By Chris Brown / STL Baseball Today | @cbrown_STLBBT | May 30, 2016, 8:50 pm CT
By Ron Cogswell / CC Image / No changes made
As former Cardinals scouting director Chris Correa continues to await sentencing in regards to the Houston Astros hacking scandal, Major League Baseball is “unlikely” to issue any punishment to the club before the June 9 amateur draft, sources with knowledge of Commissioner Rob Manfred’s thinking told Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
The sentencing hearing for Correa, who pleaded guilty to five counts of unauthorized access to computer information, was originally scheduled for April 11, but multiple delays have prevented the commissioner’s office from concluding its investigation, Goold reports.
Correa admitted in January to accessing the accounts of three Astros employees and viewing emails and information about minor leaguers in the club’s baseball operations database ‘Ground Control,’ but said he only did it based on suspicions that Astros personnel had stolen information from the Cardinals.
The value of the information Correa gained access to was placed at $1.7 million dollars, an amount which, under federal sentencing guidelines, means the former executive could face three to four years in jail.
His sentencing is now scheduled for July 5, nearly a month after the draft.
As Goold writes, Manfred had previously stated that MLB hoped to “receive some cooperation from the federal investigators who uncovered the illegal entry in the Astros’ internal database and prosecuted Correa,” something the league apparently believes could only be accomplished after the case was closed.
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Manfred, in his second year as commissioner, has a wide range of potential options when it comes to handing out team punishment, something the Cardinals have been bracing for. Sources described to Goold the possibilities of stripping future draft picks, limiting how much money the club can spend signing amateur players, or both.
Cardinals GM John Mozeliak declined to comment, stating he could not speak in regards to the federal or MLB investigations at this time.
In his first year in the position, new scouting director Randy Flores will lead the Cardinals in the June draft, where the organization’s four picks on the first day (June 7) are more than any team except the San Diego Padres.
