A Postscript For A-Rod

The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract Excerpt

Since A-Rod's retirement, I fished out my copy of 'The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract', which has the following write-up on Alex Rodriguez:

17 - Alex Rodriguez
(1994-2000, 70G, 189 595 .309)
 The best seasons ever by a 20-year old player. 

1. Ty Cobb, 1907
2. Silver King, 1888
3. Alex Rodriguez, 1996
4. Dwight Gooden, 1985
5 Mickey Mantle, 1952
6. Bob Feller, 1939
7. Ted Williams, 1939
8. Mel Ott, 1929
9. Al Kaline, 1955
10. Noodles Hahn, 1899

Of the other nine players on the list, six went on to have Hall of Fame careers. The three who failed to do so were all pitchers - Silver King, Doc Gooden and Noodles Hahn

Then right below it, he has a section that goes:

XXX - Nomar Garciaparra and Derek Jeter
It is too early to rate Nomar garciaparra and Derek Jeter; the same is true of A-Rod, of course. I have nothing to add to the constant hype that accompanies all three men, except that I will observe that it seems likely that all three men will rate amongst the Top 20 at the position and that I would regard any stronger statement as speculation. We do not know whether any of these men will eventually have better seasons than they have already had. 

Pretty careful avoidance-of-prognostication there. For the record, the final tally for these guys were:

• Alex Rodriguez: 114.9 oWAR, 9.5dWAR from BRef, and 112.9 WAR from Fangraphs.
• Nomar Garciaparra: 42.6 and 6.0dWAR from BRef and 41.4WAR from Fangrpahs.
• Derek Jeter: 95.5oWAR, -9.5dWAR from BRef and 71.7WAR from Fangraphs.

Baseball Reference seems to think all three were better than what Fangraphs has them pegged as having been.

By our contemporary reckoning and ignoring the PED issue, A-Rod clocks in at about the 14th best player of all time, while Derek Jeter sits at about no.50. If you think about the value to the franchise, A-Rod delivered about 60-odd WAR to the Yankees. That's pretty remarkable lump of performance. Eyeballing the Shortstops in the HOF, and again ignoring the PED issue, A-Rod and Jeter would be a shoe-in for the Hall of Fame, but Nomar falls short (50WAR is about the cut off for HOF consideration for Shortstops).

Ravaged by injuries, Nomar really didn't get to rack up the counting stats. A-Rod moved off Shortstop in favour of Derek Jeter, which is going to be one of those stories they'll be talking about a hundred years from now. So A-Rod's value at Shortstop ceases at 2003; even so A-Rod did rack up 52WAR as a Shortstop to that point in time, so if he dropped dead at the end of 2003 instead of playing for the Yankees, he still did better than Nomar's entire career and still would be worthy of being a Hall of Famer.

As it is, it is most certain that only Jeter will make the Hall of Fame out of these three men. Not something Bill James might have predicted given what was in front of us in 2000. Things played out much more strangely than one might have predicted back then. I was asked his week if I went soft on PED cheats because all these Yankees like A-Rod, Andy Pettitte, Roger Clemens and Jason Giambi got caught. It's most likely true that I did. Taking those drugs sure didn't make those teams win the World Series more. For all the personal records and even the numbers in the seasonal win columns, the Yankee dynasty after 2001 was more notable for how fruitless it was given how much money was being invested. A-Rod was the poster boy even for that.

Yet if it really gets down to the brass tacks, A-Rod was trying to win each year. I'm not going to fault him for something like that given that half of professional sports is about the entertainment value. The numbers might be tainted by PEDs, but at the end of the day there's only the championships and flags fly forever. We were mightily entertained by A-Rod, and that's the truth. I can't fault him for trying to entertain us more. Pretending that simple relationship doesn't exist in spectator sports is exactly what makes lesser sports boring.

And The Dynasty Finally Ended

Goodbye A-Rod, 

It's been a while since I wrote an entry about the New York Yankees, but hey, when some big time players announce their up upcoming retirements, it's time to have a look. The last time I wrote anything about the Yankees was when Derek Jeter retired at the end of 2014. While 2015 had its own little pleasant surprises, the nub of the problem was that the remaining players beyond what was once the 'Core Four' were getting older, and the other players were merely role players. The Dynasty has been receding from its historic peak for years.

I'll always be an A-Rod fan. At the end of the day I always appreciated his hitting. The whole PED issue has stepped back in importance for me when I look at his career. Sure, he took PEDs and possibly hit more than his fair share. Maybe he did it his entire career? May be he did it as a teen and that's how he became the A-Rod we know in the first place? One can think of the worst of him and come up with ever more theories about the relative merits of his career. I opt to put those things to the side for the simple reason that those homers and hits are real enough.

It is wilfully putting my head in the sand, I guess, for the world of sport screams out loud against "drug cheats".  The thing is, it's nothing like match-fixing. The athlete taking drugs to win, is going exactly in the direction everybody wants to them to go: to excel in performance like no other mortal human being. So, I've decided no, I'm not going to hold the steroids against the steroids era players. It's silly. MLB tacitly allowed this to happen under their watch and then belatedly hunted out players and made examples of them. It's not right, it's not a two-way street, it was a witch hunt concocted by Bud Selig so that he wouldn't have to look bad for having presided over the steroids era.

The truth is, it shouldn't be about the PEDs, the steroids, the allegations, the suspensions. It should be about the guy who was possibly the most talented player of all time. Win or lose, hit or miss, A-Rod provided a mountain load of entertainment for 23years. Twenty-three years! He was the heel, he was feared, he was outrageous, he was hilarious, he was the guy that always compared worse to Derek Jeter in the eyes of the New York Media, but had better numbers. He was all those things, rolled into one, and a once-in-a lifetime player like you will never see again. When I put it under the rationality light, I for one don't really fault the amazing trade that Brian Cashman swung to land A-Rod in 2003. The Yankees got well over a decade of something special from the guy.

We'd be chumps to pretend that didn't happen, or that it didn't mean anything. It meant the world.

Goodbye Tex

As for Mark Teixeira, he too reached the end of the road this year. The injuries caught up to him. He was making noises during Spring training that he'd like to go another 5 years after this season but obviously he said those things before the injuries got out of hand.

Out of eight seasons, Tex had 3 excellent seasons, 2 good seasons, 2 injury-curtailed seasons, and this one where he simply failed to provide any value at all for three months. All the same, it's a pretty good outcome for an 8year contract. As with A-Rod, there's no point complaining about the end being what it is. The Yankees signed him to a long contract just to land him in 2009, and they won the World Series on the back of that signing.

Tex isn't going to make the Hall of Fame, but he is in the imaginary Hall of the Very Good. The amazing thing about Teixeira for me is that I can remember the year he was drafted by the Rangers. The Cubs drafted Mark Prior, and they both made their debut in 2003. It doesn't seem all that long ago. Especially because A-Rod was already in his prime and in his last year as a Texas Ranger that year Teixeira came up into the big leagues. Arguably, the Rangers had the infield of the future in Teixeira, A-Rod, Hank Blalock, Michael Young, and Ivan Rodriguez behind the plate. It's a weird kind of twist of fate that brought half that infield to the Yankees by 2009, only 6 years later.

Amazingly, Tex's tenure at 1B for the Yankees follows in the footsteps of long tenures before him. There have only been five 1B since Mattingly won his spot as a regular in 1984. He went 12 seasons to '95; Tino Martinez went 6 seasons from '96 to '01; Jason Giambi wen from '02 to '08, and that brings us to Teixeira. For the first time since 1983, the Yankees will go into a season without knowing  who will be playing 1B.

The New Kids On The On-Deck Circle

It wasn't just A-Rod and Tex announcing retirements. Brain Cashman also traded away Aroldis Chapman, Andrew Miller, and Carlos Beltran to load up the farm system. The real story in a sense has been how decisively the Yankees have gone about re-casting their future and the talent they acquired to shape that future.

The Yankees have, for once, collected a lot of talent in their farm system. They have depth at just about every position. In fact they have the most depth at SS which is the hardest to fill. They go 6 deep at SS, starting with Gregorius at the Big League level, Tyler Wade in AA, Gleyber Torres and Jorge Mateo at High A, Hoy Jun Park and Kyle Holder in Low-A. That's a lot of depth. Even first base will have a competition next year with Greg Bird coming back from injury and Tyler Austin graduating the farm this year. They also have a packed outfield with recent additions Clint Frazier and Bill McKinney as well as Aaron Judge.

Not all of these guys will make it, but the Yankees potentially have one of the younger rosters in the AL  next season. It really is a re-boot of the team, right from the ground up. I don't think I've seen anything like this in the Yankees since 1995. Chances are, the young core to emerge out of all these young players won't win a World Series until 2020, but depending on the way things break, this group might peak earlier than expected, just as the aged veterans were forced out sooner than they had hoped.

I can recall back in 2009 when the Yankees wont World Series that the window had closed on that team. The 2009 win was the last win possible with the Core Four. A quick survey of the farm system at the time revealed that the Yankees would project to being a pitching and defence sort of team by 2016-2017. Judging from the makeup of the current team, it's something that has come to fruition, if a little less effectively than hoped. Yet the new kids projecting forward seem to provide an ample horizon where the Yankees will once again be The Bronx Bombers.
That's one sure thing about Baseball - hope always does spring eternal.

News That's Fit To Punt - 29/Jul/2013

Won't Take It From You

This business of the asylum seekers that arrive by boat being sent to PNG as a deterrent has quite a few critics. Judging from the Q&A panel that I watched the other night it seems nobody gets the point of the policy which is deter people from handing over their hard earned cash and life savings to people smugglers who will put them on leaky boats to Christmas Island. Now, there are all kinds of critics out to brand this policy xenophobic to not tough enough, but you would be surprised at the people who want to piss into this pot.

A more irritating critique came out of Fiji today.

Mr Kubuabola said Fiji was ''decidedly less-than happy'' with the PNG deal, saying Australian politics was affecting Fijian affairs and demanded that Australia consult with the region.

''It is our business. Before this goes any further, we want thorough regional consultation ... We demand to have our voices heard.''

Mr Kubuabola said that Australia had used its ''economic muscle'' to persuade PNG to accept the deal that would see asylum seekers who arrive by boat sent to the country for processing and successful applicants resettled there. The Rudd government has also flagged that the model could be applied to other countries in the region.

''This was done to solve a domestic political problem and for short-term political gain without proper consideration of the long-term consequences,'' Mr Kubuabola said.

''This deal and those mooted with Solomon Islands and Vanuatu clearly threatens our interests by altering the fundamental social fabric of any ... country that accepts a deal with Australia.''

Now, this s a bit rich coming from Fiji. Fiji has been having coup d'etats every decade since the 1980s because every time they hold elections, the naturalised Indian population's vote outnumbers the indigenous Melanesian/Fijian vote. The point being, the Military-led Fijian governments are quite the xenophobic racists themselves because the sole point of these coups has been to oust democratically elected governments.

Let's also not forget that Fiji, like most nations on this planet is decidedly not a signatory to the UN convention on refugees, meaning they are currently not likely to take anybody seeking asylum.

So now, they're turning around and saying to Australia, they don't want Australia to send Asylum seekers to PNG because it is going to disturb a kind pan-Melanesian polity by introducing non-Melanesians. There is no other conclusion to draw but that the Fijian government is xenophobic and not really understanding the issue at all. They'd have a bit more credibility in their complaint if they actually were signatories and took asylum seekers.

I'm okay with just about anybody in the region criticising the 'PNG solution', but it's really hard to take Fiji's complaints seriously.

Will They Really Ban A-Rod For Life?

I haven't written much about baseball and the Yankees and what have you for a while, but the ugly business of steroids keeps on coming back to haunt us all. now it is this Biogenesis thing which has squarely framed up A-Rod for a big suspension and possibly even a lifetime ban.

Bud Selig was at the Hall of Fame ceremonies in Cooperstown this week and was said still to be mulling what punishment to deliver Rodriguez. It is conceivable he could ask for permanent banishment, akin to Pete Rose. But the belief is no matter the level of evidence — and it has been portrayed that MLB has substantially more evidence on Rodriguez than it does on Braun — it would be hard to convince an arbitrator, if Rodriguez appeals, that Rodriguez’s first suspension should be for life.

Keep in mind, though, that Selig could ask for life knowing the arbitrator could lower the punishment to a shorter duration — or even find that Rodriguez should not be punished at all.

But as a way to levy a sanction that will not be reduced, there was growing belief around baseball that Selig would request the rest of this season and all of next year.

That could be viewed as just about the death penalty for Rodriguez, at least for his playing career. He turned 38 yesterday. He has yet to play this year. The idea that he would not play this season or next season and come back able to play in 2015 after two hip surgeries seems farfetched.

It's a messy business. None of this is endearing baseball as a game to the IOC to let it back in, but that is a minor point. This A-Rod and PEDs business just keeps ripping the side out of the reputation of the game itself. All of these kinds of revelations and arguing suspensions in various sports across the last two decades have exhausted my tolerance and patience for the topic itself. At this point it wouldn't surprise me that anybody was on PEDs. I don't trust any of it on one side, and I've learned not to care that sometimes the champions are chemically enhanced. There's nothing you can do to unscramble the egg.

 

Yankees Update 21/06/09

Another Sucky Week

The Yankees went through another mediocre week, where they beat the Mets, lost a series to the Nationals and took a game from the Marlins. By rights, they should have swept the Nationals who trailed the worst record in baseball into Yankee stadium. Instead the Yankee bats were silenced by a pair of pitchers they hadn't seen before.

It's getting to be a really irritating pattern where the Yankee bats suddenly go quiet against some new kid up from the minors. The contrast is particularly stark after they thumped the Santana-led Mets 15-0 in the last game in that series. If they can get 9 runs off the great Johan Santana, why can't they pile drive these rookie hurlers into the ground?

Clearly they need some familiarity, but all too often the Yankees go very quiet in the face of a new face. It means they're actually not playing each pitch, each ball on their merits but are hedging heavily on past behaviour/record. I wish they wouldn't approach it this way, because it means they're vulnerable to these ambushes, as they were in the post-seasons of 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005.

And of course everybody coming into the Bronx to play the Yankees are jumping out of their skins to do their best, so the Yankees really ought tobe careful about playing some of these crappy teams, looking to ambush them. I don't know what the solution is, but those losses, together with being swept by Boston are going to kill their post-season chances.

Brian Bruney

Reliever Brian Bruney called out K-Rod during the week which turned into a media circus. For a guys aspiring for mo-like greatness, K-Rod behaves more like a show pony.

I kind of like the blunt appraisal Bruney made as he pitched an inning of rehab in Trenton. Bruney's proving to be one of the wiser pick ups by the scouting department. It reminds us of the small miracle that was Aaron Small's magic year. Like Small, Bruney was picked up from the discard pile, and has quietly been refashioned into a very useful part of the bullpen.

Still, the media fracas was a little silly.

Jose Veras Released

Somebody from the pitching staff had to go, with the return of the above-mentioned Mr.Bruney. That somebody turned out to be Jose Veras. Right now, the bullpen workingback from the end is Mo, Bruney, Coke, Aceves, Robertson, Hughes and Tomko. Tomko probably got kep for the mop up innings he can pitch.

More interestingly, there's the competition for the fifth spot of the roster between Wang and Hughes. Damaso Marte is on the come back trail with his Left shoulder tendinitis, but he may be out for a while yet. Thus, barring injury and losing somebody (touch on wood) the bullpen might be as solid as it can get this season.

A-Rod's Slump

I don't know why but all players go through a slump I do know that BABIP fluctuates and sometims hard-hit balls just keep going straight to fielders, but A-Rod's slump this time is a little frustrating.

The New Stadium

The new stadium is proving to be a homerun park. It's not exactly clear by how much, but the stadium is on pace to far out-homer the previous park. A lot has been made of this pace, particularly with respect to how it is affecting the pitching staff. Pettitte's ERA away is about 3 runs better than at home.

The problem with an organisation with a hitter's park is that it tends to cloud judgment about a team's own hitters. While on a day to day basis it affects the pitchers, in the longer run it tends to affect the Front Offices more. While the Yankees are stat-savvy, an extrme hitters' park is going to add a layer of difficulty in future analysis and appraisal of performances.

Yankees Update 09/05/09

Well That Sucked

5 straight losses. 2 to the Bosox, 3 to the Rays. Phil Hughes lost. Joba lost. AJ Burnett lost. Andy lost. It was a really forgettable week. Joba struck out 12 in 5.1 innings, but that was about the highlight of the string of losses. They then won one behind CC but are in the process of losing today as I write.

Today's probable loss will put them at 14-16, 2 games below .500. What's becoming evident about this team as with the team last year is that they just don't like they're capable of going on a hot streak where they win 6 or 7 in a row, and do it a couple times before July which is what they need to get back above .500 and stay there. In a nutshell, they need 2 weeks of all-wins to make up for a week of all-losses and get back on a 95-win pace, which is what they'll need just to sniff the post-season.

Guess Who's Back?

In amongst all the losses, You-know-who came back and sent the first pitch over the wall. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Alex Rodriguez!  As he was meant to be. He said he didn't take steroids as a teen. Beyond which he said he wasn't going to address Selena Roberts' book. At this point in time, it's probably a good call. The return of A-Rod's bat is probably the best news this week.

Injury Plagues More

Both Jorge Posada and Jose Molina have ended up on the DL. So, just as the Yankees make up the fall from A-Rod to a coterie of Ransom, Berroa and Pena, they get to los it in the drop from Posada-Molina to Cash-Cervelli. If the former was a 7 win drop, this is still like a 5 win drop. It sucks, believe you me.

Nady, Wang and Bruney are still out. It's like a MASH unit again with Posada and Molina out.

Meanwhile Ian Kennedy at AAA got diagnosed with an aneurism in the arm and went under the knife. It's notable on this list because the pitching has been atrocious and anything that depletes the depth is bad. It means that if Wang is out and Phil Hughes keeps stringing bad starts, they might have to look past Kennedy to look at Kei Igawa. Most fans don't want another Igawa start in pinstripes ever again.

Phil Franchise

Not only did Phil Hughes lose against the Sawx, he took a shellacking today. I don't know about you, but it seems the guy dominates AAA only to get hit hard at the major level. He does throw in a couple of good starts, so clearly he can pitch at the major level. Maybe he's tipping his pitches? Maybe he's being tentative? Maybe the jump from AAA to AL East is much bigger than we think? Whatever the case I hope he puts it together by the next start, if not now.

Derek Jeter And His declining BABIP

Derek Jeter is hitting .260 or so with a .770 OPS. His BABIP is sitting at .290 as of this writing. That's about 80 points short of his career level, but when you go look at the fangraphs of BABIP over the years, you see a steady decline in the last 4 seasons. It's either the case that the short stop position is catching up to his legs, or that there's something different in his swing - he's hit 4 HRs to date with an ISO of .150 which is uncharacteristic at this point.

Or it could just bee that he's been a little unlucky again and this will all correct itself as the season progresses. I don't know, but I just thought I'd mention it here.

Enhancing A-Rod

The Olympic Ideal of Performance

I was walking on a flat paved road a couple of days ago, pondering how a flat track pavement would have been a bit of a marvel to a caveman. Maybe it was a marvel even to a human being in the ancient world. You see, I walk across an uneven lawn park to get to the stretch of pavement that leads me to the place where I get lunch. So the difference is noticeable when it goes from the uneven grass in the park to the pavement.

I thought to myself that one could imagine that the ancient olympics might have started this way; that some guys boasting about how fast they ran or how far they could throw stuff, so they decided to create a neutral ground to eliminate the discrepancies of uneven grounds and came up with a flat track. And on this extremely artificial phenomenon of a flat track, they would standardise the conditions for the contestants and let them run.

Nobody really knows how the Ancient Olympics started in the ancient world, but you'd have to figure it had to be about settling who gets the bragging rights as fastest man over 100 cubits or whatever. The point is that the notion of fairness goes hand in hand with the notion of standardised conditions.

All the same, we compare records across time. When somebody breaks a record, it is often in slightly different conditions to when the previous record was set. For instance, in the modern Olympics have been getting tracks that are 'faster' then the older tracks. Swimming pools have bee built so as to remove adverse waves, which in turn produce faster results. Modern shoes have been engineered to better specifications than say those of Emil Zatopek. Do we dare even go into the engineering and technologies that go into regattas and bicycle riding?

In all of these cases, what nobody is saying out loud is that technology is helping the athlete more than for which the media or punters give credit. Nobody really questions the records that get broken by historically newer athletes, with better equipment, even though it seems mightily unfair to compare these numbers. After all, we'll never know what Dawn Fraser would have been able to do in the Sydney Olympic Park Aquatic Centre's pool at her peak. Clearly technology is playing a part in all these accomplishments.

Which of course then brings us to PEDs, notably those used by the East Germans in the 1970s. Some of the records set then have taken a long time to break precisely because it has taken that long for the other technologies to compensate for the absence of the biochemical technology used by the East Germans way back when. Yes, it was grossly unfair that the East Germans were using them and the other athletes were not. Yet it seems to me today that the basis for this 'fairness' which creates the moral outrage is actually not quite as cut and dry as WADA and the IOC and the other anti-doping agencies make out.

For instance, Shane Warne underwent a year of being banned from the Cricket because he took a banned diuretic (to look better). It was doubtful he took it to enhance his performance, but he was banned on principle. We won't go into the fact that this is in stark contrast to Murali who regularly gets pinged for his dodgy action, or the unlikelihood of the diuretic assisting Warnie in getting wickets. The logical corollary of banning Shane Warne is that anybody who is a leggie bowling for the weekend club is going to have their performance enhanced. Not many people buy this corollary to be likely.

The point is that the benefit of the biochemical technology may not be as significant as people give it credit, while other technologies in sport are influencing the outcome to a degree that it might not just be the flat-track that people still believe it to be. As far as I know, nobody has been able to quantify just how much drugs are in sport, and yet any time a name gets linked to it, we turn it into a witch hunt, demonising the person.

Let's face it, games like cricket and baseball have actually been less influenced by technological agencies as say, even tennis or squash with their new-fangled racquets, or for that matter swimming.  I mean, yes, PEDs in swimming might be a bigger problem than in cricket, but nobody talks about those pools and the borderline-buoyant swimming costumes.

Which brings me I guess to A-Rod. When I look at A-Rod's accomplishments, I can't imagine I could do what he has done even with PEDs. It's not just guess work, it's probably a statistical likelihood that had I taken gobs of PEDs since my teenage years, I still wouldn't have ended up playing baseball professionally, let alone reached the pinnacle of performance as he has. Seriously folks, I wanted to be the slugging 3B for the Yankees and be their franchise player but it sure wasn't to be! :)

That would be because I have insufficient talent, as in I suck; And I didn't try at all once I realised I sucked. Steroids and their ilk alone would not have carried me there.

Given that it does takes more than just getting injections of weird steroidal chemicals to get to where he has got, I think it's time to actually give some credit back to the effects of true talent and hard work. Barry Bonds and Alex Rodriguez and Roger Clemens and Mark Magwire  are/were all amazingly talented dudes who made sacrifices to do what they did. We're over-rating the effects of Performance Enhancing Drugs every time we subscribe to the witch hunt.

Yankees Update 02/05/09

Doing It Tough But Phil Was Huge


The Yankees ended up being swept in Boston at the start of the week. Considering they had the Sox on the ropes in 2 of the games, it was hard to take those losses and to get swept.

They then rolled into Detroit where CC Sabathia pitched 8 innings and still lost 4-2. Then, something good started to show. Phil Hughes pitched 6 strong innings for a win, followed by Job Chamberlain who also pitched into the 6th and got his first win. The Yankees then returned home to face the Angels and won 2 interesting, edgy games with walk off hits by Melky Cabrera and Jorge Posada. That left the Yankees 2 games behind division leaders Toronto, unti of course they lost today's game 8-4.

The Bullpen Is Flammable

The 2 games coughed up in Boston were in no small part due to the bullpen. In fact, the leads coughed up in the Angels game also were due to some bad outings from the pen.The ERA of these guys are looking really ugly as we speak:

• Edwar Ramirez 5.40


• Jose Veras 7.94


• Damaso Marte 15.19


• Jonathan Albaladejo 7.50


• Mark Melancon 2.70


• Phil Coke 3.72


• Mariano Rivera 2.79

So right now, 3 of the 7 guys in the pen are good, the rest are dreck. Things can't keep going this way, what with Joba pitching to about 5.2 innings and Phil Hughes filling in for Chine-Ming Wang. Surely there will be some changes shortly.

Ramiro Pena

The guys that the Yankees get to fill infor their injured superstars can be surprising. Erick Almonte in his stint filling in for Derek Jeter back in 2003 did all right. Cody Ransom filling in for A-Rod was less impressive, and then got injured. Right now, the man filling in at 3B for A-Rod and Ransom is Ramiro Pena who has hit 8-for 17 in the last 5 games. His line now sits at .333/.393/.367. Anybody can hit anything in 5 games, but it's nice to get that out of your second string utility player. 


Tex, It's May Now

So you can commence hitting.

A .189 Ave is pretty yuck, but he's walked 5 times in the last week. As a result his OBP is sitting at .358. He's still helping when he's not hitting, but in an injured-Jason-Giambi kind of way. That being said, actually hitting some would be nicer.

A-Rod Miasma

There have been more leaks from Selena Roberts' upcoming book about A-Rod, imaginatively titled 'A-Rod'.

The new assertions are that he took steroids since high school and that he tipped pitches to opposing players back in Texas - Doug Mientkiewicz who played with him in High School said it was unlikely, because he was with him 20hours a day and didn't see it. Other allegations include how A-Rod is totally obsessed with Derek Jeter and how he was playing up with strippers and hookers while his wife Cynthia was pregnant.

Even if you think 90% of these allegations are wrong in some way, it leaves the picture of a guy who isn't exactly the kind of guy you'd want to have as role model for your children. All the same, you probably shouldn't have superstar athletes as role models for your children - parents should be the role models for their own kids.

Yankees Update 19/03/09

Injured Vets On The Comeback Are Doing Fine

Jorge Posada was mostly missing from the Yankee lineup last year, and Hideki Matsui was hampered by a knee problem for the better part of 2/3rds of the season. They've both had surgery - as has Mariano Rivera - but so far they're doing well in spring training.

If Posada can healthily catch 120 or so games, then he's certainly going to contribute to the offense. I'm bullish on Posada, in as much as his problem ilast year was his shoulder and not his knees, ankles and hips. His lower body still seems to have juice, an that's important for a catcher.

Mastui is designated to DH duty and is unlikely to take the field this year until the Inter-league games begin, but his bat is going to help greatly. While it is often discussed as if he is now a spare part, his OBP and OPS still projects to be better than Xavier Nady, Johnny Damon, and Nick Swisher. Declarations that Matsui is passed his use-by-date for the Yankees  are just a little premature. If he doesn't have to field, he can surely offer more than enough value over replacement level than the OF who will.

Mo? He's Still Mo from all indications. Mariano Rivera is coming from surgery to remove some calcified tissue in his shoulder. Apparently he played the whole season with the pain last year. Goodness know how good he's going to be this season without the pain. :)

So yeah, I'm bullish on all three.

The Predicted Demise Of Derek Jeter, Shortstop


Derek Jeter is 35. He's at the point where most players who play shortstop  get moved off. Watching him in the USA-Puerto Rico game where he let 2 critical grounders go by sort of made me cringe. He never could get those, but now it's pretty obvious he can't get those.

"Past a diving Jeter!" - *Cringe!*

Still, his projection sits at about an .800 OPS, and that's pretty darn good for a shortstop. He probably will stumble to the end of his contract as a shortstop and with the addition of Sabathia and Burnett, the Yankees are going to have to worry a lot less about balls in play than at any time in the last 6 seasons, so it just might not matter this season. When you do the maths, even in the recent past, his deficiency in Zone Rating has been worth 2 singles up the middle in a fortnight of games.

The future beyond this season is a lot more cloudy. It may come to pass that the Yankees do sign a real shortstop, but at that point they're going to have to figure out where to play Derek Jeter, and live with the fact that new Shortstop is not likely to post an .800 OPS.

Aaron Boone Headed For Heart Surgery

Aaron Boone - that's Aaron Fucking Boone in Boston - is going under the knife to correct an aortic valve.

Boone, 36, has known about his heart condition since the early 1990s, when he played for the University of Southern California. A recent physical and follow-up exam revealed that he needs an operation soon, and Boone will schedule it in the coming days.

“I’ve monitored it all these years,” Boone said in an interview after the news conference. “I knew this day was out there. I just didn’t know it was now.”

For Boone, the news was another unexpected turn in an eventful career. In January 2004, three months after propelling the Yankees to the World Series with a homer in Game 7 of the American League Championship Series against the Boston Red Sox, Boone tore a knee ligament playing pickup basketball. He forfeited most of a $5.75 million salary and cleared a path for Alex Rodriguez to join the Yankees.

He's not even in my Top 100 Yankees of all time, I'd imagine. He was only around for 3months, displacing Robin Ventura. Now Robin Ventura, I liked - he just never had a big moment for the Yankees, but he was a 3B who could hit for an .780-.820. OPS, and therefore a better bat than Scott Brosius who had retired at the end of 2001. I know Ventura was struggling at the time but Boone hardly seemed like an improvement at the time. He had about the same ISO as a declining Ventura, but Boone gave up 40 points in OBP for not even a marginally better glove.

But all that is mere detail. His resume has that one blast, and together with Bucky Dent - That's Bucky Fucking Dent in Boston - I'll never forget Aaron Boone. That, and the fact that he got himself foolishly injured in a game of basketball which paved the way for A-Rod to land in the Bronx. My goodness, the Yankees have been  soap opera this decade, and Aaron Boone was more than a bit player in that production.

So, here's wishing the operation is a success and to many happy years for Aaron Boone.

That Brings Us Up To The Weirdness of A-Rod

I really don't know what to make of A-Rod when he goes and gets pieces done on him like this.

The night before his life changes forever, Alex Rodriguez calls from Miami with an urgent request. A-Rod is worried about something he said during our interview last night. I've been hearing mysterious warnings all afternoon: Alex needs to talk. Alex wants to clarify something. Can't say what. Alex will call you from his car.

"Listen," Rodriguez says. "I was thinking about one thing that I spoke about—it's something that's kind of trivial but will give me a hard time for no reason." He pauses. "The song."

Aha. Last night, he let slip his favorite Madonna song. The curious relationship between A-Rod and the pop icon makes for delicious gossip, of course. Is Rodriguez terrified that Madonna will resent the tongue-wagging? Or, better still, has he picked the wrong song as his favorite, and fears that an offended Madge might march her stilettos over his back? No: Rodriguez believes that revealing the song would lead to its being played every time he stepped to the plate during an away game. "The last thing I want to do is go to every stadium and have them play that song," he says. Fine—to be honest, it's not even a great Madonna song (if it had been something juicy like "Justify My Love," forget it).

Looking back, his preoccupation seems surreal. Just the day before, Selena Roberts, a reporter from Sports Illustrated, had confronted Rodriguez at a Miami gym, asking for his reaction to evidence that he'd tested positive for illegal steroids in 2003. And now here he was, sweating a Madonna song. It's like worrying about the in-flight movie as your plane is belly flopping on the Hudson River.

At least he seems to be recovering nicely from surgery.

Take Me Out To The Ball Game

A-Rod Circus Continues

This week saw the WBC begin, and with it, some Yankees scattered to national squads. Jeter went to captain Team America and even took on the Yankees in a warm up match. A-Rod went to the Dominican squad, watched Jose Reyes and decided he looked the like of Reyes and said he wished he was with the Yankees. It was a colossally stupid thing to say because the press went to town on it.

After that, A-Rod went to meet the MLB authorities about his steroid admission, following which nothing seemed to come of it, except that now he is going to get hip surgery and will be out 10 weeks. During the last 72 hours it's gone form a cyst to a torn labrum; from being able to play through the season with the injury, to must-operate-now.

One imagines that the MLB reps told A-Rod he has to take 10 weeks off, even if it wasn't in their power to suspend him for steroid use when there weren't any regulations against it. A-Rod in turn probably said, "fine, in that case I'll get my hip looked at because it didn't get any better this winter".

Who knows?

The guy seems to be a headline magnet no matter what he does, and he does choose to do and say some stupid things that by their nature make him newsworthy in ways almost tangential to playing baseball. One wonders what kind of movie Billy Crystal would make out of the Derek Jeter- & A-Rod thing, having seen his take on Mantle and Maris in '61*'.

The media is jumping the gun in trying to find a replacement, but there is no replacing A-Rod in the lineup. That's the point of his $275m over 10 year contract. A-Rod didn't grow on some tree, and even if he did, there's not another one waiting to be picked.

World Baseball Classic Begins

It's here again, the fast-tracked arbitrary international professionals' Baseball Comp. For what it's worth, this is the one Ichiro takes seriously - he's never taken any interest in the Olympics, but he's always been dreaming of this kind of competition. It's fast-tracked in the sense that it's only been 3 years since the last one (my, how time flies!) but from here on in, it is once every 4 years.

Japan won the last one and kicked off this tourney with a shutout over China. Korea beat Taiwan and everything is rolling now. Things are going as predicted even as we speak.Apparently it's all part of a bid to repatriate baseball at the IOC. I can't imagine two organisations more diametrically opposed in attitude than professional baseball the world over and the largely amateurism-worshipping Olympic movement.

I enjoyed baseball's moment at the Olympics, but it just seems wrong to have those guys compete alongside people who need sponsorship from Uncle Toby's to live while training. Even having professional Tennis in the fold with the likes of Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer alongside th Uncle Tobys Non-Stars is pretty daft. Worse still, even if say, Derek Jeter  or A-Rod were to turn up, it's not like the Olympic audience is going to appreciate them more. Furthermore, winning the gold medal for their country at the Olympics is not going to be more important than... even the WBC. So really, they should all collectively let that one go. Baseball ought not go back to the Olympics - and it's no great loss., now that there's the WBC

The only thing is that the IOC should reinstate Women's Softball. There's no reason why those Uncle-Toby gals should be punished for Barry Bonds' and A-Rod's and Roger Clemens' perceived faults.

Outrage In Pakistan


Not to do with Baseball now, but Cricket. The week's big news was how a bunch of terrosist unleashed a hale of bullets on the visiting Sri Lankan team's bus. Some guards and drivers were killed, some players were injured. The greater part of it hs been the shock of how they actually took to shooting professional athletes. Apparently there was a common understanding that athletes were off-limits.

I had no idea such a tacit agreement was in place. It was probably more wishful thinking.  That attack has torn asunder such day-dreams about world terrorism, and with it the notion that the Australians were somehow cowardly in not wanting to tour Pakistan. They had good reasons, as it turns out. Pakistan is likely to miss out on hosting a part of the 2011 World Cup. It's a total mess.

On another level, you wonder why it took them so long to attack professional sport. It's the pinnacle of our capitalist entertainment-led lifestyle ideology. There's us sitting in our couches watching the big-screen TV, eating our fatty foods and scoffing nutrition drinks, as professional athletes earning mega-bucks do some athletic thing on screen; meanwhile angry bearded jihadist terrorists with minimal education and nutrition live in muddy caves polishing their AK-47s wanting to kill us all and take it all back to the Dark Ages.

Say It Ain't So - Redux

Okay, I Admit It, I Stayed Up Late To Watch The Grilling

So I watched the statement on video, and I watched the other bits of the Q&A. A-Rod really does himself no favors. He's a terrible interviewee in that he looks evasive all the time. It makes it hard for anybody not to lend the basic charity of understanding to his statement. Instead it provokes more questions than answers, and frankly, do we want more dodgy answers to what is already a dodgy situation? I think I've had my fill.

For A-Rod's part, we have to concede a few things to him. He's given the most outspoken admission in Baseball apart from Jose Canseco. He's come cleaner than McGwire, Bonds, Sosa, Palmeiro, Clemens, and even Pettitte and Giambi. Asking for more detail is a little unfair given that he was outed through the inaction/incompetence/faith-breaking of the MLB and MLBPA combined, and the US government that subpoenaed those results.And it's only because some body leaked them that we're all here saying "say it ain't so A-Rod and where's your fucking mea culpa?"

That's right: Let's not forget that the public was not to be privy to this information from 2003, and now that it is, we're collectively making A-Rod pay for all those 104 names. It's way too rich for the press to claim some kind of high ground as it accuses A-Rod of being evasive. And those 103 other guys sure are getting off lightly. They need to send A-Rod a very big Christmas hamper for taking ALL the heat.

As for the Yankees, they seem to be getting very tired of these PED-admissions-biennale. Giambi's "sorry, but I can't admit to what I did" thing was one thing; Pettitte saying, "yes I did, but only once' was another; now with A-Rod saying "I was young, naive and stupid, I wish I'd gone to college where they teach you this stuff" routine must have had the Yankee brass' collective stomachs churning. I like how Cashman said he liked it when A-Rod emphasised the 'stupid' part more than the 'young' part. Indeed, good sir.

Many people give Brian Cashman a hard time for being the GM of the team with the highest pay-roll, as if he's got some wasy, cushy job; but it's in these moments that I think he's gold. He sure doesn't sugar-coat things. If having to organise these horrible moments for the press with a marquee, mics, PA, etc. every couple of years, front up and keep a straight face when you want to chew the players' heads off for their stupidity... I think it would be tough. Really. You have to take your hat off to the man.

Phil Pepe sasy it's a different kind of Bronx Zoo now, but it's  a Zoo all the same. I tend to agree with that easy summation too. I think about those guys now and it seems a world away. I mean, imagine if it turned out Reggie Jackson was on steroids when he hit those 3 homers in that World Series game in 1977? This is a little bit like that hypothetical. Pardon the jokey pun, but this is the Bronx Zoo on steroids. :)

If one had 10 lifetimes, in one of them I think we'd all like to have been an elite athlete. I would've loved to have been the slugging 3B for the Yankees. I wanted to be like Graig Nettles, y'know? Crack some homers, crack some funnies at the journos. He was the man!

When the current guy filling the job description turns out to be a media-circus scandal-sheet-headline and bad-PR rolled into one entity, you wonder how such an endowed human being who is living  dream, turn his dream into such a nightmare? I mean, how do you fuck up something so good, so right royally A-Rod?

*Ugh*. But today is another day. The players are filling into spring training. There are sounds of balls being hit. The guys who got signed look good, the injured guys from last year look fresh, the guys looking to make the team look keen and pretty soon it will be the regular season!

What do the Yankees have going? They have a lineup that has A-Rod and Tex in the heart. It might be the best combo since Mantle-Maris. You'd think this thing has got to score a lot of runs. I hope they kill the league pitching. I really do - as I do every year.

A-Rod Apologia Part 25,701,932,947,462,514,234

Groan

A-Rod has his big press conference today. It's pretty grim. He says evil cousin Kevin gave him the drugs and he took it unquestioningly. We're all having our credulity stretched to breaking point, but that was the gist of it. It's so stupid that it creates more questions than it solves. Considering he had a bunch of people advising him how to handle this press conference, it looks like it was a bit of a stinker.

This is A-Rod's Statement.

Here's the NYT's take from Tyler Kepner.

Rodriguez began the news conference by reading a prepared statement and took questions for about 30 minutes. He paused for 38 seconds near the start when he tried to address his teammates, from stars like Derek Jeter to rookies like Phil Coke. “Thank you,” Rodriguez finally said.

“I saw tears in his eyes,” said Manager Joe Girardi, who sat at a table with General Manager Brian Cashman and Rodriguez. “I thought he was disappointed that it’s come to this. For him to look over and see his teammates, he was moved. I think he really felt like they were part of his family.”

The Yankees are tied to Rodriguez through 2017, after signing him to a 10-year, $275 million contract in December 2007, when Hank Steinbrenner was more visible atop the organization. (Steinbrenner attended the news conference but his brother, Hal, did not.) Rodriguez has stressed that he has been clean since joining the Yankees in 2004, and said he had never taken human growth hormone.

He did admit to using an over-the-counter supplement called Ripped Fuel when he played for the Seattle Mariners, his team from 1994 through 2000. Ripped Fuel contained the substance ephedra, which increases energy and burns fat.

In 2003, Steve Bechler, a pitcher for the Baltimore Orioles, died after he had been using ephedra. The federal government banned the over-the-counter sale of ephedra in 2004. Major League Baseball added it to its list of banned drugs in 2005 and began testing for it a year later, along with other stimulants.

It is not clear what substance Rodriguez was referring to when he said that he had used the drug “known on the streets as boli or bollee.” Rodriguez said his cousin bought the drug legally in the Dominican Republic.

What can you say? Cousin Kevin who straps Tommy to a chair injected him with steroids? Here's a blog entry from Peter Abraham about how Brian Cashman was handling this situation.

Then we have Brian Cashman, who clearly would like to find a Wayback Machine, go back to 2007 and get rid of his third baseman.
Here is what Cashman said when asked about A-Rod saying he was young and stupid:
“Those are the facts he gave you, it doesn’t mean it’s acceptable. I like the fact more that he was stupid rather than young or naïve. It was a bad decision that may cost him on so many levels.”
Then there was this:
“We’ve invested in him as an asset. And because of that, this is an asset that is going through a crisis. So we’ll do everything we can to protect that asset and support that asset and try to salvage that asset.”
An asset? Brrrrrr.

Yeah that would be right. I imagine Brian Cashman feels a deep betrayal, and it's goin to take one heck of a MVP season from A-Rod to get himself out of Cashman's doghouse.
I also want to link to this piece which kind of gives you insight on how gormless Bud Selig has been about this issue.

In a lengthy telephone interview Monday, the commissioner of baseball strongly disputed the widely held perception that he was in any way complicit in the proliferation of steroids in major-league baseball during the past 15 years.

"I don't want to hear the commissioner turned a blind eye to this or he didn't care about it,'' Selig said. "That annoys the you-know-what out of me. You bet I'm sensitive to the criticism. The reason I'm so frustrated is, if you look at our whole body of work, I think we've come farther than anyone ever dreamed possible.''

Selig pointed to the reduction in the number of positive steroid tests among major- and minor-league players during the past three years, as well as the institution of amphetamine testing as evidence that baseball's 2005 drug policy is working.

He also defended his efforts to stop the use of performance-enhancing drugs as far back as 1999, the year after Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, two now-suspected steroid cheats, staged a seasonlong home run derby that helped pull baseball out of the tailspin it went into after the work stoppage of 1994.

"I'm not sure I would have done anything differently,'' Selig said. "A lot of people say we should have done this or that, and I understand that. They ask me, 'How could you not know?' and I guess in the retrospect of history, that's not an unfair question. But we learned and we've done something about it. When I look back at where we were in '98 and where we are today, I'm proud of the progress we've made.''

Selig said he pushed for a more stringent drug policy during the labor negotiations of 2002 but ultimately settled for a watered-down version out of fear that the players association would force another work stoppage.

"Starting in 1995, I tried to institute a steroid policy,'' Selig said. "Needless to say, it was met with strong resistance. We were fought by the union every step of the way."

It's a bit like a guy arriving late by train claiming the train broke down, but he jogged in the direction of the destination while the cariage was being fixed. This is the same Baseball Commissioner's office that had Kennesaw Mountain Landis unilaterally ban the Black Sox back in the day.

Why didn't Bud get tougher? Why did he wait all those years before he gently nudged the subject towards the Union? It wasn't as if the warning signs weren't there. It should have been one of the non-negotiables. When the premier slugger on the premier team gets busted for steroids, it's a little late, don't you think? The Yankees are having to wear a lot of the Steroid smear thanks to the players it signed on the basis of their steroid fueled performances. If I were Hank and Hal, I'd be a little pissed off about how Bud's timidity in tackling the issue ended up as the Yankees' PR nightmare.

As a guy who roots for the laundry, this is just all too alienating. It also brought this question to mind: If a model inflates her boobs and ends up on the Sports Illustrated calendar, does anybody cry foul for her performance getting enhanced?

It's professional sports. It's not amateur sports or the Olympics. The records are all tainted, so those don't matter. Maybe we're all barking up the wrong tree? Maybe what needs to happen is a way in which PEDs are administered rationally and reasonably to help Pro athletes perform with PEDs without coming to harm?

Jose Canseco is now vindicated. He wants an apology.

Jose Canseco believes he was the only player telling the whole truth about steroids. Who used and when. For how long.
He was called a liar and a huckster for admitting in two books he juiced for nearly the entire length of a 462 home run career and describing how he injected teammates with illegal anabolic steroids and human growth hormone.
Now that players he named in his tell-all memoirs, like Alex Rodriguez and Rafael Palmeiro, have admitted using performance-enhancing drugs or flunked drug tests, Canseco wants an apology from baseball for treating him as an outcast.
"It's time for somebody in baseball to say to Jose Canseco, 'We're sorry you got treated the way you did,"' said Canseco's attorney, Dennis Holahan.
The former Bash Brother wants more than forgiveness from baseball. He wants to educate the sport, too. Canseco offered to help baseball move on from the steroid era and end the use of banned substances with education about the dangers of drugs, starting at the high school level.
Holahan sent a letter last week to union head Donald Fehr and Gene Orza, the union's chief operating officer, offering the former slugger's assistance.
Holahan's letter explained how Canseco regretted writing his 2005 book, "Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant 'Roids, Smash Hits, and How Baseball Got Big," and wanted to restore his "good name."
"Nevertheless, after being vilified and labelled an informant and a liar, all allegations, in both of his books, have now been proven to be truthful, including the recent news about Alex Rodriguez," Holahan said in the letter obtained by The Associated Press.
Holahan held a conference call on Friday with two union lawyers, including Steve Fehr, and spoke again with Fehr on Tuesday to discuss the letter.
"We want some kind of joint response to the situation and some plan to move forward where Jose is included, instead of excluded," Holahan said Tuesday night.

Frankly, I don't blame him. If Bonds was allowed to hit his home runs on PEDs and everybody turned a blind eye, and Canseco had to limp away with 36 homers to go for 500, just because he was vocal and open about steroids, the man deserves an apology from somebody. It wasn't like he couldn't play any more at that point. They, as in the owners and front offices shunned him to put a lid on the steroid talk, hoping he would go away. Clearly, they betted wrong.

What a fucking mess.

I found this on BTF. The original's been edited back, but it's worth grabbing the full quote.

Group mentalities are easy. Too easy. We’re the Yankees, we all wear the same uniform, we all have one goal, we all will man up and support our guy. Blah, blah, blah, blah. It’s the same blather you hear from high school football coaches; from college basketball coaches; hell, from Klan leaders and gang leaders. We are one. We stand together. Be a man. Fight the power.

Bulls$%#.

Being a man (which, for the record, is one of the dumbest phrases ever; is “being a man” different than “being a woman?” Are we tougher, stronger, more courageous than women? Hardly) means having guts to go against the uniform and the expected behavior. Of course the Yankees are going to stand behind Rodriguez—because 95% of these boobs have never taken a stand in their lives. The foundation of their existences centers around repetition and precision; doing as told and being robotic in response and output. That, more than anything, is why I’d rather my daughter and son become bowling shoe cleaners than pro athletes. I want them to be blessed with conviction and decency, not mindless adherence.

So, New York Yankee players, line up behind a man who cheated; who lied; who shamed the game. Line up behind someone who has shown you and your profession no respect.

Line up behind him—because he would line up behind you.

Totally agreed. It shits me quite a bit that the Yankees are trotting out their star players to 'support' A-Rod. Support him for what exactly? To hold his hand through this tough time, having cheated and totally fucked up the public trust for the game, the franchise and any respect somebody might have had for the rest of them? This reflects badly on EVERYBODY - the players, the owners, the front offices, the coaches, the MLB, the MLBPA, the agents, the journalists who covered them and the fans. Yeah, us, the fans.

I want to close off with this photo of the guys from Peter Abraham's blog:



Interesting expressions on the dynasty four, huh? Mo, Andy, Derek and Jorge. Imagine what they're really thinking.

More On The 'A-Roid Scandal'

He Admits It Now



In the confusion that followed the allegations, A-Rod seemed to be avoiding a comment, but he came out swinging by admitting to years of use, to Peter Gammons.

"When I arrived in Texas in 2001, I felt an enormous amount of pressure, I felt like I had all the weight of the world on top of me and I needed to perform, and perform at a high level every day," Rodriguez told ESPN's Peter Gammons in an exclusive interview in Miami Beach, Fla. An extended interview will air on SportsCenter at 6 p.m. ET.

"Back then, [baseball] was a different culture," Rodriguez said. "It was very loose. I was young, I was stupid, I was naive. And I wanted to prove to everyone that I was worth being one of the greatest players of all time.

"I did take a banned substance. And for that, I am very sorry and deeply regretful."

So I guess that covers that. Dan Szymborski who does the wonderful ZiPS projection system amongst other things has this opinion piece at BTF.

In 2004, Major League Baseball, under the terms of an agreement with the MLBPA, started instituting penalties for players that tested positive for certain drugs that were believed to be drug-enhancing.
25 years before, Major League Baseball also came to terms with the MLBPA on a drug-testing deal, though cocaine was the more worrisome issue in the eyes of the public. Unfortunately, Bowie Kuhn subsequently announced that he was the final authority for anything not specifically outlined in the drug-testing arrangement, forcing the union to opt out of the agreement at their earliest allowed juncture. Future commissioners further muddied the waters, ending any hopes for a new drug-testing agreement, most notably Fay Vincent, who attempted to circumvent the contract agreed to with the MLBPA and then taking the further, reprehensible step of actually threatening Gene Michael, Buck Showalter, and Jack Lawn in order to prevent them from testifying to the arbitrator. There simply was no reason for players to trust the owners at this point.

But are the owners to blame for the various performance-enhancing drugs used in baseball and other sports over the last 50 years? Nope.

Any blame, if there is blame to be distributed, should be pointed directly at how we, the fans, view athletic excellence.

We expect our athletes to be supermen. Hurt your hamstring and have to miss games? You're a slacker and should get back into the game. Torn labrum? Stop being a sissy and bear it, Don Drysdale didn't need no MRI! Stress fracture in your foot? Rub some dirt on it.

For fans, the belief has always been that athletic excellence is something that an athlete should risk everything for. Playing in pain, running into walls, brutal crushing tackles, are the currency of fandom's love and abiding respect.

I think it's a very good piece, largely because it reaffirms my own thinking on this subject which has been growing for some years.Yeah, I know, there's nothing like something that reconfirms your prejudices, except it's not a prejudice. I've been forced to think about this for a long time. Thank you Bud Selig, Donald Fehr and all you muthas who dragged their bleeding heels in the MLB and MLBPA.

One of the more interesting observations I have seen around the traps is that the players have always been the players: members of a competitive, privileged  club, who are always looking for an edge. in other eras there were amphetamines and stimulants. It is just that the ethical standards have changed around them, and they are being exposed for being dinosaurs.

It's not exactly Ben Johnson either because the game didn't ban it, so the guys who did it, did so with a tacit non-disapproval, which amounted to a tacit approval. How weak is that? And as for Ben Johnson (an Tim Montgomery who broke Ben Johnson's number and turned out to be on PEDs too), nobody can take away from him the fact that he ran as fast as he did. Even Carl Lewis who was given the Gold in that race as Johnson was disqualified, turned out to have a PED taint in his career. Nobody can deny Big Mac and Bonds and A-Rod hit those jacks and they went over the fence.

And the people cheered. It was all 'good'. Remember?

I had a conversation with Walk-Off HBP and he said that the abject hypocrisy of the sports media was simply astounding. Because he carried Barry Bonds in a Keeper League for years and years, he read the entire posts to do with Bonds' career in the years he was lauded for hitting the homers, and then reviled for being a steroid user, often by the very same journalists who did the lauding.

In Walk-Off HBP's opinion, it was obvious Bonds and Big mac were ALWAYS abusing steroids, so it was laughable that it when they were being lauded and reprehensibly hypocritical when they were being condemned. Besides which what exactly do steroids do for you in Baseball?

Walk-Off HBP's theory is that being anabolic, they help recovery and therefore allow the athlete to perform at their peak more often than without. Everybody thinks it is about the strength, but that is hardly how it would impact the game, in Walk-Off HBP's opinion.

Steve Goldman has this piece in the Pinstriped Bible.

ESPN has posted a very deceptive bit of statistical analysis. It's a two-column table. It says that in the three seasons that Rodriguez cops to using, 2001 through 2003, he averaged .305, hit .52 home runs, and slugged .615. In the other 10 seasons of his career, he batted .309, hit 39 home runs, and slugged .574. Looks pretty damning -- the guy picked up 13 home runs a year on the juice! However, those statistics are not park or league adjusted. More important than any juice is the fact that Rodriguez went from a difficult home park to a very generous one. In his last year in Seattle, Rodriguez hit .272/.406/.502 at home with 13 home runs in 265 at-bats, but .356/.433/.702 with 28 home runs in 289 at-bats. In 2001, those numbers nearly reversed themselves. He hit .361/.439/.677 at home, .276/.359/.567 on the road. The splits for 2002 and 2003 are very similar.

If you do the necessary adjustments, Rodriguez's offensive production ranks this way (I'm using Equivalent Average as my stat of choice):

1.    2007
2.    2005
3.    2000
4.    1996
5.    2001
6.    2008
7.    2002
8.    2003
9.    2006
10.    1998
11.    2004
12.    1999
13.    1997

The point here is not to let Rodriguez off the hook for juicing, but to have some fairness in our response. If we accept that he has been clean since 2003 -- and I admit that believing any ballplayer about anything is a huge problem right now -- then it is impossible to say that his best work has been the product of any artificial sweeteners.

Yeah, that's a big maybe too, Steve.

The Dude at Audio Darnok mentioned to me he had to take steroids for a week because of a sinus problem. He said during the week he took the steroids, he felt like he was charged up and ready to go all the time. He didn't experience roid rage but he said he felt like he was bouncing with endless energy. He reported that just having it seemed to focus his mind and become superhuman in his ability to stay with tasks. He joked that the music mixes he did that week were definitely "performance enhanced".

I still don't know what to make of all of this. I don't really care about the record books. I don't care about Hall of Fame chances. I don't care about the straight and crooked numbers. Now, I just think the Yankees ought to win and that's that - and for that to happen, A-Rod just has to hit and hit and hit. Yay for the pinstriped laundry.

Oh, and doesn't Derek Jeter come out looking great again, just as every time A-Rod has a moral failure? If it ever came out he was on PEDs, I think I'll have a stroke. :)

A-Rod Was 'A-Roids'

Wouldn't You Know It? Jose Canseco Was Right

Jose Canseco was out to out everybody with his books. One of the big names he claimed was on steroids was A-Rod, and A-Rod in turn shrugged as if to say it was so preposterous it didn't warrant an answer. Now, there are leaks that A-Rod was one of the players who tested positive in 2003, the year MLB commenced anonymous testing.

In 2003, when he won the American League home run title and the AL Most Valuable Player award as a shortstop for the Texas Rangers, Alex Rodriguez tested positive for two anabolic steroids, four sources have independently told Sports Illustrated.

Rodriguez's name appears on a list of 104 players who tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs in Major League Baseball's '03 survey testing, SI's sources say. As part of a joint agreement with the MLB Players Association, the testing was conducted to determine if it was necessary to impose mandatory random drug testing across the major leagues in 2004.

When approached by an SI reporter on Thursday at a gym in Miami, Rodriguez declined to discuss his 2003 test results. "You'll have to talk to the union," said Rodriguez, the Yankees' third baseman since his trade to New York in February 2004. When asked if there was an explanation for his positive test, he said, "I'm not saying anything."

The MLBPA issued a statement on Saturday, saying "Information and documents relating to the results of the 2003 MLB testing program are both confidential and under seal by court orders. We are prohibited from confirming or denying any allegation about the test results of any particular player[s] by the collective bargaining agreement and by court orders. Anyone with knowledge of such documents who discloses their contents may be in violation of those court orders."

Well, that's great because it's out in the open now. Who knows who the other names are, but it's A-Rod that's been hung out to dry. The MLB's labor relations man Rob Manfred released this statement.

"We are disturbed by the allegations contained in the Sports Illustrated news story which was posted online this morning. Because the survey testing that took place in 2003 was intended to be non-disciplinary and anonymous, we can not make any comment on the accuracy of this report as it pertains to the player named.
"Based on the results of the 2003 tests, Major League Baseball was able to institute a mandatory random-testing program with penalties in 2004. Major League Baseball and the Players Association have improved the drug testing program on several occasions so that it is now the toughest program in professional sports. The program bans stimulants, such as amphetamines, as well as steroids.
"Any allegation of tipping that took place under prior iterations of the program is of grave concern to Major League Baseball, as such behavior would constitute a serious breach of our agreement.
"Under Commissioner [Bud] Selig's leadership, Major League Baseball remains fully committed to the elimination of the use of performance enhancing substances from baseball. As the Commissioner has said, we will continue to do everything within our power to eliminate the use of such drugs and to protect the integrity of the program."

Well, that's great too but there's no way to un-fuck this goat. A-Rod's been named and that's that. He's either got to come out swinging with full denial in the face of contrary evidence like Roger Clemens or he has to come clean like Andy Pettitte and Jason Giambi. It's just so wonderful that the Yankees keep on having to hold press conferences for guys who essentially cheated to get inflated numbers and went on to collect big money from their payroll. I imagine Brian Cashman is groaning in bed holding a pillow over his head. I wouldn't want to face the coming Monday either.

Even if he comes out and says "I did it, sorry", his projected legacy is going to be tied up with this stuff. Sitting on 553 HRs, he's likely going to leave a big HR total. Now he's going to be in the Barry Bonds/Mark McGwire territory of having big tainted numbers.

My personal take is that I've stopped being angry about the steroid abusers. I can't sustain my fury at the cheats when I know that it was widespread and that the Owners, the MLB and MLBPA turned a blind eye to it for many years. The tacit non-disapproval, and by its own corollary extension, a tacit approval, created the conditions whereby athletes flocked to bulk up or try and gain an edge. If A-Rod was no different, then at least we know, that's what it takes to get a  Shortstop to hit like Lou Gehrig.

Look at that chart closely. The blue squiggle is the average Isolated Power of MLB hitters through all that time starting from 1926. There are ups and downs that correspond to various periods of the game, but the eye-catching thing is how the league average ISO pops over .150 in 1993. That's the year McGwire posts an ISO of .393, at Age 29. Late bloomer, don't you think? His previous high point was .329.

It's obvious in hindsight but that's just what it is: hindsight. Even A-Rod's graph looks 'interesting' in retrospect. He's been posting a flat .300 ISO since 1999 with the exception of 04, 06, 08 as a Yankee. 2003 in particular marked the end of a 5 year run of around .300 ISO. It's incredibly fishy - in hindsight. Is this proof? No. But it should have sounded alarm bells the way, say Bernie Madoff's fund sounded the alarm for Harry Markopolos.

Still, even when McGwire was smashing records and when Bonds was smashing McGwire's records, it seemed abundantly obvious these guys were on something. All of them looked like monsters compared to the sluggers I knew from my childhood. Old images of players like Jim Rice and Reggie Jackson in their peak years look small by comparison to these guys hitting.

As an audience I guess I just learned to turn a blind eye to it. For that I think I'm equally to blame as the athletes, the ownership, the MLB and the journalists. Our collective acceptance of these numbers enabled the athletes to cheat. It's a bummer when you realise that. It's too late to innocently say, "Say it ain't so."

UPDATE:

There was this lovely article in the NYT.

Go ahead. Laugh. Dismiss tarot cards as a mere superstition. But I am a baseball fan. Superstition is my middle name. I have my lucky “Property of New York Yankees” T-shirt that is ripped and faded and belongs in the trash. I have my lucky black Yankees cap that my friend Judith bought for me, the one with the rhinestone-studded NY. I even have my lucky turkey burgers that my husband throws on the grill for dinner whenever I’m panicking during a game, which is always. Who am I to rule out anything?

“Let’s start by asking the cards who you are to the Yankees,” Patricia said as we sat together in her living room, the oversize, brightly colored cards spread out face down on a table.

I slid a card out of the deck and handed it to her.

“Ah, the Time Space card,” she said, nodding. “Apparently, you have a karmic connection with the Yankees. They’re not just a team to you. They’re your destiny.”

Wow. No wonder I spent hours obsessing over whether Joba should start or relieve.

“We signed three high-profile free agents,” I continued. “We paid a lot of money for them, too, so I’d like to find out how they’ll do this year.”

“How much money?” Patricia asked before taking a sip of water.

“Almost half a billion dollars.”

She did a spit-take.

“But they’re great,” I assured her.

“Which one would you like to ask about first?”

“C. C. Sabathia.”

“Then the question is: Who is C. C. to the Yankees this season? Pick a card, Jane.”

I selected one and gave it to her.

“The Fortune card!” she exclaimed, beaming. “He’s going to be very, very successful — definitely their ace in the hole.”

She clearly meant ace of the staff. Holy cow!

The Yankees are going to have an auspicious year in spite of everything.

Penny For My Thoughts On This Man

$70 To Be Exact

It's just my luck that in my worst financial crisis EVER par none, I should get approached to participate in a focus group for a price of $70 to discuss the man you see above: NSW Premier Morris Iemma.
Like, I'm going to turn that down.

Focus Groups are one of the worst inventions in marketing. They gather people in order to get qualitative feedback from a market but in most cases the feedback is coloured by a growing group-think that happens in the room. not that these companies tell their clients that fact. In my case I found out that the parallel session running was for 'Softly' a fabric softener. It's nice to know that NSW politics has about the same gravitas as laundry product, but that's what happens when you get marketing people to put together focus groups to discuss policy.

Most of the questions were context-less phrases where they tried to gauge people's emotional reaction to phrases. The moderator would trot out campaign catch-cries and try to figure out if we believed in those phrases. As if we would. The moderator would then go through the room asking people these dumb questions like, "what do you think of Morris Iemma if he were your friend?"

Occasionally, the questions would veer towards the surreal, like "what would you think if it was mandated that sheikhs and Imams had to pass a government test to qualify?"
or
"What do you think of mandatory sentencing for sex offenders and violent criminals"
Amazingly nobody agreed with the first but everybody apart from me agreed with the latter. In fact everybody thought we were in the midst off a crime-wave. I pointed out that mandatory sentencing would put insane people into prisons and that it would take away the power of judge's discretion. They didn't understand so I said, "look, we don't pay our judges to be stupid. By all means have better guidelines, but any kind of mandatory sentencing is asking the judges to be dumb bureaucrats ticking boxes."
There were some retired bureaucrats in the room. Heh. :)

The biggest policy mess was obviously the Cross-city Tunnel and the contract with the Private company. This was fun, because it was clearly a failure of policy, AND execution; and as such was open to a lot of interesting debate. The moderator asked:
"If there was one name you'd blame, who is it?"
Like blaming somebody is going to get them through the mess. My advice to them was to forget blaming somebody but instead to play hardball. Audit the private company and its board until they squeal with discomfort, and then throw out the contract on the basis that it's fraudulent. You should've seen the faces of the retired bureaucrats.
"You can't break contracts!" they said.
"Come on, a contract can only be truly binding if both parties want to be in it. Why is this one so sacrosanct and unbreakable? The Rolling Stones have broken lots of contracts in their time but they're still the Rolling Stones. Why can't the NSW Government just stiff them like they stiff other people?"

Indeed. Like they're stiffing me, the bums! :)
You should've seen their faces. They were apopleptic with rage, shaking their heads in disgust. Maybe I am too much of a Machiavellian, but hey, Morris Iemma is at least Italian! Come on Morris! :)

Predictably I went in there hyped, pumped and motivated to let loose and I did exactly that. I think I got in the most words of any participant because that was my target. I went in to swing hard for education and health, particularly mental health; hard against the anti-terror laws; totally slammed the Christian Right and their desire to obfuscate the line between Church and State and went in for better city-planning in Sydney and more trains and public transport.

At the end, everybody grabbed their cash and ran away. Nobody wanted to talk to me afterwards because I really went to town. I don't think I'll be asked back ever again.

Overall, if the questions were any indication, the powers that be are planning for a very anti-democratic time ahead. Oh, by the way, in the coming weeks, if you hear a politician say "we don't pay our judges to be stupid," you'll know where that phrase came from because it really shut the room up. :)

Forecast Is For Strong Protests Today

The protests over IR laws are predicted for today. I hope they RIOT.
I won't be going because I've already expended energy for political spleen-venting last night at the focus group where I finished as the most hated individual in the room for dominating discussions.
Also, public transport costs too much. :)

So I'm going to root them on at a distance. Go protesters. Where the hell were you when the put through the anti-terror laws?

And This Man? He's The AL MVP!

Alex Rodriguez, a.k.a. 'A-Rod' won the American League Most Valuable Player Award.

A-Rod's numbers were hard to argue with: a .321 average, 130 RBIs and an AL-leading 48 home runs. Considering Ortiz's final stats (.300-47-148), a case could have been made for either candidate, but Rodriguez's stellar play at third base likely pushed him over the top, as Ortiz's status as a DH hurt him with some voters.

"Defense -- for the most part, being a balanced player and saving a lot of runs on the defensive side -- was a major factor," Rodriguez said. "I've been in a lot of these races and come in second and third place, so I thought David had as good a chance as I did."

Votes were cast before the postseason, which was good news for both A-Rod and Big Papi, who may have watched Chicago's Paul Konerko vault himself to the top in that scenario. Rodriguez went 2-for-15 in the Yankees' ALDS loss to the Angels, while Ortiz had just one RBI as the Red Sox were swept out of the playoffs by the White Sox in the opening round.

"I was tough on myself because I always expect to play very good baseball," said A-Rod, who referred to himself as a "dog" after New York's Game 5 loss in Anaheim. "My one regret is that I thought I could have walked 10 or 12 times, passed the baton and been a little more patient."

The fact that the Yankees overtook the Red Sox to win their eighth consecutive AL East title probably didn't hurt Rodriguez, either. In the clincher, which came on the penultimate day of the regular season, A-Rod went 4-for-5 with a home run in the Yankees' 8-4 victory at Fenway Park.

A-Rod ranked in the top five in the AL in homers (first), RBIs (fourth), batting average (second), runs (first), slugging percentage (first), OPS (first), on-base percentage (second) and walks (third). He even added 21 stolen bases, which was ninth best in the league.

Rodriguez's award is the 19th in Yankees history, the most of any franchise. He is the first Yankee to win the MVP Award since Don Mattingly captured it in 1985. Joe DiMaggio, Yogi Berra and Mickey Mantle won three MVPs apiece, while Roger Maris won two. Other Yankees winners were Lou Gehrig, Joe Gordon, Spud Chandler, Phil Rizzuto, Elston Howard and Thurman Munson.

Rodriguez became the 24th multiple MVP winner and only the fourth to win at two positions and with two clubs. He was a shortstop with the Rangers when he was the AL MVP in 2003.

Rodriguez has also been the runner-up twice, in 2002 with Texas to Oakland's Miguel Tejada and in 1996 with Seattle to Texas' Juan Gonzalez.

Ortiz's supporters pointed to his numbers in "close and late" situations, which are defined by at-bats in the seventh inning or later with the team either ahead by one run, tied or with the potential tying run at least on deck.

Yeah, close and late stats are interesting and this discussion of 'clutchness' will never go away - but we all know Derek Jeter is the Clutch God so why even argue... only kidding. This is the AL MVP award that was so heavily debated so it deserves some amount of pondering.
Under more sober, statistical analysis, Win Shares has A-Rod (37WS) ahead of David Ortiz (31WS) by about 6 wins shares. Indeed, Ortiz' team-mate Manny Ramirez was more valuable than David Ortiz, clocking in at 34 win shares, about a win behind A-Rod.

And to be totally fair, I note that 'my favorite Clutch God' *only* had 26 WS. But he did win a Golden Glove Award to the amazement of many at the Baseball Think Factory. Everybody with any knowledge knows that Jeter (much as we may love him, adore him, cherish him) is only the second best shortstop playing for the Yankees. The grumbling ins and outs of that issue aside, gee it's good to have A-Rod at his career peak, manning Third base for the Yankees.

UPDATE: This is hilarious. ESPN columnist Jason Stark is ramping Ortiz' case on the basis that A-Rod wasn't 'clutch'. the best bit? He's citing Eric M. Van. LOL Bwahahahahahahahahahahahaha:

On the admittedly partisan, Red Sox-oriented Sons of Sam Horn site, frequent contributor Eric Van has laid out some truly startling evidence. He found that A-Rod was vastly more productive in the Yankees' blowout wins than he was in games where a hit either way was the difference between winning and losing.

In the 20 games each of their teams won by six or more runs, A-Rod hit .549, had an OPS of 1.793 and racked up 46 of his 130 RBI (35 percent). Ortiz, on the other hand, batted .277, had an OPS almost 800 points lower than A-Rod's (.999) and drove in only 33 runs (22 percent of his overall total).

But in close games (games that either went to extra innings or were decided by one or two runs in regulation), the numbers look a whole lot different.

In those games -- and each team played exactly 65 of them -- A-Rod batted only .243, had an OPS of .805 and drove in just 38 runs (29 percent). Ortiz, meanwhile, clearly tapped some mysterious force that made him even better in moments like that -- batting .321, running up an OPS of 1.116 and knocking in nearly a run a game (62 -- or 42 percent of his overall total).

Roll that info around your brain for a second. Think about what you make of it. All we know is that, when it came time to make our MVP pick at season's end, we had a tough time ignoring figures that staggering.

Oh crap, Jason Stark, crap. A-Rod's bat alone was better than Ortiz's at 33.3WS to 31.4WS. That's 2 WS, or 6 runs, or 2/3rds of a win, before we talk about defense. If you had to untangle numbers in an Eric M. Van way rather than say, a Bill James way, you know you're playing with partisans. Eric M. Van is infamous at the Baseball Think Factory/ Baseball Primer as the guy who was forever 'projecting' and fiercely predicting the Red Sox to win 125 games a year.
He was a laughingstock.

This Man Isn't Winning Friends In Kazakhstan

Sacha Baron Cohen's Borat the Kazakh is a pretty broad comic creation. He so broad even Americans understand him.
In case you thought attitudes about freedom of speech may directly affect what you get to say or see, try this article

KAZAKHSTAN'S Foreign Ministry has threatened legal action against a British comedian who wins laughs by portraying the central Asian state as a country populated by drunks who enjoy cow-punching as a sport.

Sacha Baron Cohen, who plays Kazakh television presenter Borat in his Da Ali G Show, has won fame ridiculing Kazakhstan on British and US channels.

Cohen appears to have drawn official Kazakh ire after he hosted the annual MTV Europe Music Awards in Lisbon this month as Borat, who arrived in an Air Kazakh propeller plane controlled by a one-eyed pilot clutching a vodka bottle.

"We do not rule out that Mr Cohen is serving someone's political order designed to present Kazakhstan and its people in a derogatory way," said Kazakh Foreign Ministry spokesman Yerzhan Ashykbayev.

"We reserve the right to any legal action to prevent new pranks of the kind." He declined to elaborate.

Cohen's jokes about the Central Asian state include claims that the people would shoot a dog and then have a party, and that local wine was made from fermented horse urine.

"We view Mr Cohen's behaviour at the MTV Europe Music Awards as utterly unacceptable, being a concoction of bad taste and ill manners which is completely incompatible with ethics and civilised behaviour," Mr Ashykbayev said.

Let''s be honest, nobody's nation likes being ridiculed on the International Stage by a *gasp* mere comedian! It must be that the comedian is on the payroll of some nation trying to bring about the downfall of that mighty, prosperous, beautiful nation, Kazakhstan. LOL. So presumably this Jewish schmuck who plays racial stereotypes from other parts of the world would be perceived to be a political pundit in Kazakhstan and probably jailed for his antics - and being Jewish.

More at the BBC
Talk about ugly attitudes. Kazakhstan isn't winning friends here.

Mr Ashykbayev described the comedian's MTV appearance as "utterly unacceptable, being a concoction of bad taste and ill manners which is completely incompatible with ethics and civilised behaviour".

Then again, it could be a publicity stunt by misinformation on Cohen's part.