I get why they tried the hacking, but...the Astros?!?!? :)
The “hack” was from a former Astros exec that went to work for the Cardinals, and probably still had passwords.
Astros 38-28 0.576 0
Rangers 34-30 0.531 3
Angels 32-32 0.5 5
Mariners 29-36 0.446 8.5
Athletics 28-39 0.418 10.5
Have you been following the Astros’ progress lately? They’re on pace to win 94 games.
Ground Control, though a dazzling piece of technology, represented a huge security risk. The motto in Houston’s front office was “In God We Trust—All Others Must Bring Data.” To make sense of it, all that data was funneled into Ground Control. “It took us a full year to map out the plan and start building it,” Luhnow told me. “The original idea was if I’m sitting at my desk and I receive a call from any general manager in baseball, and he wants to talk—you know, ‘I’m interested in this player of yours and who do you want from my organization in return?’—that I can, without having to hang up and get back to them in two hours, with a few keystrokes look at their entire organization. I’ve got our scouting reports. I’ve got the medical reports. I’ve got a valuation system. I can look at our player and say, ‘OK, if I’m going to be giving up four units of value in this player, how do I get four-plus units of value back from him?’ [I can tell him], ‘I’ll take these three guys in exchange for that guy.’”
If the Cardinals had access to the Astros’ valuation system, they could obviously do an immense amount to undermine them, from drafting players they desire to undercutting them in trade deals to knowing their game plans ahead of time when the two teams faced off.