Enemy-turned-friend of MSF Ken Rosenthal posted an article today entitled “Speculation about Bautista is unfair.” I know this because he was kind of mention me and MSF by name, as well as my Twitter handle when he tweeted the article out. (See! Enemy-turned-friend, if for some reason the podcast didn’t convince you.)

The crux of the article, if it’s not already obvious, is that public statements – of which there have been many – insinuating that Jose Bautista’s unexpected mid-career power explosion could be due to PED use are both unfair and indecent.

And Ken is right. It is unfair, just as it was unfair when I linked the terms “Raul Ibanez” and “steroids” together in a headline many, many months ago.

It is unfair because, as Ken says, Bautista has done nothing to arouse steroid suspicion other than be really, really, ridiculous good at hitting over the past year and a half. And while there have been stories about swing changes he made that seem to explain his newfound power, there have been no mysterious prescriptions or failed tests or anything else of the kind to provide any sort of nefarious counter argument.

So it’s unfair to lump Jose Bautista in with proven cheaters like Manny Ramirez and Rafael Palmeiro. We know they used PEDs because they failed tests. It’s also unfair to lump Bautista in with guys like Roger Clemens whose 100% guilt may be in question, but who most reasonable people suspect was a steroid user. There are smoking guns with Clemens. There aren’t with Bautista.

Yes, it’s definitely unfair to lump Bautista in with those guys. As Ken says:

“…at this moment, there is no reason to believe that Bautista isn’t legit, other than the fact that he’s putting up big numbers. And sorry, that’s hardly reason enough to cast doubt upon a man’s integrity.”

The one thing I felt bad about after the Ibanez story was that my article forced a good and decent man (this is how everyone describes Ibanez) to have to deal with questions about the legitimacy of his numbers. If I was writing that article today with the knowledge and perspective that I have now, I would still write it. BUT, I would explain it and position much differently, with the main difference being a different title and a focus more on the sport as a whole rather than one name.

That said, I fully stand by the overall conclusion that I came to in the article: that because of the previous 15 years, baseball fans were and are well within reason to suspect any player of PED use. MLB created the culture where such use was damn near encouraged, and one of the consequences was a complete erosion of fan trust. Sometimes you get what you deserve, and MLB has deserved the fan frustration and doubt the PED story has created.

But even with that said, singling out an individual player remains unfair, and a huge part of the problem is that oftentimes people do not actually read articles before drawing conclusions from them. Hence, my regret at using Ibanez’s name and the word “steroids” in the title of the article. Most people only saw that, and then let their speculations and assumptions run wild (even though, ironically, my goal was to disprove the already-in-discussion notion that Ibanez was on a juice-fueled hitting binge).

So this is where I agree with Ken Rosenthal, and it’s why you have not seen any other stories on MSF like the Ibanez article. If I am going to discuss steroids in sports, it will be a general conversation as opposed to a specific one. Personally, I think that’s how the issue should be handled by everyone.

The fact is, I increasingly think I agree with the sentiments of Joe Posnanski’s article entitled “Why I Think Steroids Are Out of Baseball.” I think it’s quite possible that with very few and isolated exceptions, steroids exited stage left when Manny Ramirez left the game. The departure of Manny, to me, signaled the end of an era. The stats certainly back this up – and if we’re going to let bloated stats galvanize our suspicions, as I have, then we certainly have to be fair when the bloating subsides.

And furthermore, when there is not any kind of smoking gun, any player-specific doubts you or I have really should be kept general in terms of the sport, especially if you write or speak in any forum with any ounce of authority. And yes, even no-name bloggers like me who bought their domain name for $9.99 can have some small amount of reader-determined authority – especially when so many people make judgments off of headlines rather than the actual article as a whole. I was forced into learning that lesson, with Ken reiterated today, and it was a good one to learn.