Former Cardinals executive Chris Correa sentenced to four years in prison for hacking Houston Astros

A sentencing that was originally scheduled to take place months ago, finally happened earlier today, and former St. Louis Cardinals scouting director Chris Correa was sentenced to 46 months in prison. For now, Correa is being treated as though he acted alone, and this likely concludes the FBI and criminal portion of this scandal.

For a quick recap, recall that roughly a year ago, the Astros found out someone had hacked into their computers and notified MLB, who in turn, notified the FBI. The hack was not a sophisticated one as an old "Eckstein"-related password used by a former Cardinals employee then with the Astros was used to hack Jeff Luhnow's "Ground Control" database that was used to house scouting report and other information for the Houston Astros. It was later revealed that the hack was easily traced to the Cardinals.

The Cardinals then fired Chris Correa, who has since admitted to just about everything and claimed he hacked the Astros because he believed they had stolen the Cardinals proprietary information when Jeff Luhnow and multiple employees left the Cardinals' organization to set up shop in Houston in an attempt to rebuild the franchise. This reason was not a valid legal excuse and Correa entered a guilty plea months ago, but the sentencing had been delayed on multiple occasions.

Major League Baseball had been waiting for criminal aspect of the matter to wrap up before levying their own penalties. Commissioner Rob Manfred recently stated that he hoped to get more information once proceedings were finished, although he stated that this situation was not the same as the current one with the Boston Red Sox's international signings so long as there was no more new information, per this piece by Derrick Goold.

"I do not see a great parallel between the Red Sox situation and the St. Louis situation, principally for these reasons: The Red Sox, to their credit, accepted organization responsibility for what went on," Manfred said. "We don't have all of the facts in the St. Louis/Houston situation. To date, there has been no implication that this was an organizational problem but there has been an indication that it was one employee, did something inappropriate, the organization found out about it, and fired the employee. Those are very, very different things."

From the same piece, the Cardinals could receive a $2 million fine plus damages to the Astros. It remains to be seen if the league takes out more punitive measures involving draft picks or international signings. Much will be dependent on whether MLB finds out any more information from the FBI or Correa regarding his activity and whether other members of the Cardinals organization are involved.

For more on this story, visit our section devoted to the hacking scandal.