Eight Out, For Now / Young & Dumb

I don't know what the original source is, but I got a table today with the heading "The Votes Are In". I imagine that there was supposed to be an article attached to it, but the table is reproduced below:

"Here's how an informal panel of 10 Hall of Fame voters view the New Eight Men Out. Each voter is told he had to vote based on current information about each player."

NAME	IN	OUT	MAYBE
Alex Rodriguez	5	4	1
Barry Bonds	4	6
Roger Clemens	5	5
Mark McGwire	2	8
Sammy Sosa	2	7	1
Ivan Rodriguez	6	2	2
Gary Sheffield	6	3	1
Rafael Palmeiro	1	9

McGwire is the only one of the eight who's been on the HOF ballot, and he received 21.9% of the vote in 2007 and 23.9% in 2008. That matches up pretty well with his 2 IN votes, and so the voting of these 10 individuals may be a good approximation of the entire HOF voting population despite the small sample size. That would mean that unless things change, maybe Ivan Rodriguez and/or Gary Sheffield would get in (I'm counting 7 INs out of 10 as close enough to the 75% entrance requirement).

Here's an adjusted table, ordered by level of HOF support:

NAME	IN	OUT	MAYBE	Career Win Shares	Extras
Ivan Rodriguez	6	2	2	325	.301/.339/.475, 295 HR, 2605 H, 13 GG, 1 MVP
Gary Sheffield	6	3	1	426	.292/.394/.516, 499 HR, 2615 H
Alex Rodriguez	5	4	1	407	.306/.389/.578, 553 HR, 2404 H, 3 MVP
Roger Clemens	5	5		440	354 W, 4672 K, 3.12 ERA, 7 CYA
Barry Bonds	4	6		714	.298/.444/.607, 762 HR, 2935 H, 7 MVP
Sammy Sosa	2	7	1	325	.273/.344/.534, 609 HR, 2408 H, 1 MVP
Mark McGwire	2	8		342	.263/.394/.588, 583 HR, 1626 H, 1 GG
Rafael Palmeiro	1	9		395	.288/.371/.515, 569 HR, 3020 H, 3 GG

Sheffield is likely deserving of entry into the Hall of Fame, but I find it interesting that he has so much more support than Sosa. There is actual evidence that Sheff used steroids whereas with Sosa it's just speculation. Plus, Sammy has over 100 more HR, despite being the inferior player.
Maybe it's a case of the voters making the right choice (Sheffield > Sosa) but for the wrong reasons?

Take out three of these guys (kind of unfair, I know)....

Raffy is the only one caught by the testing in-season, so I guess that's why he has the least support.

Bonds is not well liked in general and is being made an example of in a sense. Ironically, if he had finished with less home runs I think he would have more support. The steroid use may very well count against him more because he broke the HR record.

Pudge was never a huge home run hitter and so I don't think there's as much stigma around his steroid use. (I may be jumping ahead a little bit, but when asked if he was on the list of 104 players that tested positive in 2003 he said something along the lines of "only God knows." That isn't even close to a "No". Cap'n Jeter said "why would I be?" That is the answer one would want to hear.) I find this bias funny, as the restorative benefits of using would be especially beneficial to catchers.

Anyway; take the remaining five guys and there HOF support is almost completely explained by their career Win Shares. That indicates to me that as people reflect on the era, those guys that really deserve to get in (Bonds, Clemens, A-Rod, Pudge, Sheff, etc.) will (though with some added difficulty), and the more borderline guys (McGwire, Palmeiro, Sosa - the first two I think are deserving) may get in and may not.

This is (hopefully) the last thing I'll write on steroids.

[Edit: Just kidding. A-Rod is having a press conference. The written statement he's reading is kind of absurd. He calls himself ignorant repeatedly, and makes himself sound like an idiot. Rodriguez is generally regarded as a smart guy, so I find it hard to believe that he and his cousin enacted a regiment of bi-monthly injections lasting for three years without ever talking to anyone else about it. He says he didn't really know it was steroids and stopped when steroid testing came into effect and made the situation serious (and he had a neck injury that scared him).

Some selected questions he was asked by the media:

Q: If you wouldn't have been caught would you ever have admitted it?
A: Rambling non-answer.
(Real Answer: Not in a million years.)

Q: Was it cheating?
A: I don't know. I wish I had gone to college so that I could have grown up.
(If he says yes then he's an cheater and if he says no he looks like a jerk. Tough situation.)

Q: How could you have been that stupid, considering how careful you are taking care of yourself?
A: Boy was I young and stupid. So very, very stupid.
(It seems like for 01-03 the clubhouse kid had to lace up his shoes for him.)

Q: If you didn't think what you were doing was wrong why did you hide it?
A: That's a good question. They weren't tic-tacs, and it might have been wrong. And I was stupid.
(Looks like he was caught of-guard a little bit on this one. If maybe it's wrong then you shouldn't have done it. Or at least asked someone first. This is the question that made him look worst.)

Q: Want to prove a point by asking to be tested every week?
A: Nah. MLB has a good system in place, and I don't want to mess with stuff.

Q: You said in Texas it was loosey-goosey - what the hell does that mean?
A: The steroid use has nothing to do with where I played; I was stupid and it's my fault.
(Canseco, Palmeiro, Pudge, Ken Caminiti - yeah, had nothing to do with it.)

Q: Why use it 36 (2 times a month for 3 years) times given your lack of understanding about it?
A: I was young and curious and stupid.
(Because I'm lying about not knowing what it was?)

Q: Should your 01-03 stats count?
A: Some stuff... honestly, the last 15 months have been tough (divorce, tabloids, etc.). I just want to get back to baseball.
(That was the first really honest thing he said. His tone and expression were different. And I'm 100% with him on that. )

MLB Network discussion afterwards:

Barry Larkin (future HOFamer, hopefully) agrees the the tough 15 months thing was his most honest time. Billy Ripkin believes that A-Rod didn't give it to any other player, since noone would accept something that A-Rod didn't know what it was but his cousin could handle the bi-monthly injections. (That makes sense, but why is Billy Ripkin on the MLB Network?) Nevermind. Ripkin makes a lot of very good points regarding A-Rod not really being able to use the young/stupid excuse after eight years in the big leagues. (Also, about the "maybe I should have gone to college" thing he says "after eights years you're a doctor." Zing.) Larkin says he's not being totally honest to protect other players. Consensus seems to be that A-Rod's message wasn't great and that he's still not open. I want to see the guy who comes out and is completely forthright about what he did. Perhaps one of the 103 remaining guys from the list will do so, but I'm not holding my breath. (The MLB Network seems to have some quality analysis - at leat relative to ESPN.)

Larkin - "I want to talk about baseball; I don't want to take about this crap."

Note: The replay of A-Rod's interview with Katie Couric from 2007 when she asks him if he ever used a banned substance he says "No" but nods his head "Yes". I don't buy what he's saying now either, but luckily I don't really care. Hopefully this story drop off soon (and I know I'm contributing to it.)] Read more ...

Another Take On The *

From USA Today:

"Asked if he would consider reinstating Henry Aaron as baseball's home-run king and adding an asterisk or some other notation to the statistics of Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez and others involved in baseball's steroid controversy, Selig said that he might.

"Once you start tinkering, you can create more problems," he said. "But I'm not dismissing it. I'm concerned. I'd like to get some more evidence.""

Enacting this kind of thing (with consistency) requires going through a number of steps:

(1) Having evidence that a player used steroids
(2) Having evidence that using steroids increases a player's stats
(3) Providing justification why said effects invalidate player's stats
(4) Removing/making notation about player's stats
(5) Profit?

Let's use Barry Bonds as an example.

(1) I don't think there's much argument here.

(2) Generally speaking, I'm on the "No" side of this debate. I've seen a fair amount of evidence saying that using steroids (and especially HGH) has no effect on on-field performance at the major league level. The best I've seen is that steroids help with the healing process and thus would allow a player to stay on the field or work-out more. Bonds did have an incredible few years in his late 30's. He also had a great year at the age of 42 despite steroid testing having already been in effect for years. Was a late-career offensive explosion to this extent unprecedented? Probably, yes.

[Though here's a nifty chart from Royals Review:It's by age - Aaron is blue and Bonds is orange.

I know that surprised me, even if it's not necessarily the best way to look at the issue.]

I looked at players with at least 400 PA for each year over Bonds' career and it seems that for the his late-career boom he was about 2.4 - 2.8 standard deviations above the groups' average number of home runs for four of those years and 4.6 standard deviations above the average in his 73 HR season. (His second highest was 3.1 SD above average at age 28.) I couldn't get nice data from before 1974 (when Aaron's career primarily occurred) but I estimated Aaron as being about 2.3 - 2.9 standard deviations above the average HR mark for the same type of groups for his late-career boom.

I don't think there is any justification to say that those home runs were the direct result of using steroids, but Bonds' performance was certainly unusual (though those players at the extreme end of the talent curve do tend to defy usual expectations). Still - for the sake of argument - let's say that we'll answer (2) in the affirmative.

(3) So Bonds cheated (yes) and it helped him put up better statistics (maybe). Does that mean those stats (specifically the home runs) shouldn't count?

• Do they all not count, or just the ones he hit while on steroids?


• If he was on steroids and so was the pitcher he hit the HR off of does it count? (And I believe that more pitchers than hitters have thus far been caught. Plus, the most prominent potential benefit of using steroids - faster healing - would likely benefit pitchers more than hitters.)


• If he hit a HR clean off of a pitcher on steroids does he get a bonus?


• If you invalidate his home runs, do you also invalidate his doubles? Or his walks? It seems like it would have to be all of them.


• His stats helped his team win games. And he won MVP awards. Do they go too?


• If you invalidate his home runs, do you take those homers off the records of the pitchers who gave them up? Just the clean pitchers?


• Why just steroids? Where's the line? Getting Lasik eye surgery can be called a performance enhancer. Or what about amphetamines? They're a performance enhancer and it seems they would also be considered cheating (since MLB has banned them along with steroids). Hank Aaron admitted using greenies, and many (many) other players have also. Why do their stats count? Gaylord Perry was an admitted cheater - he won 314 games using scuffed baseballs (he was even caught and suspended for it). He's in the Hall of Fame.

Lets add one * for all steroid users (there goes Bonds, Sosa, McGwire, Palmeiro, and A-Rod from near the top of the HR list); two * for players who used greenies (bye-bye Aaron, Mays, Frank Robinson?); three * for pitchers that scuffed baseballs; four * for players that used corked bats (which research also shows don't really do anything); five * for players that played when blacks weren't allowed in MLB (so long, Babe); six * for guys who played in Coors Field pre-humidor (the last couple weren't cheating, but they were performance enhancing situations); and so on. I guess that leaves Ken Griffey Jr. as the all-time home run king. Probably. Maybe.

So, are we going to single out only the home run totals of people that were caught (or suspected of) using only steroids (or HGH, I guess)? How do you justify that?

Are steroids a black-eye on the sport from a public relations perspective? Absolutely. Are they from a competitiveness perspective (relative to the rest of the game's history)? Probably not.

But lets go with the outrage expressed by the country's mainstream sports writers. They ignored steroid use while it was going on and pretend that all players before 1993 were pure as the driven snow, but boy are they mad now. We're going to say that Barry Bonds didn't really hit 762 HR and that Hank Aaron and his 756 HR are king again. [Bonus: if they want, we can take Bonds' 688 intentional walks and make Aaron #1 again in that category too (with his 293).]

(4) Guess what? Bud Selig doesn't really have the authority to change the record books. They keep accounts of what happened on the baseball field, and Barry Bonds really did hit 762 home runs. Roger Maris never had an asterisk next to his 61 home runs and commissioner Ford Frick admitted that he didn't have the power put it there.

(5) Profit. MLB will make a lot of money next year. A-Rod will hit a bunch of home runs and help the Yankees win games and New York fans will cheer. People on the road will taunt him. If it was never revealed that he used steroids guess what would have happened? A-Rod would hit a bunch of home runs and help the Yankees win games and New York fans would cheer. People on the road would taunt him.

Cheating (by using steroids) is wrong. It sets a bad example for children (Oh, won't somebody please think of the children?!?). Cheating on your wife with Madonna is also wrong. It also sets a bad example for children. And it's a lot weirder. Read more ...

A-Really, Really Sorry He Got Caught

It was revealed last week that in 2003 Alex Rodriguez tested positive for steroids. Then hundreds of people who obviously had never done anything wrong in their lives ostracized him. My first reaction was "Huh, that's surprising" quickly followed by "Boy, it's really easy to turn A-Rod into A-Roid."

A-Rod's a great player, he was a great player, and it's likely he'll continue to be a great player for the foreseeable future. He cheated, and so did a whole lot of other people. Rodriguez learned his lesson from some of the others that where caught and admitted he did it and that it was wrong (which should make his life ever so slightly easier). I haven't liked him personally for a while (which was cemented when he slapped the ball out of the fielder's glove on his way to first-base a couple years ago) so this news doesn't change my opinion of him at all.

The worst thing about this revelation is that it gives even more credibility to the things Jose Canseco said. I really don't like it that Jose Canseco is the most credible source of knowledge on a subject - it messes with me sensibilities.

You know who's probably enjoying this news? Barry Bonds. A-Rod was supposed to be the "clean" HR champ once he passed Bonds' record, but now that won't be the case. Plus, if A-Rod comes in second then there will be no "Well, A-Rod's the real home run champion." It's also going to be a lot harder to keep Rodriguez out of the Hall of Fame, which should benefit Bonds, McGwire, Palmeiro, and all the rest.

And what happens if Sammy Sosa's name isn't on that list? Does that make his case for the Hall all that much more credible? At some point we'll just need to accept that steroids where a huge part of the game for a number of years. Sabermetricians understand the importance of putting stats into context, so their adjustment should be a whole lot easier than the sports writers, who just lost a bunch of "hero" story angles.

Round-up of other opinions:

From Shysterball:

* "It was always silly to play the "this guy was juicing, this guy was not" game, but now it is downright absurd, because anyone who comes out now and says that they thought A-Rod was doing steroids is lying. Well, except for Jose Canseco, who I once again must note has a better track record for accuracy on this subject than anyone. How nice it would have been if he wasn't such a scumbag with respect to everything else."

Nice to see the weird Canseco-is-honest thing noted by someone else. My level of disbelief went way down after Rafael Palmeiro tested positive - that was truly shocking, and dulled every subsequent blow.

* "Because the more players who are found to have used PEDs, the less accurate it is to say that anyone had an unfair advantage. Sure, on a matchup-by-matchup basis there were users facing non-users, but the caricature of Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens -- juiced up monsters cheating their way across a league of innocents -- grows more ridiculous as each new name surfaces. Many, many ballplayers have used PEDs in recent years. So many, I'd guess, that at some point a blanket presumption of PED use -- as long as it's not accompanied by a blackballing and an excess of moralizing -- should be in order for the players of our age."

Plus, I'm still not convinced that steroids do all that much to help.

From Joe Posnanski via SI:

* "Isn't it interesting that three players who have hit 40-40 are Jose Canseco, Barry Bonds and A-Rod? Alfonso Soriano is the fourth. That's a tough room right now."

In fairness to Soriano, I actually completely forgot that he got to 40-40. I do remember Vlad Guerrero just missing the mark (39-40, I think it was) - he might be slightly less displeased by that now.

Poz's SI co-worker Jon Heyman:

* "Those test results were supposed to have been destroyed, expunged, wiped away. And they would have been obliterated, had the union not kept them around for no good reason...

That steroid survey list from 2003 was supposed to be anonymous, nameless and faceless. And the list of 104 player failures was supposed to be destroyed immediately after it was tallied up. That was the plan...

That list would have been long gone if not for the union; according to three baseball sources familiar with the testing process, players union COO Gene Orza worked long and hard to try to pare down the list. Orza's mission, SI's sources say, was to find enough false positives on the list to drive the number of failures so far down that real testing wouldn't be needed in 2004 or ever."

There are 104 people very unhappy with Orza right now, and 103 of them are just waiting for the other shoe to drop. It might be in the players best interest to have all of the names released at once, but that probably won't happen. In any case, the Union - which is supposed to protect the players - ended up screwing them over.

Some people care, some people don't. Some people think it's good for the game to get this out there, others appose the idea. I'm just waiting for pitchers and catchers to report. Read more ...