Spring is Here

Well not quite, but spring training is here. My local teams, the Giants and A's, both play their first spring training game today. Tim Lincecum is even pitching today. Very exciting!

Of course it's been an ugly time lately for Major League Baseball. Everyone is upset about Alex Rodriguez and his use of steroids in the past. I have mixed feelings on this. First, I don't care that A-Rod used steroids. I don't care who used them. I don't find any difference between a guy using steroids or using "legal" supplements or sophisticated weight training or getting a cadaver's ligament sewn to their knee when they tear their ACL. These are all examples of technology allowing athletes to be better athletes than has ever been possible before. They are bigger, stronger, faster, and they are able to play at a high level for a longer amount of time. Does this mean that as technology progresses, that the sports may change so much that it turns off fans? Yeah, maybe. Perhaps it has already started.

All of that being said, I hate dishonesty even when it is required. I don't blame A-Rod for lying about using steroids until evidence was surfaced that contradicted him. I just can't stand to hear the PR crap that he recites to Peter Gammons or at press conferences. How bad for A-Rod would it be if instead of saying "I was young and stupid" he said "I wanted to hit as many home runs as possible because the more I hit, the more money I made, so I took steroids." I know he's got to say that he's not using now and that he has to minimize the amount of time that he did use them, so I can live with these lies. But wouldn't we all be better off if people just said "I took it so that I could make more money, be more famous, see myself on SportsCenter more often."

Mitchell Report

I don't care about athletes using drugs. Most people would agree that I have a minority opinion on this. But who cares about my opinion? Most people think that athletes using drugs is a form of cheating. It is bad. Period. If I was one of those people, I would be very happy about the Mitchell Report.

A lot of people have pointed out that the evidence in the Mitchell Report would not hold up in court. They point to Roger Clemens in particular. It's as if the Mitchell Report was supposed to produce evidence to be presented to a grand jury or something. If that would have been the purpose, then it would not have been worth releasing.

I think the point was to justify stricter measures to prevent the use of drugs in baseball. Obviously you can only prevent future use, you cannot change the past. If that is the purpose, then I think it does a very good job. It shows that by only getting two people to cooperate, they were able to find evidence against dozens of players. There is no way the public could not come away feeling that drug use is widespread in baseball. It's not just the guys hitting 40+ home runs. It's the starting pitchers, the relief pitchers. It's the low-power, fast running infielders and outfielders, as well as the sluggers and wannabe sluggers. It's the utility bench players. It's the upcoming players and aging veterans. It's future hall-of-famers and guys struggling to get at-bats.

If the public thinks that everyone is using, then it will be hard for the player's union to stop the owners from instituting testing that is on-par with the NFL or maybe even the Olympics. Smart and/or cynical folks will say that players will still find ways to use drugs to get an advantage, but it does not matter. All that matters is that most fans feel like order has been restored. They feel like they are watching a "fair" and "clean" game. The Mitchell Report forces the players' union to accept this kind of testing, or baseball will lose fans, and players' salaries will fall. It's that simple.

Now if three years from now, Alex Rios leads the majors with 25 homers... Well that would be pretty interesting, wouldn't it? I don't think it will be the case. There will the usual fluctuations in hitting vs. pitching, but no amount of drug testing will have much affect on the general proclivity of home runs.

Today's Roid Roundup

I'm somewhat embarrassed to say this, but a mainstream journalist (Jayson Stark) actually wrote something that I half-way agree with. His point was that there is a double standard when it comes to steroid controversies. Barry Bonds get crucified, but Rick Ankiel and Rodney Harrison get a pass. He's right that there's a huge double standard, and there shouldn't be. Of course the "single standard" that he and I would prescribe are probably quite different.

I've said it before, but I'll say it again. I don't care that Rick Ankiel used HGH. I don't care if Barry Bonds used HGH. There that is a single standard, and a very easy one. It involves no qualifiers about their positions, the rules of the game, quantification or qualification of empirical evidence, etc. Just say "I don't care." It's easy really.

If I'm watching a baseball game, I hope to see the highest level of play possible. I don't care what it took to get to that level of play, that's somebody else's problem. Now the law might care, and if it does, so be it. Arrest Rick Ankiel if you want, just like you arrested Michael Vick. If we start talking law, I would argue against laws against drugs, but would argue for laws against dog fighting, but that's beside the point. I can't be too unhappy with somebody getting arrested for breaking a well-known law.

Jayson Stark is generally a complete idiot who is wrong too often to be funny. But he's right. It's really all a matter of if people like a particular athlete or not. If they do, then they don't care about steroids. If they don't, then they're just looking for any reason to defame, and steroids is an easy one ("You cheater! Think about the children!") Stark better watch out, or he'll wind up being really cynical about the public. And that's not good for ratings...

#756

One of the great things about eBay is the endless opportunities for profit. It's like when the iPhone debuted. The only company (besides Apple) hoping for Apple stores to sell out quickly was eBay. Of course we would love to have #756 auctioned on our site. For that matter, how about #757 hit just last night? And don't forget #755. You get the picture.

Anyways, I was pretty surprised to see the Hank Aaron video message to Bonds after Barry hit #756. Everyone wants to be so righteous and hold Barry in contempt. At the same time, they realize that people everywhere were following the chase, so they wanted a piece of that action. Bud Selig may hate Barry, but how much coin has Barry put in his and the other owners' pockets?

I like having Barry Bonds as the top player of my generation. I like that we have a guy who was already the best in the sport, but who went out, broke the rules, used technology and took the game to levels it had never seen before. He did it and never apologized for being better than everybody else before him.

When Mark McGwire broke the single season record, I remember thinking "man if he suddenly stays healthy into his 40's, he could break Aaron's record." I am so glad that didn't happen. McGwire was always ashamed of his use of juice. He just wanted to fit in with the greats and be liked by the masses. He needed the juice to do that, but he also needed for people to not know about the juice at the same time. He was too weak to break the record, and too weak the represent my generation.

Barry is perfect. He doesn't care about people liking him. He doesn't want to fit in with the greats of the game, he wants to tower over them. He's egotistical, self-centered, and completely focussed on success at all costs. He's the modern day Ty Cobb.

FIRE JOE MORGAN

One of my favorite blogs to read is FIRE JOE MORGAN. There's always some funny and insightful rants against baseball talking heads (such as ESPN's Joe Morgan.) I've found an interesting contradiction on there. The writers and reader of FJM are typically fans of sabermetric analysis of baseball. However, many of them are also "anti-steroids", i.e. they like to rail against players who are suspected of steroids use.

Now let me introduce you to two popular sabermetric statistics that FJMers are particularly fond of. The first is OPS+. This is on base percentage plus slugging percentage, adjusted for the park and the league. The second is EqA, equivalent average. This also adjusts for park and league. Both of these stats allow for historical perspective on statistics.

Why do I bring this up? Well, such league-adjusted stats allow sabermetricians to make objective analysis of players from different eras. Thus a player with a .900 OPS in 2006 is not as impressive as a player with a .900 OPS in 1976. Why? Because the league averages are higher in 2006 than they were in 1976.

So why are they higher? Well first off, it doesn't matter from statistical standpoint. You can adjust regardless of the variances. But from a practical standpoint, ballparks are smaller now, pitching is more diluted because of expansion, and players are bigger. Yep, that's right. Players are bigger, and part of that is because of steroids.

In other words, if steroids affect the entire league, then their effects can be statistically quantified and steroids users are "statistically punished." The crux of this argument is that steroids affect the entire league. So let's assume they don't, i.e. steroid is use rare.

Well most reasonable people think that players like Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, and Barry Bonds have all used steroids. We pretty much know that Jose Canseco, Jason Giambi, and Rafael Palmeiro used steroids. So if steroids use is rare, then it seems like is a sure fire way to generate huge offensive numbers. Think about, if only a handful of players were using steroids, then there is a high correlation between steroid use and offensive production. So it would seem like a simple equation "use steroids, hit 40+ home runs." So then wouldn't a lot of players use steroids? But wait, our assumption was that few used them. So that had to be wrong. A lot of players use steroids, including a lot of bad players.

So that means stats like EqA do a very good job of adjusting for steroid use. So steroid using players can easily be compared in a historical context using sabermetrics. The key is abandoning raw numbers like hit/home run/RBI totals, and using contextual numbers instead. You would think this would appeal to any sabermetric loving baseball fan.

Baseball HOF

I wasn't surprised to see Mark McGwire not get into the Hall of Fame today. ESPN had already published the results of a poll they did among HOF voters, and it was clear McGwire was not going to get in. That's a shame. I listened to Jime Rome say that he just wishes McGwire would talk about the past. He had on Sports Illustrated's Tom Verducci, an HOF voter, who said that McGwire had denied ever using steroids back in 1998 and he doesn't understand why he doesn't do that now.

So if McGwire would just say "I've never taken steroids" then he would be voted into the HOF? I guess we just want to believe that McGwire got that huge naturally. Give us our blissful ignorance and we'll put you in the HOF.

Look, we all know he took steroids. We all knew it back then. People need to grow up and realize that McGwire did exactly what we wanted him to do. He got huge so he could hit the ball 500+ ft. and break records. That's what everybody wanted. It gave us the most magical moment in baseball in recent history. It healed all the damage done by the 1994 strike. And it was powered by steroids. Now we need to all just get over that and give McGwire his due.