Concept
The 2017 St. Louis Cardinals season was the 136th for the St. Louis Cardinals of Major League Baseball (MLB), a franchise in St. Louis, Missouri. It was the 126th season for the Cardinals in the National League (NL), and their 12th at Busch Stadium III. The Cardinals missed the playoffs for a second consecutive season, having last done that between the 2007 and 2008 seasons. Major League Baseball and the Players' Association reached a new, tentative CBA contract to reduce the 15-day disabled list timetable to 10-days. This change will allow teams to make quicker decisions on whether to bring up a roster replacement rather than wait to see if the injured player would be ready to return to action in less than two weeks. In addition, the home field advantage in the World Series for the league winning the All-Star Game is repealed starting this year. Home field advantage in the World Series will be awarded to the league champion team with the better regular season win–loss record. The details of the new five-years contract (expiring Nov. 30, 2021) listed here. Commissioner Rob Manfred levied a severe penalty, Jan. 30, 2017, on the Cardinals organization from former scouting director Chris Correa's hacking of the Houston Astros database in 2013 and 2014, who was fired by early-July 2015, and is now serving out a 46-month sentence (for unlawfully accessing another company's information) that began in July 2016, and ordered to pay a 2 million. No other person was responsible for hacking into the Astros' database. Correa has been placed on baseball's permanently ineligible list. Major League Baseball transactions Former Cubs' center fielder and free agent Dexter Fowler signed with the Cardinals on December 9, 2016, for $82.5 mil.
