Posted by Danny Biancullo
Astros GM Jeff Luhnow's baseball world has been turned upside down by the alleged hack of his team's analytics database. On Wednesday night, Luhnow, 49, commented on the New York Times report for the first time in an exclusive interview with SI.com.
Although he told the website's Ben Reiter he wasn't allowed to talk about the ongoing investigation, he did for the first time speak about other aspects of the Times' report and the alleged hack, about which he said, "It was like coming home and seeing your house has been broken into."
Luhnow rejected one theory that alleged hackers gained entry to the Astros database because they he hadn't changed his password(s).
“That’s absolutely false. I absolutely know about password hygiene and best practices. I’m certainly aware of how important passwords are, as well as of the importance of keeping them updated. A lot of my job in baseball, as it was in high tech, is to make sure that intellectual property is protected. I take that seriously and hold myself and those who work for me to a very high standard.”
In the Times story, writer Michael S. Schmidt reported the Cardinals were concerned that Luhnow took proprietary baseball information with him to the Astros, an accusation that Luhnow, a former technology officer, denied.
“I’m very aware of intellectual property and the agreements I signed. I didn’t take anything, any proprietary information. Nor have we ever received any inquiries from anybody that even suggested that we had.”
Moreover, SI.com's Reiter noted, Luhnow asserted the idea that one team’s outdated intellectual property would have remained helpful to a rival even in the short term is illogical.
“If you were to take a snapshot of the database of one team, within a month it would not be useful anymore, because things change so quickly. Not to mention that the types of analysis you would do back in 2011, versus 2012 or '13, is evolving so quickly because of new tools like PitchFX and StatCast. I wouldn’t trust another team’s analysis even if I had it.”
During his time in St. Louis, Luhnow was portrayed as a polarizing presence with the Cardinals because of his approach to analytics. Still, he rejected the idea that his relationships in St. Louis were the motive behind revenge-minded former co-workers' alleged hack.
“I actually got along very well with everybody with the Cardinals. I was friendly with the people I left behind there. A lot of them came to my wedding, when I got married in January 2012. The owner, the general manager, the assistant general manager, other executives, scouts were at my wedding. This wasn’t a bad breakup. It was a happy promotion of a person to a higher position in another organization.”
No matter the motivation, when the hack happened and Luhnow was made aware of it — plus that the Cardinals were the focus of the federal investigation — he was stunned but continued to rebuild his team.
“At the time when it happened a year ago, it was like coming home and seeing your house has been broken into. You feel violated when someone does that without permission. As far as whether it affected our ability to execute our plan? It's difficult to assess the effect, but we have continued to execute our plan and we are making progress. I had to call the other 29 GMs and apologize that private notes our organization had made had been made public. Those were not fun calls to make. But I’ve made several trades since then, and I’ve had no problems getting anybody on the phone.”
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