It’s been no secret what direction the Houston Astros have been steering the franchise since GM Jeff Luhnow was hired in 2011. They would drastically cut payroll, trade major league players for multiple minor league prospects, and build from the bottom up. But as far as the inside details of trade talks and everyday business goes, all that was a tight locked secret. Until now.
It seems the Astros were the victims of a cyber hacking, one that provided the internet almost 9 months of very private, very personal discussions between other teams, and among the Astros internally.
Houston Astros Hacked
Houston created an online baseball database and named it “Ground Control”, and it allowed executives to access valuable stats, videos, and information on players, as well as communicate with other front offices within MLB. What it also allowed was the first ever, high profile cyber crime in Major League Baseball, and some insight to what actually goes on in negotiations between team executives.
The stolen info was given to a website called Anonbin, a site where users anonymously post leaked or hacked material. You can read a condensed version here.
The Astros private matters were released in two parts, one covering the time period right before the trade deadline of 2013 and the other covering the offseason activity by the Astros later that year. Contained within the leaks are private conversations with GM’s and assistant GM’s, talking about possible deals, who they want to trade, and how high they value them. Some of it is mundane chatter. But some of it is baseball trade talk at its purest.
To summarize some of the highlights,text messages indicate the Astros spent the better part of the offseason shopping starting pitcher Bud Norris. After setting the price for Norris unrealistically high, the Astros took considerably less than they initially wanted and dealt Norris to Baltimore for OF LJ Hoes and left handed pitching prospect Josh Hader. Overplaying your hand on a trade and getting less than desired is not exactly something you want your fans and the media to see in black and white.
The Astros were also in talks with the Miami Marlins to acquire Giancarlo Stanton for George Springer and Carlos Carerra(obviously didn’t happen), and the New York Yankees were looking to move Ichiro out of New York to Houston, and offered to pay most of his salary to do it. These tidbits of baseball information are priceless to fans and media, but could be troublesome to GM’s and their franchises.
The Astros released this press release concerning the situation:
Last month, we were made aware that proprietary information held on Astros’ servers and in Astros’ applications had been illegally obtained. Upon learning of the security breach, we immediately notified MLB security who, in turn, notified the FBI. Since that time, we have been working closely with MLB security and the FBI to the determine the party, or parties, responsible. This information was illegally obtained and published, and we intend to prosecute those involved to the fullest extent.
“It is unfortunate and extremely disappointing that an outside source has illegally obtained confidential information. While it does appear that some of the content released was based on trade conversations, a portion of the material was embellished or completely fabricated.”
So the Astros admit they were breached, they just won’t admit that all of it is true. One thing is for sure, Houston has every team in the league on high alert, hoping this same thing won’t happen to them.
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