allowed them to rack up high draft picks, which have been slowly and carefully molded in the minor leagues. Bloomberg Business called the Astros' plan "a project unlike anything baseball has seen before."
Luhnow established a program called "Ground Control" in Houston which was similar to "Redbird" in St. Louis. Ground control takes variablse and "weights them according to the values determined by the team's statisticians, physicist, doctors, scouts and coaches."
Per The New York Times the Cardinals officials used a master list of Luhnow's passwords to hack into the system and successfully gained access. They may be connected to a breach last year in which trade talks the team was having were leaked online.
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