The Futility Infielder

As the games on the field begin captivating our attention, we've hit a brief lull in the steroids furor, at least where baseball is concerned (football is another story). So far three players -- Alex Sanchez, Jorge Piedra, and now Agustin Montero -- have been suspended due to positive tests. None fit the profile of the musclebound slugger that drives the mainstream media bloodlust on this issue; not even Sanchez, the most well-known of the three, could hardly be considered a household name. Collectively the results have been greeted with a giant yawn.

But that doesn't mean I haven't been thinking about steroids. In particular, a recent email exchange with a friend gave me the desire to clarify my position on a couple of issues, even at the risk of wandering into quicksand at a time when I'd rather write about something else. The charge my friend made, echoed in comments by a couple of readers recently, is that the sabermetric community is somehow out to disprove the impact of steroids and would rather place the blame anywhere but on the players who used them. Having written a chapter for a forthcoming book -- Will Carroll's The Juice: The Real Story of Baseball's Drug Problems, which hits the streets later this month -- somewhat along those lines, that charge hits close to home, hence my motivation to consider it.

Inasmuch as sabermetrics as defined is the search for objective truth about baseball, I think it's only fitting that wild claims as to the impact of steroids on baseball are greeted with some skepticism. We don't have the kind of double-blind testing that would give us a more definitive picture, but we know they have some physical effects with regards to strength and speed, and that some of those effects may aid in baseball-specific tasks of increasing power, bat speed, and even foot speed.

What we most definitely don't know beyond a handful of players implicated via leaked BALCO testimony and others who have come forward is who's doing or has done them. We can guess, we can point to circumstantial evidence such as Jose Canseco's allegations, Mark McGwire's marble-mouthed Congressional appearance, and the fact that power-spiking Rafael Palmeiro wound up as a Viagra pitchman, we can theorize that it's the skinny middle infielders who are the most likely dopers because it makes a certain kind of sense, but really, that's all pretty shoddy. If we're going to hold the game to high standards in cleaning itself up, we need to keep our own standards high as well.

I am uncomfortable with the idea of ballplayers using steroids, yes. And I do believe that the millions of dollars they make as athletes/public personalities/entertainers gives them some obligation to live up to standards as role models whether they want to be such or not. Any player that doesn't want to be a role model should give back the licensing money they receive from MLB Properties, should forego all endorsement opportunities, and should demand that their contracts be negotiated without consideration to those revenue streams' effect on a team's bottom line. Of course, there isn't a chance in hell that's going to happen.

That said, I'm uncomfortable that ballplayers suspected of using steroids are somehow less entitled to due process and rules of evidence than other citizens. I'm equally uncomfortable with the tendencies of the mainstream media and many fans to attempt to convict players on sight and innuendo. With the tiny soapbox I have, I feel an obligation to counter that urge to grab the nearest pitchfork and torch. We didn't have testing until 2003, and we're never going to have much proof with regards to the culprits prior to that. We do have testing now, and the testing appears to be having an impact: a decrease in the number of positives from 96 in 2003 (6.7 percent of major league players) down to 12 in 2004 (1.1 percent). Of course, those positives don't include anyone who may be using the latest generation of undetectable designer steroids or human growth hormone, which requires a blood test to detect. It's a start.

While I think the penalties are too lax (30 or even 60 days for a first offense would be a lot better than 10), I feel even more strongly that we've just got to move on with the new program without encouraging assclowns like John McCain, Henry Waxman, and Christopher Shays to grandstand. If anything, we should be asking Congress tough questions such as why a dietary supplement called DHEA, which converts to a steroid in the bloodstream, ISN'T classified as a controlled substance and in fact enjoys a special exemption thanks to a bit of pork-barrel legislation on the part of the esteemed senator from my home state, Borin' Orrin Hatch. As the linked New York Times article asks, why hasn't Congress finished the job of writing zero-tolerance to steroids into federal law?

Further, I do think -- and I believe many other statheads feel this way -- that we ought to attempt to evaluate the statistical evidence with regards to various steroid allegations with the same kind of care we use when evaluating any other sabermetric question. For example, one thing that the media constantly harp on is that ballparks are smaller, which is aiding the rise in homer rates. In fact (and I've mentioned this already) with the wave of building since the early 1990s -- which has seen 18 new parks created -- the average outfield fence is further away than before, though seating capacities are typically smaller (Jacobs Field's 43,000 or whatever versus Municipal Stadium's 70,000). Now, that may actually work in favor of "these guys must be juiced because they have to hit it further" but at the very least, somebody needs to do the work rather than making unsubstantiated claims and pulling random numbers out of their ass. I've tried to do some of that in my chapter in The Juice, for which I'm currently trying to arrange an excerpt.

Speaking of Juice excerpts, there's one in the current issue of Sports Illustrated (the April 25 issue with Shaquille O'Neal and Amare Stoudamire on the cover; the link is available online to subscribers). It's from the chapter on Carroll's meeting with the creator of THG, the undetectable steroid at the center of the BALCO scandal. The chapter itself is jaw dropping, dynamite stuff, almost cinematic in its vivid description of the tension around this covert meeting with a man who wished to retain his anonymity. The excerpt is a merely an hors d'oeuvre, but it should do the job of whetting the appetite:

I asked how he created THG. He explained that it is a substance that is chemically similar to Gestrinone (an infertility drug) and Trenbolone (an anabolic steroid), and that it had been around since the late 1990s. While Dr. X wasn't the first to make it, he refined the process and was one of the few who could produce and distribute the substance. He'd get Gestrinone by sending women to a fertility specialist "who'd write the pass [prescription], and we'd pay cash. Doctors love that, man. We'd spend a couple hundred, spin it [mix the components] and sell it for a couple thousand.

He said there was a lot of cheap "gear" (the term insiders use for steroids) on the market, made for "pathetic losers looking not to have sand kicked in their faces. The world-class athletes who use my stuff can afford good gear" -- the kind impossible to detect.

...The leagues, he said, were overmatched. The metaphor I'd heard was that tests were like looking through mug shots; if the shot wasn't already in the book, you couldn't identify the perpetrator. "Exactly!" he said. "If the NFL wants to test for every known steroid, that's more than 100 tests per player -- 32 teams, 53 players, 100 tests; and they aren't cheap. And that's for known substances. I know there's 10 they don't know about."

Ten currently undetectable steroids -- that's a chiller. Are they being used by baseball players? I don't know, and most likely, neither do you. We can hope that these drugs haven't filtered in, and we can hope that the current testing programs prevent most of those players who would dope from doing so. Most importantly, we can hope that MLB, perhaps even with the help of our assclowns government, puts serious money into researching better methods to test for these drugs. Until then, they're sure to lose this cat-and-mouse game, forever three steps behind the Dr. X's of the world.

I'm eagerly awaiting the arrival of my Juice copy. I've discussed several parts of the book with Will, but I've only read the Creator chapter and my own, and I look forward to learning more. We've all got plenty to learn about steroids, and I'm pretty certain that Carroll's book is going to be a giant step in that direction.

Labels: steroids