St. Louis Cardinals punishment for ‘hacking scandal’ is a slap on the wrist

The punishment for the St. Louis Cardinals hacking scandal has been announced, and it’s pretty much a slap on the wrist.

The punishment handed to the Cardinals from the MLB office after getting caught hacking the Houston Astros is tantamount to a slap on the wrist.

If you have been living under a rock (or, for some reason don’t follow baseball), the Cardinals were busted a year ago for hacking into the Astros scouting database, who, during the 2013 and 2014 seasons, Cardinals former director of scouting, Chris Correa, accessed Houston’s database numerous times to gain the upper hand on prospects and other proprietary information.

When news of the scandal broke, Correa was let go and it was widely expected that the Cardinals would get a severe punishment ruling for their sins.

Instead, the Cardinals got the opposite.

On Monday, the MLB ruled that St. Louis must give up their top two picks (nos. 56 and 75) and pay a $2 million fine to the Astros.

Are you kidding me?

That punishment is like a drop in the bucket for the Cardinals, who, even without the draft picks, has a farm system that is flushed with talent. It would have been more damaging for the Cardinals if the MLB went after their farm system prospects.

But no, the league couldn’t bare to cripple one of their precious cash cows, who is one of the strongest teams in the Majors and sell out Busch Stadium on a regular basis. The fact of a Cardinal team that would have been forced to rebuild under the weight of stiff penalties was something the league office couldn’t fathom.

So, instead, St. Louis was handed a limp fine.

The moral of this story is that, if you’re one of the top dogs in the MLB, it’s perfectly OK to hack into a lesser team’s system, because you will virtually get away with murder.

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Just ask the St. Louis Cardinals, who did just that on Monday.