The Guardian
The St Louis Cardinals were stripped of their top two picks in this year’s amateur draft Monday and ordered to give them to Houston along with $2m as compensation for hacking the Astros’ email system and scouting database, the final step in an unusual case of cybercrime involving two Major League Baseball teams.
Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred also banned former St Louis executive Christopher Correa for life as he ruled the Cardinals must give the 56th and 75th draft choices in June to Houston. They must pay the Astros the money within 30 days. Correa, the Cardinals’ director of baseball development until July 2015, pleaded guilty in federal court to five counts of unauthorized access of a protected computer. He was sentenced last summer to 46 months in prison and ordered to pay the Astros $279,039 in restitution.
“Although Mr Correa’s conduct was not authorized by the Cardinals, as a matter of MLB policy, I am holding the Cardinals responsible for his conduct,” Manfred wrote. “A club suffers material harm when an employee of another club illegally accesses its confidential and propriety information, particularly intrusions of the nature and scope present here. In addition, as a result of Mr Correa’s conduct, the Astros suffered substantial negative publicity and had to endure the time, expense and distraction of both a lengthy government investigation and an MLB investigation.”
It's ridiculous either the pitching is fucked up or the offense can score only one run. Pitchers like Wood and Kershaw with stellar ERA's give up 4-5 runs. The ball takes strange bounces. We go into extra innings if our closer, the best closer in baseball, doesn't give up a home run last night. At the same time, the losing streak is showing up issues. Our framing catcher can't catch balls for example. Our set up pitcher likes to give up home runs, which is ok when we are up five runs, but not ok when we're behind. We can get guys on base but the back of the order is pretty shaky. 
