MLB Bullets Commits A Cardinals Sin

Happy Friday to everyone. It's still all bad news for the Cardinals (except on the field, of course), so you should smile.

• Let's start with Deadspin, since the whole L'Affaire Cardinal started with them. (I'm not doing a stupid -gate or -gazi suffix. I'm going all the way back to Alfred Dreyfus.) Barry Petchesky explains how Deadspin got ahold of the leaked documents last year.
• Astros GM Jeff Luhnow spoke out about the hacking to Ben Reiter and he wants to make three things clear: One, contrary to reports, he definitely did change all his passwords after leaving the Cardinals. Two, he did not take any proprietary information with him to Houston and three, he disputes reports that he wasn't liked in St. Louis.
• Evan Drelich has more information from the Houston side of things and reports that their were more hacks than the two previously-reported incidents. Also, Drelich expects the Astros to sue the Cardinals for damages when this is all said and done.
• Johnette Howard explains why the Astros database was worth hacking.
• Cardinals GM John Mozeliak gave an interview to Bob Nightengale and said "Unequivocally, I knew nothing about this." He also said that he was not being investigated. It should be noted that an attorney was present during the interview and stopped him from answering questions.
• Cardinals owner Bill De Witt stated that the Cardinals are conducting a full investigation of what happened. Which is worth about as much as FIFA's internal investigation of improprieties surrounding the Russia and Qatar World Cup bids.
• Jeff Passan wonders how high this will go and reports that the source of the hacking was a house in Jupiter, Florida, where the Cardinals' spring training complex is located.
• Craig Calcaterra knocks down those who say this might not even be a crime. "It really is a crime," writes Calcaterra and he explains what law was broken.
• Matthew Trueblood gives some suggestions for punishment for the Cardinals, although taking away draft picks would require the commissioner to invoke his "best interests of baseball" clause and would certainly bring a fight.
• Will Leitch has some good advice for his fellow Cardinals fans. (video) Really, it is good advice. Most can be distilled down to "Stop behaving like an ass, you're making us all look bad."
• Alex Crisafulli has some similar advice for Cardinals fans. (h/t Hardball Talk)
• There was another baseball internet scandal that you may have missed: Red Sox third baseman Pablo Sandoval was benched for one game for going on Instagram during a game. Really, if you're going to sneak a peek at Instagram during a game, don't press "like."
• And another legal suit won by Sluggerr, the Royals mascot that can't spell but that's understandable because he's a lion. Sluggerr and the Royals were sued by a fan hit by a hot dog from a hot dog cannon. A jury ruled in favor of the anthropomorphic cat.
• Cole Hamels will miss his start today with a hamstring issue. There was speculation that "hamstring issue" was code for "imminent trade," so Hamels cleaned out his locker as a prank, scrambling beat writers to see if and where Hamels might be going.
• Then there was Jeff Francoeur, who pitched two innings and threw 48 pitches as an emergency relief pitcher. He wasn't supposed to pitch that much, but someone left the Phillies bullpen phone off the hook and manager Ryne Sandberg couldn't tell anyone to get warmed up.
• Phillies GM Ruben Amaro Jr., without whom this column probably wouldn't exist for a lack of anything to write about, said that mishap with the phone "can never happen again."
• Amaro also said that manager Ryne Sandberg's job is safe. As is his, as far as he knows. So my job is also safe, thank god.
• Dan Mullen has a list of memorable pitching performances from position players.
• The grievance filed by Alex Rodriguez against the Yankees for not making the performance payouts has been put on hold.
• Major League Baseball and the Yankees also trotted A-Rod out for a community function with kids in New York. It's amazing how much absolution a 146 OPS+ will buy you.
• Rodriguez is also just one hit shy of 3000 for his career.
• Tony Blengino looks at Robinson Cano's season and asks if this is just a fluke half-season or a sign of real decline on Cano's part. (ESPN Insider Only) Short version for non-subscribers: Cano is better than this, but he is in decline.
• Anthony Castrovince lists ten winter signings that haven't worked out so far.
• The Blue Jays are the hottest team in baseball, and Josh Donaldson and Russell Martin are two big reasons why.
• Ben Lindbergh explains the issue of "perceived velocity" and why the radar gun figures you see on the screen may be lying to you.
• Rob Neyer looks back at Moneyball, 12 years after its publication.
• More reasons to hate the trade of Chris Archer. (Yup, I'm still bitter.) Tim Brown looks at Archer's work with underprivileged kids and the RBI program.
• Finally, a look at the two careers of Lance Broadway. Just six years ago, he was pitching for the White Sox. Now he's got his own imdb.com page. How he got from baseball to  . . .cripes, why does he have to be in movies and TV and not on stage? Now I can't say "Broadway to Broadway."

And tomorrow will be a better day than today, Buster.