Another steroid post

Great post from Joe Posnanski:

Yes, players were using steroids, and that use of steroids does indeed — as Bob Costas put it the other day — make their numbers inauthentic. But let’s talk about that for a second. Did illegal amphetamines that were apparently a part of every day baseball in the 1960s, ‘70s, 80s, 90s make those numbers inauthentic? I don’t know. There is pretty good reason to suspect that Babe Ruth corked his bat — does that make those numbers inauthentic? I don’t know. There is every reason to suspect that the Los Angeles Dodgers broke baseball’s rules — in letter and in spirit — by raising the mound above the limits. Does that make those numbers inauthentic? I don’t know.

And beyond cheating: Does playing in an all-white league make every number before 1947 inauthentic? And it’s not like the league was fully integrated the day Jackie Robinson stepped on the field — it took a decade or more, so maybe all numbers before 1961 are inauthentic. And the game did not really open up to Latin players until the 1980s — just look at one country, the Dominican Republic. The only regulars from the Dominican Republic throughout the 1960s were the Alou brothers, Julian Javier, Rico Carty and Manny Jiminez (for one year). Even in 1979, there were only five regulars in the big leagues (Carty, Cesar Cedeno, Pepe Frias, Alfredo Griffin, Frank Taveras).

In 1985 alone, there were 12 regulars — including stars like George Bell, Tony Fernandez, Pedro Guerrero, Tony Pena and my guy Julio Franco. And of course the last 20 years, you have MannyBManny, Papi, Tejada, Vlad Guerrero, Hanley Ramirez, Adrian Beltre, Alfonso Soriano, on and on and on. And these are just the hitters — we’re not even getting into Pedro and Bartolo Colon and so on.

So what is authentic? I am not defending those players who cheated — they knew it was wrong, they knew why they were doing it, they knew — but I don’t even know who were those players and neither does anyone else. Was it 50% of baseball, like Ken Caminiti said long ago before he was bullied into backtracking? Was it MORE than 50%? Were teams complicit? Were people behind the scenes in baseball quietly cheering? Or, worse, were they putting subtle and perhaps even not-so-subtle pressures on players to get stronger, however necessary? And how much of what we saw was steroid induced? Was it 90%? Was it 40% How much?

We don’t know.

He touches a lot of things that I've addressed before, and it's an excellent piece. There's so much noise without context - Joe has a lot of context with almost no noise...

Bonds and Red Sox Nation

Re: David Ortiz, Barry Bonds

Bonds name has now come up in various forums. The attitude of many people is as follows:

I'd rather lose than sign the cheater.

I know that some people feel that way. I'm not one of them. I don't feel the loathing for Bonds that many do, and have never really understood it. Did he use substances which were technically illegal to help him play better? I'm pretty sure that he did. Was he the only one doing so? I'm pretty sure that he wasn't. When he was doing it, did Major League Baseball have a testing program in place or specified punishments for using those substances? Not that I'm aware of. As near as I can tell, that stigma attaches to Bonds because a) he doesn't like the media and the media doesn't like him¹ and b) he is the best hitter in the game since Ted Williams. Yankee fans seems to be surviving with Jason Giambi and Andy Pettitte on the roster. Cleveland fans managed to cheer for Rafael Betancourt on the mound last October. But we can't bring in a great hitter to DH, a guy who's been tested frequently for the past four years and never failed a test, because he took some substances 6-9 years ago in his quest to be a better player?

I really don't agree...



¹ - Bonds, unlike most players, grew up in a Major League clubhouse. He was exposed at an early age to media behavior, and saw, at an early age, biased, skewed, vicious and unfair commentary aimed at people that he personally knew and loved. He came to the game with no illusions about the "ink-stained wretches" and no patience with them, and the coverage of him has been negative since day 1. Some of it has probably been deserved - there are reasons to believe that he's been, at times, a jerk. A lot of it, I suspect, has been overdone, petty, vindictive and inaccurate. I don't know this - that's just my gut feel from 3000 miles away.

Wrist. Tendon. Sheath. Ortiz. Bad.

I wrote yesterday that "I expect that Boston will have to make due without David Ortiz for a while. The fact that he couldn't finish his at-bat, and the rumors that he felt a "pop" inside the wrist make me think that surgery is likely in the offing." I did not get a chance to post Will Carroll's assessment at Baseball Prospectus, but it ("Papi is said to have a mild sprain...it's more about giving him a couple of days off and expecting that the rest is all that will really be necessary to have him back out there") made me feel much better. Will's tied in to the medical people on the team's, and he's the best source for injury info. That said, in this case, my expectation was right and Will was wrong. The Red Sox put Ortiz on the DL with a "partial tear of the extensor carpi ulnaris tendon sheath in his left wrist."

If anyone's feeling a chill sense of deja vu, there's a reason. Here's a reminder from the New York Times, 4/3/2001:

Nomar Garciaparra had wrist surgery yesterday at UMass Memorial Health Care in Worcester, an opening day operation that could deprive the Boston Red Sox of their All-Star shortstop and a two-time American League batting champion for half the season.

And there is no assurance that his right wrist -- which had a split tendon surrounded by an inflamed sheath -- will ever be as strong as it was before the injury.

"The repair went quite well," the Red Sox team physician, Bill Morgan, said. "It's obvious that he's more vulnerable than prior to ever being injured. He had a fair amount of injury and a fair amount of surgery."

The injuries are not the same. But it's a bad thing. Nomar ended up playing in 21 games in 2001. Ortiz is going into a cast for the next month in hopes that the injury will heal. If it does not, that foul ball on Saturday night was the last swing we'll see from Ortiz in 2008.


There is, of course, a DH available on the open market. Whether they've got the guts/brain/nerve/common sense/chutzpah/arrogance/what-have-you to go get Barry Bonds or not is something that I don't even have a guess on. Bonds has been Sports Villain Number One with the loudest and most vocal part of the Red Sox fan base for the past ten years, egged on and encouraged by the bomb-tossers at WEEI, so that would be a story. On the other hand, it is a perfect fit. You get a hitter who is probably still as good as, or better than, Ortiz, you bring him in and let him DH five games out of seven, while giving Manny a couple of days a week at DH. He costs nothing but money, and probably only reasonable amounts of it at this point. And, while the hue and cry would, I suspect, be loud and ferocious (and tedious and tiresome), the tickets are sold. People aren't going to boycott the team, they aren't going to stop watching or listening.

I would love to see it. I don't expect to, but I would love to see it...


UPDATE: I need to clarify one point. Art Martone has pointed out that

The blog LyfLines lays out the case for Bonds ("a perfect fit"), but wonders if the Sox have the "guts/brain/nerve/common sense/chutzpah/arrogance/what-have-you" to sign him. Lyford, I'd say that the attributes you lay out are mutually exclusive. Do they have the guts, the chutzpah, the arrogance? Sure. You'd need all that, and more, to sign Barry Bonds. But brains and common sense? Those gifts tell you to avoid Barry Bonds at all costs, at least for now.

Art is right, of course. Yes, some of those attributes are mutually exclusive. That was the point of the list - some people think that signing Bonds would represent "common sense and brains" while others think "arrogance and chutzpah." So I obviously could have put that better...

Art also discusses some recent Bill James comments on Bonds, indicating that he (James) thinks that he (Bonds) is likely to collapse - "[when] a player reaches the point where ALL that he does is hit, he is normally very near to the end ... if you look at old players who have a very high OPS and essentially no other skills, what happens to them is that they suddenly collapse. They go from 'valuable' to 'out of the game' or 'still in the game, but worthless' in one year."

So there are reasons not to. And we need to see what ends up happening with Ortiz - if he heals and is back to normal at the beginning of September, then Bonds is unnecessary.

But frankly, I'd still love to see, if only to watch the media reaction...