For those of you who haven’t heard, there’s been a buzz around baseball media circles over the past week after Jerod Morris of Midwestsportsfans.com wrote the following article regarding the hot start of Raul Ibanez in Philadelphia.
“In fact, the 37-year old Ibanez has been so good that it has led to the inevitable speculation that his improvement may be attributable to factors other than his new lineup, playing in a better ballpark for hitters, or additional maturation as a hitter. In this day and age of suspicion at any significant jump in numbers, even over small sample sizes, it is what it is – and such speculation is to be expected.”
And when such speculation was posed to Morris via his fantasy baseball league’s message board, he set out to disprove with whatever statistical evidence he could muster that Raul Ibanez’ hot start was artificial by nature. After a fairly well articulated statistical overview of everything from park effects to opponents faced and more, Morris concludes;
“Thirdly, it’s time for me to begrudgingly acknowledge the elephant in the room: any aging hitter who puts up numbers this much better than his career averages is going to immediately generate suspicion that the numbers are not natural, that perhaps he is under the influence of some sort of performance enhancer. And since I was not able to draw any absolute parallels between his prodigously improved HR rate and his new ballpark’s hitter-friendliness, it would be foolish to dismiss the possibility that “other” performance enhancers could be part of the equation.
Sorry Raul Ibanez and Major League Baseball, that’s just the era that we are in — testing or no testing.”
In my opinion, hardly taking Ibanez to task or placing any assumption of guilt on the player, just pointing out that speculation will exist because it is germane to the life and times of baseball today.
As Red Sox fans, we don’t need to look very far at all to see this very conversation striking more closely to home. Given David Ortiz’ struggles this season, no player currently unlinked to steroids in any official way has been the brunt of more speculation about his potential use than Big Papi. In fact, MVN’s MLB Outsider Kurt Evans, takes that speculation much further than Morris did of Ibanez in a column dated less than three weeks ago.
Stemming from some off color jokes in his fantasy stock report of David Ortiz, Fire Brand reader Gerry took Evans to task for merely connecting Ortiz to steroids in his banter. You can find both Evans’ initial comment and Gerry’s rebuttal at the lead of the MVN MLB Outsider column.
*Just to air my opinion on both sets of comments that sparked the further column, I think Evans’ “joke” wasn’t an intended accusation as much as it was an attempt at humor around innuendo that was no doubt being talked about across the internets. That said, even tongue in cheek, it was on the harsher side of personal indictment. I think it is fair to say that unless you believed that Ortiz was in fact a juicer, you wouldn’t feel comfortable making that type of innuendo, humorous or not. Then comes Gerry’s comment. I love Gerry to death, loyal to a fault, always brimming with optimism within the Fire Brand community. But in this case, I think Gerry takes a very appropriate overall stance regarding blogging, mainstream media, and steroids, only addressed a little to harshly and pointed at the wrong statements. We are clearly in the grey area here, but I wouldn’t call Evans’ points accusations nor would I call the “Stock Report” journalism. I would save Gerry’s outrage and statements for the people making more direct accusations not as veiled attempts at humor.
Evans’ rebuttal to Gerry takes the form similar to Morris’ investigation of Raul Ibanez above. He sets out to analyze the question, “What are the chances that David Ortiz did in fact use steroids at the height of his offensive prowess?”. Not too dissimilar a question from Morris’ of Ibanez. The major difference between the two pieces is in tone and intent.
Morris is very clear that his agenda is to disprove that Ibanez performance was due to the use of PEDs. Evans, placed on the defensive here from the outset, has built his argument primarily around setting out to prove Ortiz, at least, shrouded in a cloud of suspicion, if not with a written assumption of guilt.
“But based on the evidence found by a couple of quick Google searches — from the way his power numbers doubled to the string of injuries he’s had that could be steroid related to his backhanded confession that he may have used — it looks like David Ortiz was a probable user.”
Evans’ agenda is further perpetuated with a personal slam on Ortiz in the column’s close;
“And no matter how red your socks are, no matter how much man-love you have for David Ortiz, you have to acknowledge that there’s plenty of reason to suspect the guy. From his injuries to his production to his own words, Ortiz is unclean — even, ironically, if his body always has been.”
Think back to Morris and his evaluation of Ibanez. Morris went out of his way multiple times to consider how “good of a guy” Raul Ibanez is. Ironic that Papi, known across baseball as the ultimate “good guy”, doesn’t even get an ounce of that respect from Evans.
With the Ortiz speculation brewing across both the internet and talk radio, Ken Rosenthall, of Fox Sports, addressed the larger issue of blogs, mainstream media, and steroid accusation the same day that Evans column dropped.
“For all I know, Ortiz might have been a user; the Steroid Era, sadly, has taught us to view all players skeptically. But there is a significant difference between holding such a view privately and accusing a player publicly without any factual basis for such an opinion. Ten years ago, no reporter would have dared make such a leap, fearing, at minimum, a stern rebuke from an editor and, at worst, a lawsuit. In fact, the difficulty in “naming names” was one problem in reporting on steroids in baseball.”
In this context, I found myself in general agreement with Ken Rosenthall. Every mention of suspicion of performance enhancing drug use must be clarified as pure opinion (which I think everyone is entitled to) vs. accusation, which sits dangerously close to the other side of a very fine line. Per the poll riding along with the column, it would appear that most Fox Sports readers agree with Rosenthall as well.
To be clear, however, this column wasn’t intended to rehash any type of speculation of David Ortiz’ association with any performance enhancer. What struck me this week was how two conversations about similar topics with one more inflammatory than the other had two very different outcomes.
How did the Ortiz conversation result in nothing more than some generalized banter across the sports media landscape, when the Raul Ibanez piece generated this:
A ten minute segment on ESPN’s Outside the Lines and a relative (pardon the term) shitstorm that would ensue?
The simple answer, Morris’ column was picked up by John Gonzalez of the Philadelphia Inquirer. And as it was, I would argue it was greatly mischaracterized as a slanderous attack on Raul Ibanez and his suspected steroid use.
“Then JRod dismissed all the evidence of opportunism, pivoted like a second baseman turning a double play, and fired his conclusion into the mitts of conspiracy theorists and amateur drug testers everywhere”.
From there, one of the Phillies beat writers took the question straight to Raul Ibanez, likely only mentioning that a blog had indicated or insinuated that he had been taking PEDs. That elicited this response, as warranted from Ibanez.
“Unfortunately, I understand the environment we’re in and the events that have led us to this era of speculation,” he said. “At the same time, you can’t just walk down the street and accuse somebody of being a thief because they didn’t have a nice car yesterday and they do today. You can’t say that guy is a thief.
You can have my urine, my hair, my blood, my stool – anything you can test, I’ll give you back every dime I’ve ever made.
Make them accountable. There should be more credibility than some 42-year-old blogger typing in his mother’s basement. It demeans everything you’ve done with one stroke of the pen. Nobody is above the testing policy. We’ve seen that.”
Ibanez had every right to be upset and to go on the offensive. Of all the people in this chain, he was probably the most wronged for the least reason. The problem however, is that he never read the initial piece by Morris, and it’s possible that Salisbury never did before asking Ibanez about it, only reading his colleague’s article on the topic. As much as Ibanez has been trampled in this scenario, Morris has been nearly as trampled.
I’ve heard alot from “JRod” over the last few days, and I’ve come away more than impressed. I haven’t heard as much, nor have I been as impressed, by the likes of Rosenthall or the Philadelphia reporters who threw the match on this fire.
I’ll give John Gonzalez credit, I know he’s been in touch with Morris and with others covering this story since it went down and that he’s engaged in the conversation.
There are important lessons to be learned from this experience for everyone involved. I think it all starts with being as upfront as possible with your opinions vs. any notion of an attempt to prove an assumption of guilt in regards to performance enhancing drugs. I also think that all parties need to take the time and respect to read and thoroughly understand everyone’s original piece before using it to further their own perspective.
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