The Epistemoligical Steroid Problem

Over at ESPN, Buster Olney advocates for someone to stand up and tell the truth:

Could someone stand up and offer an unvarnished truth? Could someone please be fully credible and open and offer a complete version? Or are we going to see, day after day after day, these carefully crafted apologies, designed to tackle a public relations problem but really having nothing to do with honesty.

I could agree more. Let's have the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. But therein lies the rub: how do we know that's not already what we got? The problem with all the handwringing about athletes not telling the truth is that it presumes that they have not already told us the truth. And why do we believe that they have not told us the truth? Because it does not fit what we believe the truth to be.

This is an impossible problem. Any athlete who comes out and provides a story that does not conform perfectly to what we already believe the truth to be is simply presumed to be lying. We are making assumptions that can't possible be assumed and claiming to know things that can't possible be known when we take this position.

I grant that athletes do not have a great track record here. Furthermore, all the incentives are lined up to tell as little of the truth as possible. I'm not saying you have to believe a baseball player who tells you that he bought HGH but didn't use it. What I'm saying is that you can't simply presume that what they're saying is false simply because it doesn't fit what you think the story is.

A-Rod speaks

You can read the details here.

Alex admitted to taking PEDs between 2001 and 2003. He says he did it to cope with the pressure of being the highest paid athlete on the planet. He says he has been clean since then.

I want to believe Alex. I want to believe that he's sorry, that he only used for a couple years, that he hasn't used since 2003. It's important that you, the reader, know that because it can't help but color what I have to say. He's the best player on my favorite team. There's no way for me to be unbiased about this.

Much of what Alex says rings true to me. He admits to a much longer period of use than he "had" to. His reasons for taking them seem plausible. He seemed genuinely sorry, inasmuch as I can tell someone seemed genuine.

If Alex is telling the truth, and I mean the whole truth, not some Andy Pettitte truth where your story keeps evolving as more evidence is released against you, then I think he's done the right thing. I think people will be more receptive to this than they will be to a Roger Clemens style assault.

What if Alex isn't telling the truth? I don't want to think that's the case, but the skeptic in me admits that it is necessary. If you want to get full-blown cynical about it, athletes have a poor record of truth telling when it comes to personal failings. Alex's story could all be a very well conceived attempt to hit the "sweet spot" between admitting so little usage that people think you're lying and admitting so much usage that people think don't care that you are sorry. Are we really supposed to believe that all of his Yankee years, in which he has the most personal investment now and in the future, and all of his MVP years, which are critical to his legacy, are clean? That only a few years were not clean? That seems awfully convenient.

*sigh*

I can't be that cynical. Like I said, I want to believe A-Rod. It is my hope that he is telling the truth and that we can all move on from this. For now, I'm gonna take him at his word.

More A-Rod

If you're looking for a thoughtful take on the A-Rod situation (and profanity free!), try:

• King Kaufman
  

  So maybe the records from that time -- which for all we know is still going on, since the cheaters are always ahead of the testers -- are tainted. But they aren't any more tainted than the records from the time when baseball was segregated.

• Rob Neyer
  

  I hope Alex Rodriguez didn't cheat. If we do find out that he cheated, I will wish that he hadn't. But whatever happens, I'm not going to change my opinion that he's a great baseball player. Like many of the greatest players, he'll do whatever it takes to be the best player he can be. For a stretch of five or 10 years -- and yes, perhaps even today still -- being the best player could have meant cheating. Maybe the cheaters were wrong; that's the direction in which I lean, probably because I've got a streak of the moralist in me. But I will not sit idly while great athletes looking for an edge -- not all that different from the many generations before them -- are demonized by the high priests of baseball opinion. I will not.

If instead you want some hysterical, over-the-top reactions, try:

• Jayson Stark
  

  In baseball, we love our numbers. And we love our heroes. And that brings us to Alex Rodriguez, a man who has committed a crime he doesn't even understand:
  
  A crime against the once-proud history of his sport.
  
  A-Rod didn't commit that crime alone, of course. In many ways, he is just the latest, greatest face of a mass conspiracy that has now succeeded in obliterating the quality that used to separate baseball from the rest of the sporting jungle.
  
  Once, the numbers of baseball used to mean something special and magical. And the men who compiled those numbers were transcendent figures in American life.
  
  But not now. Not anymore.

• Peter Abraham
  

  At this point, anybody who played the game in the last 15 years is guilty until proven innocent. Nobody gets a pass. Rodriguez is the most physically talented player in decades. If he decided he had to cheat, everybody else has to be a suspect. Don’t forget, there are still 103 names out there just waiting to be leaked.
  
  Mike Mussina went from being bounced out of the rotation to his first 20-win season. Suspect. Mariano Rivera never seems to take a step back. Suspect. Derek Jeter plays every day. Suspect. Joba Chamberlain sure throws hard. Suspect. Two years ago you would bet your house on those guys being clean. Would you bet $20 now? You can’t be sure about any player, not even the supposed good guys. If you are, you’re hopelessly naive.

Mr. Abraham's opinion and Mr. Stark's opinion are exactly why I can't stand the steroid saga in baseball. It's not that I condone steroid use, or that I don't view steroids as cheating, or that I think we shouldn't care. I just don't see why steroid use is a bigger problem than segregation, game fixing, gambling, bat-corking, ball-scuffing, or any of the other ethical problems that baseball has faced over the years.

Baseball players aren't heroes. They never have been. That's not to say that some aren't admirable. I'm sure there are good men playing baseball. But on the balance, baseball players are actually just like you and me and the rest of humanity.

If you can say that you've never cheated on your taxes, never illegally downloaded a piece of software, a track of music or a movie, never used any sort of recreational drug, never lied to a boss, coworker, or business partner, never cheated on your spouse, and never driven drunk, then you can go ahead and get up on your soapbox to decry baseball players for failing to be saints.

The rest of us should probably remember that it is in human nature to cheat when it will benefit us. That doesn't make it right. That doesn't excuse anyone for cheating, but it should give us pause when we set out to villify a select group of people simply because their job is higher profile than ours.

Shoot me

Please.

Seriously, I wish I could say that I didn't care about this. I do, though probably not for the reasons most care.

I just want this whole steroid hysteria to go away. We get it. Some players did steroids. Some did not.

So fucking what?

Seriously.

So fucking what?

Athletes do whatever they can to win. They always have. Steroids are just another manifestation of that. That doesn't mean we have to turn the whole goddamn situation into a media shitstorm every time someone is "outed." That doesn't mean we have to go around leaking supposedly anonymous tests that are legally sealed. That doesn't mean that a whole era of baseball is "tainted" or invalidated or whatever. For crying out loud, it's still not even a matter of fact that steroids even assist baseball performance.

We've covered this before, so I don't want to turn this into a 1,000,000,000 word post. Every era has different quirks and idiosyncracies that make direct comparisons across eras impossible. Steroids are just another thing that may or may not need adjusting for. They are, in this respect, no different from large ballparks, loosely-wound baseballs, poor playing surfaces, shoddy equipment, heavier bats, better nutrition, better training, better medicine, or any other factor that influnces baseball performance.

The only reason that steroids are villified the way they are is because it gives media pricks the chance to stand up and ram their sanctimonious, morallizing, narrow, shallow, uniformed opinions down our throats.

Yes, let's try to keep steroids out of baseball. I think that's fine. But we also need to move on and acknoweldge that what happened happened. Please, spare me the histrionics.

I just want to enjoy baseball again. I want us all to be able to enjoy baseball again.

Won't somebody please think of the children?

If a baseball player trains in the woods and nobody interviews him, is he still in the best shape of his life?

Who knows?

Mike Gonzalez:

Gonzalez has lost 15 pounds. He’s a fit 6 feet 2, 200 pounds and in the best shape of his life, he says. He had to have surgery in October to remove a fatty tumor from his back called a lipoma, but it was benign, and he recovered in three weeks.

Kasey Kiker:

“I’m definitely in the best shape of my life,” Kiker said. “Everybody tries to point the finger at, ‘You’re on the disabled list, and you got hurt because you’re not in shape.’ It’s fair, to a point. I’ve worked as hard as I could.”

Adam Dunn:

Dunn is not Ramirez, mind you. But he's 7 1/2 years younger, said to be in the best shape of his career and the only major leaguer to hit 40 or more homers in each of the past five seasons.

Russell Martin:

Russell Martin, the hard-nosed catcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers, has taken up yoga.

That’s right, the native of Chelsea, Que., best known for his dogged blue-collar work ethic and play-through-all-pain intensity, has made yoga an integral part of his off-season workout regimen for the first time this winter.

“I’ve never felt better,” he said.

How should we value closers?

J.C. Bradbury, a man who writes a blog that combines two of my favorite subjects, baseball and economics, has put up a couple of posts so far this offseason decrying what he believes are the inordinately large salaries being given to closers.

His chief problem is that relievers, even the best ones, save so many fewer runs than starting pitchers that it seems ridiculous to offer relievers salaries that even approach the salary of a comparably elite starter. The usual response to this is that relievers pitch in "high leverage" situations, which is to say that the best relievers often pitch in situations where each run is of magnified importance. I think we can all agree that it is less damaging to give up a run when you are leading by 15 in the top of the ninth than when the game is tied in the bottom of the ninth.

J.C. does not agree that leverage, which amounts to a simple usage pattern for relievers, should factor in to their salaries:

I have considered the impact of leverage, but I don’t think leverage can explain the vast differences in my estimates and what is happening in the market. Leverage is a product of outside factors when a pitcher faces the same rules during all times of the game. The quality of his pitching is the same in the 5th inning as it is in the 9th.

He concludes (emphasis mine):

Another factor is that better pitchers in earlier innings affect the leverage in later innings. So, a good starter preventing runs as an impact on reducing leverage later in the game by creating bigger leads. I’m not sure exactly how to value that. So, I believe that the proper method is to treat all pitcher innings the same, while acknowledging that some elite relievers have some extra value in that they could be used in more valuable spots. But this value doesn’t necessarily come from when they pitched in the past.

J.C. is certainly right that it doesn't matter when a reliever has pitched in the past. All that matters is how a reliever can be used in the future. I will also admit that I myself have struggled with how to deal with the question of leverage when assessing player value, both in a past sense (how much reliever X contributed to a team's success) and in a future sense (how much reliever X will be worth to me next year).

I want to leave aside the question of past performance for now. I think that J.C. is in error to not factor leverage into future player value. Let me offer an analogy.

Let's say that I have been offered a prize of $1,000,000.00 if I can win a race from New York to Los Angeles. After a couple days of driving, I'm only a couple hours from Los Angeles and comfortably in the lead, by perhaps an hour or two. Suddenly, I find that I have a flat tire. Worse, I have no spare, since I dropped it to lighten my load and increase my fuel economy. I'm stuck in the middle of nowhere with no way to get going again.

But wait! Just when it seems that all hope is lost, a man pulls up beside me with tires for sale. He knows about my predicament and the prize waiting for me at the end of the race. If I act now, my lead will still be comfortable and I can cruise to the finish line in peace.

So I ask my savior, "How much for a spare tire?" He replies, "Only $750,000.00."

Obviously that tire did not cost that much to make, nor would it be worth that much at just about any other point in the race. Nonetheless, that tire is almost certainly worth that much at this point in time because I have no other options. I can either accept a prize of $250,000.00 or receive nothing. In fact, one might say that my enterprising benefactor is giving me a good deal, since I should probably be willing to accept almost up to the entire $1,000,000.00.

The situation is slightly more complicated when there are multiple tires (or relievers) on the market and multiple people bidding for them, but the principle is the same. How you intend to use a tool and the situation in which you might use it most certainly impacts how much that tool is worth, even if that tool is a pitcher.

Best. Shape. Ever.

And it's not even Thanksgiving yet!

[New York Yankees second baseman Robinson] Canó, Long said, has dedicated himself to physical fitness and is in “immaculate condition.”

Let the good times roll!