The REAL Official 2015 MLB Bitch & Moan Thread

[Snaggletiger]

[AUJarhead]

Why did the Post Office recall their latest stamps?
They had pictures of Mets players on them and people couldn't figure out which side to spit on.

What do you get when you combine all 40 New York Mets with 40 lesbians?
Eighty people that dont do dick!

What do the New York Mets and lawn furniture have in common?
They both fold and end up in the cellar after Labor Day!

How many New York Mets fans does it take to change a lightbulb?
None. Lava lamps don’t burn out man!

How do you keep a Mets fan from masterbating?
You paint his dick Phillies red and white and he won't beat it for 4 years!

What do Michael Jackson and the New York Mets infielders have in common?
They both wear one glove for no apparent reason.

[GH2001]

Slow your roll GH, I know your mad cause the Braves suck but its gonna be ok. Besides, I thought smack talk was the norm here.

 

In all seriousness though, I can see the parallels with the Sox/Yankees but to me Mets/Yankees seem to be a closer relation. Not talking about the fan base personality really, more the proximity and the rivalry.

I wish I could care more about the Braves. But I don't. I got more emotionally vested in the Hawks the last two seasons than I have in the Braves in a long time. Braves just aren't for the faint of heart. For all the wrong reasons except 1991, 1992, and 1995 - those were fun years even though they lost those first two ultimately... 

[Buzz Killington]

I got more emotionally vested in the Hawks the last two seasons than I have in the Braves in a long time.

[djsimp]

Hey GH! The Mets/Padres play tonight on MLB Network. Just thought I'd let you know. Also, if you are up to it, the Cubs/Marlins are on just before that.

[Snaggletiger]

M-E-T-S Mets Mets.....wait...or is it....?

[djsimp]

Mets Mets METS

[djsimp]

Cubs lost a close one today in extra innings.

Blue Jays on a 9 game win streak.

[GH2001]

Cubs lost a close one today in extra innings.

Blue Jays on a 9 game win streak.

Its his new hobby folks. He hopes to be editing for Clay Travis articles next year.

[djsimp]

Its his new hobby folks. He hopes to be editing for Clay Travis articles next year.

Oh yeah? Well, go lick some donkey balls. I'm better than Clay Travis.

By the way, Mets Mets METS!

[GH2001]

Oh yeah? Well, go lick some donkey balls. I'm better than Clay Travis.

By the way, Mets Mets METS!

Been too busy enjoying seeing Lebron get his ass kicked in that other sport.

[AUJarhead]

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/17/sports/baseball/st-louis-cardinals-hack-astros-fbi.html?_r=0

St. Louis Cardinals Investigated by F.B.I. for Hacking Astros

WASHINGTON — The F.B.I. and Justice Department prosecutors are investigating whether front-office officials for the St. Louis Cardinals, one of the most successful teams in baseball over the past two decades, hacked into internal networks of a rival team to steal closely guarded information about player personnel.

Investigators have uncovered evidence that Cardinals officials broke into a network of the Houston Astros that housed special databases the team had built, according to law enforcement officials. Internal discussions about trades, proprietary statistics and scouting reports were compromised, the officials said.

The officials did not say which employees were the focus of the investigation or whether the team’s highest-ranking officials were aware of the hacking or authorized it. The investigation is being led by the F.B.I.’s Houston field office and has progressed to the point that subpoenas have been served on the Cardinals and Major League Baseball for electronic correspondence.

The attack represents the first known case of corporate espionage in which a professional sports team has hacked the network of another team. Illegal intrusions into companies’ networks have become commonplace, but it is generally conducted by hackers operating in foreign countries, like Russia and China, who steal large tranches of data or trade secrets for military equipment and electronics.

Major League Baseball “has been aware of and has fully cooperated with the federal investigation into the illegal breach of the Astros’ baseball operations database,” a spokesman for baseball’s commissioner, Rob Manfred, said in a written statement.

The Cardinals officials under investigation have not been put on leave, suspended or fired. The commissioner’s office is likely to wait until the conclusion of the government’s investigation to determine whether to take disciplinary action against the officials or the team.

The case is a rare mark of ignominy for the Cardinals, one of the sport’s most revered and popular organizations. The team has the best record in baseball this season (42-21), regularly commands outsize television ratings and has reached the National League Championship Series nine times since 2000. The Cardinals, who last won the World Series in 2011, have 11 titles over all, second only to the Yankees.

Their owner, Bill DeWitt, is a highly regarded executive who last year was in charge of the search committee for a new commissioner to replace the retiring Bud Selig.

Law enforcement officials believe the hacking was executed by vengeful front-office employees for the Cardinals hoping to wreak havoc on the work of Jeff Luhnow, the Astros’ general manager who had been a successful and polarizing executive with the Cardinals until 2011.

From 1994 to 2012, the Astros and the Cardinals were division rivals, in the National League. For a part of that time, Mr. Luhnow was a Cardinals executive, primarily handling scouting and player development. One of many innovative thinkers drawn to the sport by the “Moneyball” phenomenon, he was credited with building baseball’s best minor league system, as well as drafting several players who would become linchpins of the Cardinals’ 2011 World Series-winning team.

The Astros hired Mr. Luhnow as general manager in December 2011, and he quickly began applying his unconventional approach to running a baseball team. In an exploration of the team’s radical transformation, Bloomberg Business called it “a project unlike anything baseball has seen before.”

Under Mr. Luhnow, the Astros have accomplished a striking turnaround; they are in first place in the American League West division. But in 2013, before their revival at the major league level, their internal deliberations about statistics and players were compromised, law enforcement officials said.

The intrusion did not appear to be sophisticated, the law enforcement officials said. When Mr. Luhnow was with the Cardinals, the organization built a computer network, called Redbird, to house all of their baseball operations information — including scouting reports and player personnel information. After leaving to join the Astros, and bringing some front-office personnel with him from the Cardinals, Houston created a similar program known as Ground Control.

Ground Control contained the Astros’ “collective baseball knowledge,” according to a Bloomberg Business article published last year. The program took a series of variables and “weights them according to the values determined by the team’s statisticians, physicist, doctors, scouts and coaches,” the article said.

Investigators believe Cardinals officials, concerned that Mr. Luhnow had taken their idea and proprietary baseball information to the Astros, examined a master list of passwords used by Mr. Luhnow and the other officials who had joined the Astros when they worked for the Cardinals. The Cardinals officials are believed to have used those passwords to gain access to the Astros’ network, law enforcement officials said.

Last year, some of the information was posted anonymously online, according to an article on Deadspin. Among the details that were exposed were trade discussions that the Astros had with other teams. Mr. Luhnow was asked at the time whether the breach would affect how he dealt with other teams. “Today I used a pencil and paper in all my conversations,” he said.

Believing that the Astros’ network had been compromised by a rogue hacker, Major League Baseball notified the F.B.I., and the authorities in Houston opened an investigation. Agents soon found that the Astros’ network had been entered from a computer at a home that some Cardinals officials had lived in. The agents then turned their attention to the team’s front office.

[Snaggletiger]

St. Louis Saints

[AUJarhead]

St. Louis Saints

I wondered why the pitchers were driving around town in new cars.  I bet they put bounties on people when they hit them.

[GH2001]

More surprised someone WANTED to hack the Astros....why??

[AUJarhead]

More surprised someone WANTED to hack the Astros....why??

It's like a fucking soap opera with the GM of Houston, and the front office of the Cardinals.  We hired him in 2003/2004, and he immediately started butting heads with Walt Jocketty, then the GM.  Apparently Luhnow (the Houston GM) ruffled a bunch of feathers.  When Moe took over, I guess a large number of Cards front office people still disliked Luhnow.

Anyway, from what I can tell, all parties in this a stupid dumbasses.

Luhnow creates this database in St Louis, and when he leaves town, he basically takes a copy of it, rebrands it to Houston and doesn't even change his fucking password.

Then, whoever in the Cards front office that did this, they did it from their house.  Then, to top it off, they leak it about a year ago (http://deadspin.com/leaked-10-months-of-the-houston-astros-internal-trade-1597951970).

I suspect this is someone in the Cards front office, who thought they would try Luhnow's password, was shocked that it worked, and then leaked it all online, thinking it would be funny.

[AUJarhead]

http://dkonpittsburghsports.com/2015/06/16/newsviews-cardinals-investigated-for-hacking/

News/views: Cardinals investigated for hacking
44

News/views • Pirates

BY DEJAN KOVACEVIC

News: The Cardinals are being investigated by the FBI and the Justice Department for hacking into the Astros’ baseball database, per the New York Times.

Views: It’s a sensational story on the surface, no question. It’s got all the fodder of Patriots-sized headlines, public outrage, Today show, Oprah, the whole deal.

But sorry, upon digging past that surface, there just isn’t much there.

I know this won’t be a popular view, because we all love to hate the Cardinals, but this comes across as little more than a bunch of stats geeks hating Jeff Luhnow, their old boss in St. Louis and now the GM in Houston, and wanting to find a way to stick it to him.

Now, that’s egregious in its own right and deserves to be punished accordingly, especially if it can be proven that anyone over the geeks’ heads had any clue about this. It’s petty, malicious and, hey, it’s illegal, too. Throw the full weight of the law and Major League Baseball at all concerned. And let Rob Manfred, in his first big challenge, lead that charge rather than follow.

But the broader perception from this story will be, if it already isn’t, that the Cardinals were hacking for the purposes of cheating or toward some competitive advantage. Which, of course, along with their perennial success, would put them in a class with Bill Belichick, Tom Brady and the cheating Patriots. And I just don’t see that here.

If you’re going to hack into someone’s system for a competitive edge, why the Astros, who aren’t even in the same league, much less the same division, anymore?

Why not hack into the systems in Pittsburgh or Chicago or Milwaukee?

Look, these geeks can be a stomach-turning lot, and by that I’m referring to the ones employed by teams. They’re arrogant, insufferable and, as I found out first-hand when writing some critical things about the Pirates’ processes a few years back, they can be vindictive, too.

But even the investigators interviewed by the Times seem to acknowledge that the only apparent motive in this hacking was this hatred of Luhnow. That’s apparently how the secrets got out last year. And to repeat, if that’s the case, punish accordingly.

Labeling the Cardinals as some broad-scoped cheaters over this … eh, I’ll wait for more.

[djsimp]

Cardinals have the best record in the MLB by far, so haters gonna hate. Personally I don't have anything against the Cards, except they could help the Cubs out by losing about 10 games in a row. Nothing much.

[AUJarhead]

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/mlb-big-league-stew/the-best-twitter-jokes-about-the-cardinals-allegedly-hacking-the-astros-172428320.html

[Tiger Wench]

... we all love to hate the Cardinals...

Read all I needed to. Fucking bammers of MLB.