*82 days after Rob Manfred said that MLB was "in the last ten yards" of their investigation into the Cheatin'-ass Cardinals, new details into the Cardinals' breach into Ground Control have been unsealed by a federal judge. Among those details:
-Chris Correa broke into Ground Control 48 times.
-He had unlimited access to Sig Mejdal's email account for 2.5 years
-He tried to get into the accounts of Bo Porter, Brent Strom, Colin Wyers, and three minor-league players.
-Correa accessed the Astros' trade notes 14 times leading up to the trade deadline.
-Correa is the one who leaked the information to Deadspin, which is pretty freaking stupid, seeing as how that's how the Astros realized they'd been breached, and what led to Correa's prison sentence.
It's a damning list, even for a guy already in federal prison. But the Cardinals need to be held accountable, and Manfred/MLB have looked like they're just hoping everyone will forget. Still, Barron and Kaplan write that a decision on the Cardinals' punishment could come this week.
*The Astros have five players on MLB.com's Top 100 Prospects list:
-Francis Martes (#20)
-Kyle Tucker (#35)
-David Paulino (#54)
-Derek Fisher (#83)
-Forrest Whitley (#84)
Martes, Paulino, and Whitley are starting pitchers, which is perhaps the reason the Astros didn't pull the trigger on Jose Quintana or Chris Archer: the answer might be in-house.
*About a quarter of the way down in David Laurilia's Sunday Notes column at FanGraphs, Mike Elias discusses Francis Martes.
*Nick Cafardo writes that the Astros remain a possibility for free agent catcher Matt Wieters, which makes no sense to me.
*Somehow the Astros don't have a first baseman ranked in FanRag's 1B fantasy baseball rankings... But Brian McCann (#6) and Evan Gattis (#10) got in the catcher rankings.
*The Astrodome is now a State Antiquities Landmark, which means it cannot be torn down. Take that, you non-preservationists with no regard for history. Brian T. Smith writes that Houston needs to figure out a way to honor its legacy.
*This columnist points out that the Ballpark of the Palm Beaches is less than four miles from the local landfill and that, when the wind blows out of the northwest, you'll know.
*Vice Sports: How self-assessment runs the hot stove
We didn't come out here to play tiddlywinks, son.
-Hal Smith
