Mozeliak Discusses Punishment

(Busch Stadium) Following MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred handing down a punishment which will cost the St. Louis Cardinals their top two draft picks of 2017 and a fine of $2 million, team General Manager John Mozeliak opened an afternoon press conference by reading the following statement:

“With respect to the Commissioner’s decision, we appreciate where we are right now in the fact that we have final resolution to this matter. The Commissioner’s findings are fully consistent with the government’s investigation and our own investigation’s conclusions and this incident was isolated to the conduct of one rogue employee who was acting on his own volition for his own personal reasons.

“Mr. Correa’s behavior in accessing the Houston Astros email and Ground Control database was completely inappropriate, unlawful, and should not in any way be tolerated and as a result of the internal investigation, he was immediately terminated. The conduct is contrary to everything the Cardinal organization is about.

“No one in the Cardinal organization directed or authorized him to access the Astros database or knew he was viewing Astros confidential and proprietary information. We reacted immediately when we learned of these allegations, fully cooperated with the government’s investigation, conducted our own internal investigation, and terminated the responsible individual as soon as the facts became clear.”

The floor was then opened up for questions–among them if he felt the punishment would serve as a deterrent for others?

“First off, do I think it’s a deterrent–I think four years in prison is a deterrent,” answered Mozeliak. “I think, clearly, the Commissioner’s response to this should be a deterrent as well. The fact, there’s more than one victim if you will in this, given the fact we are here today, it will make people rethink this in the future.”

Not wanting to comment on if the penalties were fair, Mozeliak did reiterate that he and the Cardinals “respected” the decision.

“I certainly think the organization, even though we didn’t do anything wrong, we understand that the Commissioner had to make a decision and that ruling obviously affects us as we currently stand and I think his message is ‘this can’t happen again’ and therefore the penalty did have to be stiff.”

Besides the actual draft selections, the Cardinals also lose the draft pool money associated with those two picks–which leaves them with significantly fewer dollars to sign their remaining draft choices.

“The draft always has it’s challenges–this certainly isn’t great news from that perspective,” said Mozeliak. “Today as we sit here, I think the good news is we can now conclude and put this behind us. Whether we have a opinion on the severity of the penalty, the fact is, at least we now know what it is and we can now move forward.”

“When you think about the success of this organization we’ve been, candidly, defined by how well we’ve drafted. So losing the opportunity to draft someone in the 2nd Round or the Competitive Balance pick, it hurts. Rather than focus solely on the penalty right now, I think we have to as an organization just understand that we have to deal with it, accept it, and then move to the future.”

Noting that the legal situation for Correa had yet to be resolved before last year’s draft, Mozeliak said pending discipline had no impact on the team’s selections in 2016–or their aggressiveness in the international market.

“Why we were so aggressive on that side of things was solely driven on the opportunity that we saw the landscape at Major League Baseball was going to change and we wanted to take advantage of that.”

MLB and the Player’s Association worked out a new collective bargaining agreement this off-season and one of the negotiating points was over an international draft, which to the surprise of some was met with strong resistance by the players and later removed from the negotiations.

TRULY A ROGUE??

Responding to the opinion of some that Correa may not have been the only person involved or with knowledge of his actions–as he had mentioned in court about telling colleagues information, Mozeliak countered that the dialogue should be re-examined.

“I think if you go back and actually read what he said there, the actual question was do you think anybody took information from the Cardinals,” pointed out Mozeliak.  “He said yes and the judge then asked well, who did you tell and he said colleagues. So again, this isn’t in reference to hacking as it is to was he suspicious of anybody taking information. I do think when you look at those sentences and look at how it was said, I do think a lot of people are misinterpreting what was actually said.”

Indeed on page 14 of the official court transcripts, the following exchange took place between the judge and Correa:

THE COURT: Did you find any Cardinal’s information in the computer?

DEFENDANT: I did, your Honor.

THE COURT: Who did you tell?

DEFENDANT: Colleagues.

THE COURT: At the Cardinals?

DEFENDANT: Yeah.

Mozeliak reiterated that he never was told by Correa and was unaware of another employee telling him about any Cardinals information found in the Houston computers.

The Cardinals have changed their own database protection, moving to a dual system password but in terms of business, Mozeliak said there had been no effects on any of their existing relationships–even with Houston.

“I don’t feel that there’s any relationships that were damaged in this–it certainly hasn’t affected how we’ve done business up to this point,” he said. “Today basically just allows really closure to this. From an organizational standpoint, we’re just going to continue to look forward and try to put this behind us.”

photo credit: St. Louis Baseball Weekly