"This isn’t stats vs scouts - this is stats and scouts working together, building an organization that blends the best of both worlds. This is the blueprint for how a baseball organization should be run. And, whether the baseball men of the 20th century like it or not, this is where baseball is going."---Dave Cameron, U.S.S. Mariner
Does anyone feel, like me, that HGH isn't as big of an issue as anabolic steroids? I know HGH is a PED but I couldn't care less if a player uses HGH to recover from an injury. Why wouldn't they? HGH is something that is prescribed on a regular basis to deal with injuries. Anabolic steroids are never prescribed for any medical situation outside of sex change issues.
All conjecture, and very reliant on conspiracy. My conjecture is that steroid use was widespread, teams that won during the era did so with big payrolls before revenue sharing, perhaps buying the players who gained the most advantage from using PEDs, but still it was more big payroll heyday. Power hitting records were more what PEDs destroyed than competitive balance. Competitive imbalance resulted from no revenue sharing and big market teams spending their way to winning, not PEDs. The Reds didn't win because they didn't have any pitching, not because they had "clean" players.
"Rounding 3rd and heading for home, good night everybody"
I don't buy that for a moment. First off, I'll nominate the dynasty Yankees of the late '90s as a fairly low PED team.
Second, that's a convenient narrative for all other teams. Were the Indians clean with Albert, Thome and Manny? The '90s Phillies sure profiled as a juiced team (Dykstra, Hollins, Daulton, Incaviglia). And maybe the Pirates were juiced to the max, but it didn't matter. Maybe the DBacks milked one last big season from a whole slew of their 2001 roster thanks to chemical enhancement. Biggio and Bagwell played with Ken Caminiti on the Astros and that guy was far from clean. Supposedly the Mets had a clubhouse guy who could get you what you wanted. Edgar Martinez got a lot more muscular in his 30s. Brady Anderson is widely assumed to have juiced and Manny Alexander got caught red-handed, so how clean were the Orioles?
And what's the evidence on that one Cubs guy other than he was big and hit lots of homers? Because if that's evidence then how am I supposed to believe Mike Piazza was legit. BTW, no matter what anyone believes about Sosa, Larry Walker was a better player.
Anyway, I don't have roidar and I'm not assuming teams that may have enjoyed the benefits credulous or complicit reporting were the clean ones.
I'm not a system player. I am a system.
"This isn’t stats vs scouts - this is stats and scouts working together, building an organization that blends the best of both worlds. This is the blueprint for how a baseball organization should be run. And, whether the baseball men of the 20th century like it or not, this is where baseball is going."---Dave Cameron, U.S.S. Mariner
I heard through the grapevine that Franklin used both juice (high fructose) and carbs.
And everyone, please enjoy what may be the worst column ever written about HOF voting - http://espn.go.com/new-york/story/_/...ball-hall-fame
I'm not a system player. I am a system.
Not sure how any of that disjointed diatribe has much to do with the point I was making. I certainly wasn't making a comprehensive list of players who juiced. I was primarily referring to teams whose managers and general managers may be considered for induction into the Hall of Fame someday.
The point is that certain teams (and their managers and general managers) benefited tremendously from steroid cheating while other more honest teams (perhaps with more ethical managers who didn't allow cheating) suffered. It is pretty obvious that some teams had much greater involvement with steroids than other teams did.
I believe the managers and general managers of those teams were aware of the cheating and chose to allow it. They are guilty of cheating too. It seems that up to now only the players' reputations have been stained by the steroids scandal. Only the players' Hall of Fame candidacies are in jeopardy. In my opinion, if the players are going to be denied induction to the Hall of Fame for their involvement with steroids (which is fine with me), then their managers who allowed it should also be held accountable when they are being considered for induction into the Hall of Fame.
Come on now, that's not even at 10% of my diatribe capabilities. I yawn more stridently than that.
I think the problem is that you're now randomly picking good guys and bad guys. Were the Braves clean? Supposedly yes, but maybe we just think that because their local media whistled past the PED use. And you're throwing Sosa under the bus based on what evidence?
My point is you have no idea whether PED use was concentrated on a handful of teams, let alone who those teams might have been (Philly was a glaring omission and the Yankees were a questionable inclusion). You can't make a comprehensive list of juicers. You can't even make an accurate partial list of juicers outside of guys who've been caught or admitted to juicing (and it's not just you, no one can).
I don't disagree that GMs, managers and owners tacitly, or in some cases overtly, condoned PED use, but I'll guarantee your rogues gallery is incomplete and, in cases, possibly mistaken. Maybe the winning teams in MLB were a bit like Lance Armstrong, beating out a well-medicated pack of challengers.
We don't know and I don't see how more uninformed suspicion does anything other than make the whole mess more convoluted.
Last edited by M2; 01-09-2013 at 02:17 AM.
I'm not a system player. I am a system.
I have no more idea than anyone else who did and who didn't use anything. If I had to guess, I'd say the use of PEDs was (and may still be) a part of the culture of the clubhouse during that entire era and the ones we know about are just the tip of the iceburg (that's kind of been mentioned publicly by both Jose Canseco and Ken Caminiti but no one wanted to believe it and blamed the source even though both of those guys have proven to have been more correct than anyone wanted to admit as time has gone by). Its why I think using who we think used vs who we think didn't use as a criteria for the Hall of Fame seems silly to me. Either put them all in or keep everyone from the entire era out. Chances are some one who has already used has probably already been elected. Singling out Bonds or Clemens because of incomplete (and who knows how distorted when repeated down the line) hearsay seems like a witch hunt to me. How do we really know that Greg Maddux, Robbie Alomar, Barry Larkin, Pedro Martinez or Ken Griffey JR. never used? There hasn't been any evidence or public accusation and we don't want to believe it, but we really don't know anything.
Either keep the enire era out or put them all in IMO. I don't think the museum should ignore an entire era, where the games were just as important and fans and towns lived and died with each win or loss just as much as in other eras. I'd put them all in. Sure some may have reached some numbers in part because they were PED aided, but lets not pretend that the numbers of others aren't tainted anyway. For example, the 295 foot RF fence with a 340 foot RF power alley in Yankee Stadium may have something to do with the dominance of Ruth and Gehrig might it not? Did an entire era with a dead ball and a legal spitter taint the pitching numbers of Walter Johnson, Christy Matthewson and Cy Young? Did the higher mound reduce the aura of Bob Gibson or Juan Marichal or did it tip the scales for a borderline guy like Jim Bunning? Trying to place some qualification on the numbers is a slippery slope IMO.
Last edited by mth123; 01-09-2013 at 06:11 AM.
All my posts are my opinion - just like yours are. If I forget to state it and you're too dense to see the obvious, look here!
I'm going to abstain from reading John Fay until he unabstains (or would it be "stains?")
It will be tough but....
So if no one makes the Hall this year what will the media reaction be? Will people care?
There were some interesting points from the transcript of Nate Silver's "Ask Me Anything" on Reddit that addressed the HOF and this vote:
Q: How would you fix baseball Hall of Fame voting?
— MrDNL
A: I'd probably lower the threshold for players getting dropped from the ballot, from 5 percent to 2 percent or so, or have some sort of a sliding scale where the threshold depends on how many times a player's name has appeared. It now seems plausible that Alan Trammell will eventually get in, for example, and it's a little weird that Lou Whitaker got dropped from the ballot years ago when he might otherwise be gathering some support along with Trammell right now.
Q. Given that Barry Bonds will likely be declined a first-ballot visit to the Hall of Fame tomorrow, is there any way to look at numbers from the steroid era (both for those implicated, and those that just happened to play in the era) such that they show actual performance? Essentially, can we actually make any assessments of numbers from the steroid era?
— OhEmGeeBasedGod
A. If we had a list of exactly who used steroids and when, you could do a lot of clever things. But we don't, and the sample of alleged and actual steroids users is liable to be nonrandom and biased in various ways.
Q. Would you vote for Barry Bonds or Roger Clemens to get into the Hall of Fame?
— Dovercourt
A. Yes, I think, in large part because the split-the-baby solutions to steroids use are hard to apply in practice. I might use steroids use as a tiebreaker for otherwise very close cases (and I think McGwire, Sosa and Palmeiro all fall into that category). But I don't think people should pretend that we can put each player's stats through some kind of algorithm and come up with "steroid-neutral" statistics. We just don't know all that much about who did and didn't use steroids, and when.
“In the same way that a baseball season never really begins, it never really ends either.” - Lonnie Wheeler, "Bleachers, A Summer in Wrigley Field"
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I've been meaning to throw my two cents in on the initial question. I think some of what Nate Silver said applies regarding Fay's decision. First, I applaud Fay's decision to abstain as opposed to mailing in a blank ballot. The point that Silver made, that some direction from the Hall viz a viz how to address what history will call the Steroid Era is needed. All I'm hearing from Fay, I think, is he personally needs to see some further clarification before he proceeds in voting for this group of individuals. I don't think it's an unreasonable position even if I don't actually agree with it.
“In the same way that a baseball season never really begins, it never really ends either.” - Lonnie Wheeler, "Bleachers, A Summer in Wrigley Field"
The Baseball Emporium - Books & Things.
The Baseball Bookstore
http://tsc-sales.com/
http://tscsales.blogspot.com/
http://silverscreenbooks.com/
I actually like what Fay has done. Baseball writers are a sanctimonious bunch wanting to preserve the history and tradition of the game. We are at the point where we have sure fire HOF's who are not first ballot HOF's. We have voters who won't elect someone unanimously because Babe Ruth wasn't. I would rather have someone like Fay abstain from voting than mailing in a blank ballot and hurt the players that were deserving.
If we view the Baseball Hall of Fame as a vehicle to tell the story of baseball I can see two sides to the story. If you don't think that steroid players belong than I have no problem with a writer telling the narrative that this era was flush with cheating. If a writer wants to say that Baseball, the owners, and Selig weren't strong enough to take a stand then this is one way to tell the story of the steroid era.
On the other hand do you want to tell the story that these are the best players of a juiced up era? We have different era's in baseball, is the steroid era just that? Don't we want the HOF to tell the story of baseball, all of baseball?
As for me I would have voted for Clemes and Bonds, I thought they were the best pitcher and hitter of their generation. I would not vote for Sosa or McGwire who I thought were able to put up HOF numbers because of the needle.
Nobody in the 2013 HOF class was elected.
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