Sure. I never said a GM couldn't use the resources he has to ensure potential assets. That's part of his job. What I don't think he should do is look at a few statistics and then conclude that the player is a user based on a few apparent trends he sees in the data.
Bear in mind, this is a completely different question than whether or not a player should be publicly scapegoated based on steroid gossip -- which is closer to what we're doing on this board, no matter how much folks say "RedsZone doesn't matter."
No idea. That's an impossible hypothetical. Depends on who "Average Joe" is, how much time I have, how much I'm giving up, what my team needs are, etc.
That said, I don't think there's inherently more reason to suspect Chris Davis than any other player. Lots of players use them mostly to recover from injuries rather than to accentuate their on-field performance in some way. If Hal Morris used steroids, anyone can, so I'd probably be inclined just to have a standard operating procedure.
Forget about feelers, what about just factoring it into your decision, how many years/dollars to give him, what kind of clauses to add to contracts, etc?
Chris Davis vs Shin Soo Choo. You would "investigate" both of them the same...given you have the time, team needs are the same, etc...?
You wouldn't make one extra phone call to a friend in the Orioles organization to try to be sure? Fair or not, he has already been mentioned with PEDs in several media articles. Many people fair or not, already suspect him.
I won't argue if you say yes. Just want to be clear on where you are.
When Neifi Perez (twice), Alex Sanchez and Ronny Paulino are known users and Andy Pettitte is an admitted one, I think it's pretty hard to have a measuring stick for who is and who isn't a user. As a GM, I probably wouldn't just trust my instincts or the eye test to know. I'd want something a little more than that.
I don't find Davis inherently more suspect than Choo, no.
In terms of the GM hypothetical... I find this very difficult to answer without knowing details. Who would the phone call go to? My guess is the guys who really know something in any organization about this stuff aren't going to be saying anything to potential trade partners.
I think that they already have these in-house types of conversations. But there is a difference between having that conversation in your office and having that conversation in public. One is acceptable because it isn't getting beyond those walls. No one will actually know you had that conversation. Having it publicly is an entirely different animal.
As for the media..... no GM should care at all what they say about anything.
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