Fansided

Off Topic: The Cardinals Are Showing Us The Future And You Should Embrace It

Jul 10, 2013; St. Louis, MO, USA; Houston Astros left fielder C. Carter (23) is congratulated by first baseman B.Wallace (29) after hitting a solo home run off of St. Louis Cardinals starting pitcher S. Miller (not pictured) during the second inning at Busch Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Jeff Curry-USA TODAY Sports

The St. Louis Cardinals’ hacking scandal is absolutely incredible and you should embrace it, because it’s ridiculous and wild and something out of a movie.

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The future is upon us, you guys! The St. Louis Cardinals were caught ~~with their pants down~~ ~~with their hands in the cookie jar~~ with their grubby fingers all over the computers of the Houston Astros, hacking into their systems to gain proprietary information on players, stats, trades, and maybe even all the catering places the Astros call out to for front office corporate lunches.

Those two teams aren’t even in the same damn league, let alone the same division any more, so I’m not sure how much the Cardinals believe they would’ve benefitted from the Astros’ information aside from, like, a specific trade or two. Granted, there is a connection between front offices, so maybe the motivation was entirely personal, rather than seeking to gain just a competitive advantage.

Either way, nobody in baseball except the Cardinals and Astros really care about that specific stuff; it’s boring for teams that aren’t, you know, those two. Instead, we should all be excited about the future, because oh my god it is here after this hacking news broke.

In something that would seem to be straight out of a movie, one baseball team hacked another one to get information? This is, like, the Sony hacking. Or North Korea? (Who maybe did the Sony thing? I don’t know, I wasn’t paying attention, I’m dumb.)

Anyways, there’s two things to take away from this. Number one:

That. All of that. The Cardinals aren’t an inherently evil organization or anything, but the overly sanctimonious “best fans in baseball” moniker coupled with the “Cardinal Way” of playing the game “right” just means, holy crap, the hubris is out of control here. What a perfect way for the team that does everything “right” to… yeah.

Second, this hacking underscores the importance of sabermetrics, “second-level” statistics, stat-head geeks, whatever the hell you want to call it. The Astros have numbers in their database that aren’t privy to the general public, and the Cardinals want those numbers. Don’t think it’s an accident that the Cardinals hacked the one team that does sabermetrics better than anyone in all of baseball.

The fact that one of the most successful teams in all of baseball would seek out proprietary data from one of the least successful (at least until this season) teams in all of baseball should tell you something: secondary stats and sabermetrics matter. You — like me — should be tired of hearing old-heads whining about how the stat-boys are ruining the game, or some other such not-terribly-fully thought out nonsense.

No, sabermetrics are not everything, but when stuff like this happens, it’s time for baseball people to stop poo-pooing them like they are nothing.

But seriously, back to the hacking thing in general — a baseball team hacks another baseball team for a statistical advantage in the year of our Lord 2015, and the future is here, man.

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