Cardinals fire scouting director Chris Correa

The Cardinals have fired their scouting director, Chris Correa, Robert Patrick and Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch report. The move presumably comes in response to the organization's hacking scandal, since Correa has admitted hacking the Astros' database.

Correa has admitted hacking into a Houston Astros database but said it was only to verify whether the Astros had stolen proprietary data, according to a source with knowledge of the investigation.

When the news about the Cardinals' hacking scandal broke, it was clear that it was an embarrassing situation for the Cardinals, but I didn't think it would result in anything anywhere near as significant as this firing. Scouting director is a prestigious front-office position, and a really important one -- the Cardinals' recent success has, of course, been built on scouting.

While Correa's departure is likely to have a surprisingly strong impact on the organization, though, it's not as if Correa was singlehandedly responsible for the Cardinals' success. He had only been on the job since December, and most strong organizations are built in such a way that the departure of one person never hurts that much. Still, I'm borderline shocked that someone this high up got the axe -- I figured the Cardinals might just find a way to pin this on a couple of low-level employees or something.