Steroids Week: Bonus Coverage 4

This article contains all you really need to know about 756, including what Hank Aaron thinks and what Willie Mays thinks.

I really don't have anything more to say.

Steroids Week: Bonus Coverage 3

Just to be fair to Mr. Kurkjian, this is a much more reasonable attitude (from the same article as our friend Pedro Gomez):

I will acknowledge Barry Bonds for what he has done: hit more home runs than anyone in history. It is a fascinating accomplishment, one that's worthy, on some level, of celebration. We have never taken records away in baseball history, and we should not take this one away unless we're prepared to take away a whole bunch of records and achievements during this era. We shouldn't put an asterisk next to it, either. There already is -- and always will be -- an imaginary asterisk next to this era. We should do what baseball has always done with its records and controversies: attach a story to them, and then let our best baseball fans -- they believe something fishy went on here -- decide how to recognize this achievement. As for Hank Aaron, he no longer will have the most home runs of anyone in history, but his legacy will not be lessened. Bonds' chase has given us another chance to celebrate the greatness of Aaron's career, and the strength of his purpose. His legacy might even be strengthened because, as far as we know, he hit 755 home runs naturally, legally and honestly.

I can respect this opinion. People don't think less of Ruth for what he did. People haven't forgotten Roger Maris. And we're all learning how to put the context of the players' accomplishments in their proper context. We don't need witch hunt to extricate players' records and we don't need an asterisk.

Steroids Week: Bonus Coverage 2

And the hits just keep on coming. This is flat out insane.

The record book may now indicate Barry Bonds is the new home run king. But that doesn't mean fans -- both outside and inside the game -- have to recognize Bonds' spot above Hank Aaron. The beauty baseball has always maintained over other sports is accountability in the fans' perspective. You can trust your eyes in baseball. An error is an error. A missed bunt attempt is just that. What you see is, well, what you see. A pitcher who is throwing 88 mph at the end of one season and is magically hitting 98 on the gun the next spring? That's just not humanly possible, at least not without some form of help. Same goes for home run hitters, and Bonds tops this list. Not just because the only time he ever hit more than 49 home runs was when he reached 73 in 2001, but also because of the numerous allegations that Bonds used chemical help to reach late-career highs. Whether baseball or its fans want to admit it, these last 15 years will forever be viewed as the steroids era. Some say Bonds is being unfairly picked on. Maybe, but remember, the lab he used, BALCO, was the one the federal government raided. Bonds' name was front and center in the BALCO investigation and it's front and center among a large faction that simply does not believe he is the new home run king.

- ESPN's Pedro Gomez, as quoted here.

What was Roger Maris on, Pedro? This makes me more angry than I have a right to be. Pedro Gomez has decided what is and is not humanly possible for a Hall of Fame athlete. Pedro Gomez knows what your body is capable of doing. After all, he has spent years researching bio-mechanics and physiology at world class institutions.

Wait. What's that? He hasn't. HE'S JUST A MOTHERHUMPING JOURNALIST!!?!?!??!?! YOU DON'T F(&!()*@#ING SAY!???!?

Also, whether or not he cheated, Barry is the new home run king, if by "home run king," we mean "the guy who has hit more home runs than anyone else." If by "home run king," we mean "the best home run hitter who ever lived" that title still belongs to Babe Ruth, after we apply the requisite adjustments for era.

Steroids Week: Bonus Coverage

I really didn't want to write anything tonight, but then Barry broke the record. And I read this article by Tim Kurkjian.

You all probably already know what I think about it. It basically just throws Barry, McGwire, and Sosa under the same bus as Raffy Palmeiro, who actually deserves it. What drives me nuts isn't so much the bringing up of Bonds' link to steroids. Again, this link definitely exists, it's just far from definitive. It's the presumption that some players are obviously users and some players are not.

Who knows which is which (and who is who)? People just lump people in the categories they want to based on their own opinions formed on nothing more rational than the answers to the questions "Do I like this guy?" and "Do I think this guy looks like he used steroids?"

There is now a system in place for labeling people steroids users. Can we please let it work?

There are only a handful of players who have been proven to have broken baseball's rules regarding performance enhancing drugs. Barry Lamar Bonds is not one of them.

Congratulations, Barry. Someday people might even remember you as the guy who almost joined A-Rod in the 800 club.

Steroids Week, Part One

Barry Bonds will almost certainly claim the position of the game's greatest power/speed combination, and probably will hold that spot for many years. He will probably break the career record for walks drawn, Babe Ruth's record now, Rickey Henderson's perhaps before it becomes Bonds'. He may well break the career record for runs scored, Ty Cobb's record now, with Henderson also in line to intercept that one. Unlike Henderson, he drives in almost as many as he scores. He will break or has already broken the career record for intentional walks. When people begin to take in all of his accomplishments, Bonds may well be rated among the five greatest players in the history of baseball.

- Bill James, as published in The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract, analyzing Bonds' career through the 1999 season.

Welcome to Steroids Week here at Basebology! As perhaps all of you know, steroids is my least favorite baseball topic in the world, mostly because it's not a baseball topic. Any remaining distaste for this subject is introduced by the grandstanding of media members, who at least have a job selling papers, and politicians, who apparently prefer to wag their finger at rich people more than they prefer to solve actual problems.

Nonetheless, I feel compelled, given the events of the weekend to discuss this topic at length before I finally shelve it for all time. It is my sincere desire that after this week I will have nothing more to say about the issue and therefore can simply talk about the greatest sport ever created by man.

An Apology To My Reader(s)

Therefore, the time has come to unveil the mystery names that you all have been waiting for with bated breath. Allow me to re-run the chart of last week with player names included and one (not so) slight modification, in bold.

Home Runs by Age:

Age:         20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
Hank Aaron:  13 27 26 44 30 39 40 34 45 44 24
Barry Bonds: xx 16 25 24 19 33 25 34 46 37 33

Age:         31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42
Hank Aaron:  32 44 39 29 44 38 47 34 40 20 12 10
Barry Bonds: 42 40 37 34 49 73 46 45 45  5 26 20

As many of you supposed, Player A was indeed Hank Aaron, whose home runs as presented here do total his career mark of 755. However, many were stumped as to who Player B was. Your confusion was not without cause: I cheated you. In fact, there is no player in MLB history who has put up Player B's numbers. In this corrected version of the chart I have restored the 30 home runs that I lopped off of Barry Bonds' record setting campaign at age 36.

Why do this? Because it is a striking how similar Bonds' career is to Aaron's once the spectacular aberration of 2001 is removed. It was this realization that prompted me to host Steroids Week. Today, rather than talk about steroids in general, which will happen later this week, I want to focus on Barry Bonds in particular. I want to examine what the evidence against Barry is, what his accomplishments are, what his accomplishments should be regarded as, and why he is so controversial.

Let's get started.

The Statistics

Much has been made of Barry Bonds' late career power surge. In fact, this surge, along with elevated levels of offense in general, is the impetus for the media circus that surrounds Bonds' quest to break Hank Aaron's record.

But why?

Reread, if you would, Dear Reader, the opening quote from Mr. Bill James. Bill wrote those words before Barry Bonds played his age 35 season, a full year before Bonds shattered the single season home run mark.

Barry Bonds, in 1999, was an inner-circle Hall of Famer, a rare baseball talent and a perennial MVP. Yet, when he exploded for 73 home runs in 2001, people were shocked. As if a Hall of Famer having an historically great season was unusual. In fact, it is quite the contrary: we expect these types of seasons to come from Hall of Famers, not that they always do.

In a certain sense, then, it was Bonds' misfortune that he should suddenly have a season for the ages right when people's sensitivity to steroid use was beginning to peak. If, as in my original quiz, Barry Bonds had hit only 43 home runs that year, no one would have noticed. Bonds' career path would look suspiciously like that of Mr. Aaron.

Furthermore, it's not as if this type of fluke season is entirely unprecedented. In 1996, Brady Anderson had one of the most famous fluke seasons of all time, hitting 50 home runs. He never hit more than 24 in any other season. Outside of his 61 in '61, Roger Maris had a single season high of 39 home runs. He had only one other season over 30. If Maris and Anderson can do it, why then are we so shocked when an all time great player does it?

And then there's the proverbial other shoe: why did Barry's home run totals immediately return to his established career norms. If Barry had really found the fountain of steroidal youth, why did it only manifest itself in one spectacular season? I will grant that he did sustain some, though not nearly all, of his power: his at bats per home run did drop in later seasons. But is this cause or effect? Bonds has always had one of the most selective batting eyes in baseball. It is entirely possible that Bonds' decreased at bats per home run post 2001 is rather the result of higher percentage of his at bats ending on mistakes by the pitcher: they were trying to be careful and perhaps walk him, but they screwed up, and Bonds capitalized. Pitchers dramatically altered their approach to Bonds after 2001, and separating this new approach from Barry's new home run rate is nigh impossible.

Additionally, the idea that Bonds was not always a power hitter is thrown around haphazardly, usually in conjunction with an observation that 40 year old Barry is bigger than 25 year old Barry. This idea is silly. When Bonds arrived in the majors, power numbers in MLB were not where they are today. When one adjusts for context, Bonds' numbers are more impressive than they initially appear early in his career and less impressive later on. The inverse is true for Aaron's numbers: he arrived in a high offense era and ended his career in a pitcher friendly environment. When these adjustments are applied, their career paths are even more similar.

In fact, when you properly adjust for context, Aaron's career home run totals are still more impressive than Bonds', though not as impressive as Ruth's. The irony of the media cacophony for an asterisk is that they don't need one: the era adjustment that should always be applied when comparing players of different eras already adjusts for the increased offense of the late 1990's and early 2000's.

Finally, it should be noted that Barry also plays in an era with vastly improved medical technology. This technology, even and especially the legal kind, has allowed Bonds to play healthily far longer than he otherwise would have been able to. Other players too have seen this benefit. It's a shame that people attribute his late career productivity entirely to steroids and not to in any part to modern medicine.

The Physiology

Twenty-one years ago, Barry Bonds looked like the graphite shaft of a golf club.

- Vin Scully, during a Giants-Dodgers broadcast this week. (Jon Weisman, SportsIllustrated.com), as quoted at Baseball Prospectus.

Apparently, if you get bigger as you get older, you are on steroids. This comes as a great surprise to every 40 year old, beer league softball player in the world. Honestly, the idea that Barry is juicing because he's bigger than he was when he was 20 is absurd. Lots of things can change naturally in twenty years.

Of course, none of this should discount the possibility that Barry wanted to change and worked to enact change in his body. I have no doubt that Barry made a concerted effort to add muscle mass as he aged. However, no one ever seems to acknowledge that this can be done without having to use steroids. Baseball players until the 1990's were not heavily into weight training. It was thought that being too muscle bound would rob you of necessary agility and screw up your swing. There has been a massive increase in general strength training in baseball in the last two decades. Why couldn't Barry's increase in muscle mass be attributable to this? There are plenty of examples of athletes who are incredibly chiseled despite undergoing an Olympic level drug testing program. But if you're Barry Bonds, you're on steroids.

The Media

Two of the key events in the steroid saga in MLB has been the publishing of Jose Canseco's Juiced and Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams's Game of Shadows.

Barry has long been a favorite target of the media, and, to be fair, it's mostly his fault. He has often acted like a spoiled, petulant child. He plays the race card at will. He's not the most accessible guy. Barry Bonds, Jerk became an unshakable characterization long before the steroids accusations.

And yet, that's not even the biggest problem with Bonds as a media target. Quite simply, there's a wee bit of a conflict of interest at play for both Mr. Canseco and Messrs. Fainaru-Wada and Williams.

Not much needs to be said about Canseco. I mean, why wouldn't you take the word of an admitted cheat with an axe to grind, a love of the spotlight, and a need for income at face value?

As for Williams and Fainaru-Wada (I'm getting tired of typing that), they've been using the shield of journalism to lend their work credibility. For the record, I have not yet read Game of Shadows, though I plan on doing so in the near future. Therefore, my critiques have more to do with the tactics and motives of the two than their accusations.

First, being journalists, there is very little mainstream public forum to hold them accountable, as they themselves are the mainstream public forum. Journalists love to push the idea that they are saints: selfless heroes who hold The Man's feet to the proverbial fire, defenders of truth, justice and The American Way.

Of course, what they really are is employees of publishers who need to move product. Just like everyone else, journalists are subject to the pressures of the market, of supply and demand. Writing a book and publishing articles about how Barry Bonds didn't break the law, and worse, the spirit of baseball, is worth nothing. Taking down the most dominant athlete in the last half-century of baseball makes you a household name.

And, of course, since every other journalist is in the same scenario, the vast majority of them will not acknowledge this reality. After all, you need credibility to sell papers, and you can help maintain that credibility by refusing to acknowledge that selling papers has anything to do with your journalism. It's hypocritical, a charade of the most perverse variety, and it's why you will forgive me for not immediately crucifying Barry Bonds because two self-interested reporters illegally obtained sealed testimony and interviewed a jilted ex-mistress.

How I View Barry

I know this post has come across as one giant apology for Barry, and that's unfortunate. Ultimately, I don't know what Barry did or didn't do. I'm just angry that a complex issue has been reduced to a variety of sound bites that don't stand up to basic scrutiny. We've allowed the media to control the entire discussion on Barry Bonds and they've done what they do best: they've manufactured a crisis.

Ultimately, there are a few facts on which Barry can hang his supposedly over-sized hat: first, he was already an elite Hall of Famer before the steroids scandal. Secondly, he has never, not once, failed a test for performance enhancing drugs, despite the increased testing due to his failure of a test for banned stimulants. Third, even Victor Conte, BALCO mastermind and outer of many other high-profile cheaters, maintains that he did not have Bonds on a steroid regimen.

How should Bonds be viewed? If you want to be objective, do it the right way: adjust his numbers for context and put them in proper perspective. You'll find him comfortably behind Ruth and Aaron. Ultimately though, the fact remains that Barry Bonds has never been caught breaking a MLB rule regarding banned performance enhancing drugs. He has maintained his post 2001 home run rate despite being tested for steroids multiple times a year. What more can he possibly do?

Welcome to Steroids Week here at Basebology!

Further Reading

This list may grow as I remember more, but until then:

"What Do Statistics Tell Us About Steroids?" excerpted from Baseball Prospectus' Baseball Between The Numbers

"Prospectus Today: Principles" on Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada

A Quiz

Quick! Which player is on steroids:

Home Runs by Age:

Age:      20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 
Player A: 13 27 26 44 30 39 40 34 45 44 24 
Player B: xx 16 25 24 19 33 25 34 46 37 33 

Age:      31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42
Player A: 32 44 39 29 44 38 47 34 40 20 12 10
Player B: 42 40 37 34 49 43 46 45 45  5 26 20

I eagerly anticipate your responses.

The Great Divide

The subject of Derek Jeter's defensive ability has long been a contentious subject among the more objectively inclined baseball analysts. There has yet to be a defensive metric, no matter how sophisticated, that can show Derek Jeter to be one of the best fielding shortstops in the league. Very few show him to be above average.

Yet, Derek wins award after award and draws rave reviews from many commentators, players, and managers. In the latest round of this puzzling affair, Derek has been voted the best defensive shortstop in a survey of American League managers by Baseball America (hat tip to RLYW for making me aware of this).

Before I dissect why this divide exists, allow me to make three disclaimers:

1. Derek Jeter is my favorite baseball player of all time. On a related note, The Flip is probably my favorite baseball play of all time.
   
2. I am not qualified to gauge Derek Jeter's defense with my eyes. I am only slightly more qualified to talk about his performance in various statistical measures.
3. My personal belief is that Jeter's defense is somewhere around league average, probably below it. His strengths are his awareness of the game situation, reading pop-ups, charging slow hit baseballs, and perhaps making that cool jump throw from the hole. His weakness is fielding groundballs hit up the middle. It is a very sizable weakness.

With that out of the way, I want to explore not the value of Jeter's defense nor his true talent at fielding, but rather why it is the this divide exists. I can think of a few reasons.

First, I really don't think that American League managers are very qualified to make these judgments. This has nothing to do with their ability to judge talent. It has to do with a simple reality: an opposing manager will see an opposing shortstop as many as 19 times during a season and as few as six. That's just not a very large sample on which to draw.

Secondly, managers are human beings just like the rest of us. They are aware of Derek Jeter's reputation. They've seen the highlights. They saw The Flip. It is impossible for them to completely separate this reputation, largely created by media members in need of an image to sell and a story to write, from their own observations. Confirmation bias and peer pressure set it. When an opposing manager sees Derek execute a jump throw against his team, that registers as evidence for Jeter's greatness. If a groundball rolls past a diving Jeter, that registers as evidence of Jeter's hustle and grit.

Finally, I can't help but shake the feeling that objective measures of Jeter's defense underrate him. Most of these measures are based primarily around the concept of range, Jeter's biggest weakness. These metrics have a harder time with pop-ups, for example. That's one of Jeter's strengths. I don't think that these metrics are wrong enough to justify the opinions of the AL managers, but I do think that it is enough to move Jeter from atrocious to simply below average.

Then again, you should go back and read my disclaimers. I really, really, really don't want Derek Jeter to suck. At anything. Accepting that he probably wasn't a Gold Glove caliber shortstop, despite the adulation, is one of the hardest things I've ever had to do. I don't mean this to sound sappy or to equate it with decisions and actions that are both difficult and important. Certainly, baseball is unimportant in the grand scheme of things. Certainly, this is not one of the most important things I've ever done, not even close.

However, forcing yourself to accept something that you wish weren't true, to which you have a sizable emotional attachment, even though there exists a large body of people willing to confirm your bias, is a monumentally difficult task. For me, it represented a commitment to making sure that my opinions and beliefs were never based on what I wanted to be true, but only on that which could be shown to be true. The inability to do this is perhaps the cause of the majority of the problems in society today. I can only pray that my efforts to discover and accept the truth are successful, even if it is about something as silly as baseball.