Commissioner Rob Manfred had no other choice. He needed to make an example out of the Cardinals to remind teams that Major League Baseball will not tolerate cyber espionage.
Manfred sent a powerful and important message Monday when he punished the Cardinals for former scouting director Chris Correa's decision to hack the Astros' proprietary data base Ground Control.
Manfred ordered the Cardinals to pay the Astros $2 million. He also ordered the Cardinals to forfeit their top two picks in this June's draft to the Astros, which are in the second (56th pick overall) and the third round (75th overall).
Correa, who was sentenced last July to 46 months in federal prison after pleading guilty to five counts, has been banned for life from Major League Baseball.
Correa joins the eight infamous members of the 1919 White Sox, who were banned for life for throwing the 1919 World Series, on baseball's banned list.
Although Correa testified that he had told some Cardinals colleagues that he had been hacking the Astros, no other Cardinals officials were implicated.
That was the only good news Monday for the Cardinals, an organization that prides itself on building the team through its farm system.
Correa's actions have sullied the Cardinals, embarrassing owner Bill DeWitt Jr. and general manager John Mozeliak.
Correa could have been a feel-good story similar to the ones that somehow drove him to cyber crime. Just like the men he eventually hacked _ general manager Jeff Luhnow and Sig Mejdal of the Astros _ he was an outsider pursuing a career in baseball when he left a doctoral program at the University of Michigan to join the Cardinals in 2009.
Correa was promoted to manager of baseball development in 2012, not long after Luhnow left the Cardinals to become general manager of the Astros on Dec. 8, 2011.
He first gained entry into the Astros' database in March 2013. He hacked the Astros 48 times until June 2014. Six months later, the Cardinals promoted him to scouting director, but the federal investigation that would catch him was already well on its way.
Considering they gave up their upcoming first-round pick to the Cubs when they signed Dexter Fowler, the Cardinals' draft will surely suffer this year.
