Ex-Cardinals scouting director Correa nets lifetime ban from MLB
MLB commissioner Rob Manfred has placed former St. Louis Cardinals scouting director Chris Correa on the permanently ineligible list after his role in the Houston Astros hacking scandal, according to Jayson Stark of ESPN.
Correa is currently serving a 46-month prison sentence after pleading guilty in January 2016 to five counts of unauthorized access to a protected computer.
Related: Cardinals to give Astros 2 draft picks, pay $2M fine for hacking scandal
The punishment, which wasn't expected to be light, places Correa on the same list as all-time hits leader Pete Rose.
A year ago, Correa pleaded guilty to five counts of illegal entry into the Astros' internal database. Manfred's investigation found that no other individual was involved in the hacking, meaning Correa was the only one punished in the ruling.
“We respect the Commissioner’s decision and appreciate that there is now a final resolution to this matter,” Cardinals chairman Bill DeWitt Jr. said in a statement issued by the team, according to Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “Commissioner Manfred’s findings are fully consistent with our own investigation’s conclusion that this activity was isolated to a single individual.”
Court filings revealed Correa not only breached the Astros' database, but he did so for about 2 1/2 years, beginning in January 2012, according to the Houston Chronicle's Jake Kaplan.
He broke into the email account of Astros director of decision sciences Sig Mejdal, who heads up the club's analytics department, among others.
"Ultimately, Correa was not intruding to see if the Astros took any information - rather, he was keenly focused on information that coincided with the work he was doing for the Cardinals," assistant U.S. attorney Michael Chu said.
Correa worked for Mejdal as an analyst with the Astros until he joined the Cardinals following the 2011 season. Correa was fired by the Cardinals in July 2015, and was sentenced to roughly four months after pleading guilty.