Written Derrick Goold at St.Louis Dispatcher.com
A bruising series of investigations that sent a rising executive to prison and dented the Cardinals’ cherished reputation reached closure Monday as Major League Baseball leveled unprecedented penalties that will limit the club’s ability to acquire talent this summer and send two draft picks to the Houston Astros.
Commissioner Rob Manfred ruled the Cardinals, as a club, were “liable for the misconduct” of an individual employee, former scouting director Chris Correa, who illegally accessed Houston’s internal database. As a result Manfred issued the harshest punishment of his tenure. The Cardinals’ first two picks in the upcoming draft will go to the Astros, as will the cap money attached to those picks. The commissioner fined the Cardinals $2 million – the largest fine ever for a club and the most he can, by rule, assess. That money will also go to the Astros as damages.
The commissioner placed Correa, who is serving a 46-month sentence in federal prison, on the permanently ineligible list, effective immediately. That is the same list that includes others banned from baseball like Pete Rose and infamous members of the 1919 White Sox.
“The conduct is contrary to everything the Cardinals’ organization is about,” general manager John Mozeliak said during a news conference Monday at Busch Stadium. Team President Bill DeWitt III stood quietly in the back of the room. Mozeliak continued: “I think the organization, even though we didn’t do anything wrong, we understand that the commissioner had to make a decision and that that ruling obviously affects us. I think his message is this can’t happen again. And, therefore, the penalty did have to be stiff.”
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