WASHINGTON — The F.B.I. and Justice Department prosecutors are investigating front-office officials for the St. Louis Cardinals, one of the most successful teams in baseball over the past two decades, for hacking into the internal networks of a rival team to steal closely guarded information about player personnel. Investigators have uncovered evidence that Cardinals officials broke into a network of the Houston Astros that housed special databases the team had built, according to law enforcement officials. Internal discussions about trades, proprietary statistics and scouting reports were compromised, the officials said. The attack represents the first known case of corporate espionage in which a professional sports team has hacked the network of another team. Major League Baseball “has been aware of and has fully cooperated with the federal investigation into the illegal breach of the Astros’ baseball operations database,” a spokesman for baseball’s comissioner, Rob Manfred, said in a written statement. The Cardinals officials under investigation have not been put on leave, suspended or fired. The commissioner’s office is likely to wait until the conclusion of the government’s investigation to determine whether to take disciplinary action against the officials or the team.

Well this is freaking unreal right? The Cardinals just casually committing corporate espionage. Hacking into the Astro’s computer system to steal their trade secrets. Listen I’m not even going to talk about the actual act or what the punishment should be here. I’m sure once Big Cat is done hunting down the Cup in a month he’ll be all over this story.

But I’d just like to point out the difference between the way this story has been handled and deflategate. This story hasn’t leaked at all till today. I mean the god damn Feds are involved and this is the first I’ve heard of it. It is a legitimate crime. People could go to jail for this. Yet we have no leaks. No smear campaigns against the Cardinals. Nobody has been fired or suspended. Nobody talking about putting asterisks next to all their wins. No big deal. Just that the Cards are casually hacking into other teams front offices.

Meanwhile Deflategate rages on. A story literally about nothing. It’s not even about deflated footballs anymore because science has already proven none of the balls were deflated. But because Roger Goodell is a buffoon, Mike Kensil is a rat, Bob Kravitz is a Pidgeon, and everybody hates the Pats our story about nothing morphed into the crime of the century. What a world. I guess the only question left is how many draft pics will the Pats lose because Belichick is friends with Tony LaRussa so clearly he orchestrated the hacks

PS – Before people ask why would the Cards bother hacking the Astros the Astros current GM is a former employee of the Cards and the Astros have had one of the best turnarounds in baseball.