Astros Rumors

Investigators working on the investigation into the unlawful access of the Astros’ computer systems have recommended charges against at least one Cardinals employee, CNN’s Evan Perez and Shimon Prokupecz report. The identity of that employee is not yet known.

To date, only one St. Louis staffer has been implicated directly: scouting director Chris Correa, who was fired yesterday. Reporting on Correa’s termination indicates that he was not responsible for disseminating any of the information that was ultimately leaked.

Correa’s attorney has argued that Correa did nothing illegal and sought only to assess whether Astros GM Jeff Luhnow had taken proprietary information from the Cardinals when he departed for Houston. (Luhnow has already flatly denied that line of thinking. And, of course, it’s far from clear how that suspicion would warrant a self-appointed effort to access the other club’s databases.)

The investigation is now complete, per CNN. It is not clear what the inquiry has revealed regarding other members of the St. Louis organization. Officials looking into the computer breach “have also focused on whether senior officials at the Cardinals were aware of the spying,” the report adds. Club chairman and CEO Bill DeWitt Jr. and GM John Mozeliak have both stringently denied any knowledge or involvement while condemning any improper actions by those under their charge.

It has previously been reported that investigators were taking a close look at a Jupiter, Florida house utilized by Cardinals employees during Spring Training. The report notes that Correa was one of the employees who resided there, seemingly tying his involvement to that point in time.

But it remains unclear whether other employees, or Correa himself, may have been responsible for the other breaches that have reportedly occurred. The Jupiter-based intrusion into the Astros’ system is said to have occurred in the spring of 2014. As David Barron and Evan Drellich of the Houston Chronicle note in their latest piece on the subject, computer breaches occurred as early as 2012. The Astros trade discussion notes that were ultimately leaked publicly last summer were dated between June of 2013 and March of 2014, and seemingly represented two separate time periods.

4:55pm: Correa’s lawyer, Nicholas Williams, offered the following statement to Goold when reached for comment:

“Mr. Correa denies any illegal conduct. The relevant inquiry should be what information did former St. Louis Cardinals employees steal from the St. Louis Cardinals organization prior to joining the Houston Astros, and who in the Houston Astros organization authorized, consented to, or benefited from that roguish behavior.”

3:44pm: The Cardinals have fired scouting director Chris Correa for his role in the Cardinals’ breach of the Astros’ proprietary Ground Control computer network, reports Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Lawyers for the Cardinals tell Goold that Correa had already been on an “imposed leave of absence.”

Cardinals GM John Mozeliak, Correa, and Correa’s lawyers all declined to comment, but a source close to the investigation tells Goold that Correa has admitted to illegally accessing Ground Control. Correa, however, has said that his reason for accessing the network was only to attempt to verify that Astros GM Jeff Luhnow had taken proprietary information from the Cardinals with him to his new post in Houston. According to Goold’s source, Correa did not leak any data to the public and was not responsible for additional entries to the Astros’ network. The FBI is continuing its investigation into other members of the organization, and it seems likely that others are involved, if Correa has been determined to have accessed Ground Control only one time without leaking any of the data.

The firing of Correa reveals that the breach into the Astros’ computer network goes far higher up the chain of command in the Cardinals’ front office than many had originally believed. Correa was only recently promoted to scouting director back in December after previously serving as a qualitative analyst and director of baseball operations, as Baseball America’s John Manuel wrote at the time.