Rangers’ Martin St. Louis announces retirement

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<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>Associated Press</p></bylineMeta></div><style>
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<div class="neCaption">FILE - In this  Monday, April 27, 2015 file photo, St. Louis Cardinals General Manager John Mozeliak addresses members of the media prior to a baseball game against the Philadelphia Phillies, in St. Louis. The St. Louis Cardinals say they have fired scouting director Chris Correa, Thursday, July 2, 2015. The Cardinals declined to say why, but the team is the subject of an FBI investigation into the hacking of the Houston Astros player personnel database. Last month, an attorney hired by the team said chairman Bill DeWitt Jr. and general manager John Mozeliak were not targets of the investigation.  (AP Photo/Billy Hurst, File)</div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/web1_104424117-60670f27b2894b5ba6bf0f56fb7e6146.jpg</photo0><caption0>FILE - In this  Monday, April 27, 2015 file photo, St. Louis Cardinals General Manager John Mozeliak addresses members of the media prior to a baseball game against the Philadelphia Phillies, in St. Louis. The St. Louis Cardinals say they have fired scouting director Chris Correa, Thursday, July 2, 2015. The Cardinals declined to say why, but the team is the subject of an FBI investigation into the hacking of the Houston Astros player personnel database. Last month, an attorney hired by the team said chairman Bill DeWitt Jr. and general manager John Mozeliak were not targets of the investigation.  (AP Photo/Billy Hurst, File)</caption0></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/web1_104424117-7dbba225e5dd4a2ca17b53da93a56b29.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">FILE - In this Thursday, Dec. 8, 2011 file photo, newly hired Houston Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow answers a question during a news conference in Houston. Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow led the Cardinals' data-based scouting system before leaving for Houston after the 2011 season. The St. Louis Cardinals say they have fired scouting director Chris Correa, Thursday, July 2, 2015. The Cardinals are the subject of an FBI investigation into the hacking of the Houston Astros player personnel database. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip, File)</div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo1>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/web1_104424117-7dbba225e5dd4a2ca17b53da93a56b29.jpg</photo1><caption1>FILE - In this Thursday, Dec. 8, 2011 file photo, newly hired Houston Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow answers a question during a news conference in Houston. Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow led the Cardinals' data-based scouting system before leaving for Houston after the 2011 season. The St. Louis Cardinals say they have fired scouting director Chris Correa, Thursday, July 2, 2015. The Cardinals are the subject of an FBI investigation into the hacking of the Houston Astros player personnel database. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip, File)</caption1></div></div>
<p>ST. LOUIS &#8212; The St. Louis Cardinals said Thursday they have fired scouting director Chris Correa, the first known fallout from the hacking scandal that has resulted in a federal investigation into whether the team illegally got inside the player personnel database of the Houston Astros.</p><p>The Cardinals declined to say why Correa was fired but confirmed he&#8217;d been let go a day earlier after a team-imposed leave of absence. The team is investigating the alleged hacking, as is the FBI.</p><p>&#8220;At this time, it&#8217;s still an ongoing investigation and there&#8217;s really nothing more I can add at this point,&#8221; general manager John Mozeliak said before a game against San Diego.</p><p>Jim Martin, an attorney hired by the team in February, declined to say how long Correa had been on leave. Correa, who was promoted to director of amateur scouting during the offseason, shepherded some of the team&#8217;s top draft picks this season to interviews at Busch Stadium just a few weeks ago. Martin said no other employees had been terminated and the investigation wasn&#8217;t done.</p><p>&#8220;I can&#8217;t give you an end-point,&#8221; Martin said. &#8220;But our internal review is still ongoing.&#8221;</p><p><strong>Smoltz the 1st HOFer following Tommy John surgery</strong></p><p>When John Smoltz is inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in three weeks he&#8217;ll be the first player enshrined following Tommy John surgery.</p><p>&#8220;That&#8217;s pretty doubtful that he would be the last,&#8221; said renowned orthopedic surgeon Dr. James Andrews, who performed Smoltz&#8217;s surgery. &#8220;You can&#8217;t believe how many are out there now that are pitching very successfully.</p><p>&#8220;It&#8217;s quite an accomplishment to go through that and make the Hall of Fame,&#8221; Andrews said. &#8220;It&#8217;s not going to be the easiest thing to reproduce, but I&#8217;m sure somebody will come along and duplicate that.&#8221;</p><p>There will be plenty of candidates. In a four-year span alone (2004-07), Andrews performed the surgery on 588 pitchers, nearly one-fourth of high school age or younger. Matt Harvey of the New York Mets and Kansas City&#8217;s Luke Hochevar are just two of several major league pitchers with Tommy John surgery on their resumes, and Orioles catcher Matt Wieters is proof that other position players are vulnerable, too.</p><p>The ulnar collateral ligament (UCL) reconstruction is a surgical graft procedure in which the damaged ligament in the elbow is replaced by a tendon from elsewhere in the body. Since the late Dr. Frank Jobe pioneered the surgery on Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Tommy John in 1974, it has become commonplace.</p><p>Fear of the surgery lurks in every major league dugout today.</p><p>&#8220;We&#8217;re not developing pitchers the right way to learn how to do their craft. We&#8217;re asking them to go as hard as you can, as short as you can, and that&#8217;s good enough,&#8221; said Smoltz, who&#8217;s working on his golf game in preparation for the American Century Championship in Lake Tahoe in mid-July.</p><p>&#8220;You can&#8217;t blame them. It looks sexy, it feels good, and we fall in love with it. But these guys are not given the proper time to figure out what kind of pitcher they are,&#8221; he said. &#8220;We learned how to pitch.&#8221;</p><p>Andrews sees a number of professional pitchers with an increased rate of injury, and most had some type of elbow injury when they were playing youth sports.</p><p>&#8220;That group of pitchers is just coming through the professional ranks now, and they were the first group that really played one sport (and) specialized in year-round baseball,&#8221; Andrews said. &#8220;The increased incidence right now is probably related to specialization. When they&#8217;re young baseball players, they have fatigue factors and get hurt, and it shows up early on in their professional careers.&#8221;</p>

Cardinals fire scouting director Correa amid hacking scandal