Albert Pujols and the List of Other Players I THINK (Hope) Are Clean

So I just checked traffic to the site so far today. Decent, nothing spectacular, just a normal no-link-from-the-Philadelphia-Inquirer (or, excuse me, tweet from @HHReynolds) day here at MSF.

However, something caught my eye that has become a pretty noticable trend.

My stats show me the keyword searches that have driven search engine referrals to the site. I’ve noticed that every time Albert Pujols has a big game, searches involving his name and “steroids” spike. After another two-homer outburst by El Hombre yesterday, here are the search numbers so far today:

• “albert pujols steroids” – 53
• “pujols steroids” – 41
• “pujols steroid” – 6
• “is albert pujols on steroids” – 4

And to the right is a snapshot from my Google Analytics tracking since I wrote this post about Pujols on May 15th. These are all search terms and the number of individual visits that have come to Midwest Sports Fans as a result.

I guess some people are wondering about Albert Pujols and steroids, huh?

And keep in mind, at last check my post about Pujols was only #7 on the first page of Google results for “albert pujols steroids”…so the posts above mine are driving significantly more traffic from these types of searches than I am.

And lest you think that the aforementioned post was speculative regarding Pujols being on steroids, I assure you it was not. In fact, I went out of my way to state that Pujols is one of the few remaining guys left that I believe to be clean. There is always doubt — a fact that we’ve all been over ad nauseum in recent weeks — but Pujols gets more benefit of the doubt than anyone in my mind.

A quick excerpt from that post, which was written a few weeks before the now infamous Raul Ibanez post:

I’ve given up hope on most current and former baseball players and stopped giving the vast majority of them any benefit of the doubt. And I don’t blame myself for not being able to withstand the force of pessimism…I blame Major League Baseball and the greed and vanity of the players.

However, one of the few guys that I remain steadfast in defending is Albert Pujols.

…

In fact, I’m done referring to PED’s as performance-enhancing drugs. From now, I’m calling them Pujols Emulation Drugs. Albert Pujols is the standard by which all other major league baseball players should be held, both on and off the field. Anyone caught using PEDs, like Manny for instance, is clearly just trying to reach Pujols’ level. But that’s the greatness of Albert Pujols: he didn’t need to use PEDs to get where he is (good Lord I hope…I really do).

I could go into all of the SEO reasons why this post ended up on the first page for an “albert pujols steroids” search, but I don’t want to bore you. Mainly it’s because those terms are in the <title> tag and the content matches up. It wasn’t necessarily my intention (not that I’m complaining, mind you) but I am glad that people searching for this information are finding that post.

Just as in the case of the Ibanez post, my discussion about Pujols was completely speculative, completely honest in terms of my thoughts and feelings, and highlighted a continuing problem in Major League Baseball that still requires addressing. The tone of the Pujols piece was more explicit in giving him the benefit of the doubt than the Ibanez article (something I’ve previously recognized as wishing I could do over) but I don’t really see a huge gulf of difference between them.

At the end of the day, Albert Pujols and Raul Ibanez sit atop my list of players that I believe in more than others. Everyone is playing with a cloud of suspicion right now, testing policy or not, and that’s just the reality. And while stories like ARod and Manny continue to frustrate me and many other baseball fans (though many have professed to just not caring anymore, which is fair…I’m just not there yet), I still try to focus more of my attention and appreciation on the guys who I think have always played the game the right way.

With that said, a list was recently published at the site RotoInfo that is supposedly the complete list of the 103 players who failed drug tests prior to the 2003 season. It is accompanied by the statement “Rumored steroid list (UNCONFIRMED)” and no other information is given but names. I find it absolutely amazing that my piece about Raul Ibanez — which accused no one — caused such a huge stir, while this list — which accuses 103 players specifically — has gone relatively under the radar in comparison. Again, I’m not complaining about the exposure generated by the Ibanez post, and I never have. The whole thing just still seems so random to me.

For the record, I don’t really have an opinion one way or the other about the RotoInfo list. I’ve seen other lists that have attempted to guess the identities of the 103 players and I simply lump this in with those. It’s just a speculative list — which I’m fine with — and there is no reason to consider it something more or less than any other list until we have some sort of confirmation. Tommy Craggs over at Deadspin wrote about the list yesterday and offers a more informed opinion about its potential validity than I can provide, as I am not all that familiar with the past work of RotoInfo.

However, after seeing the RotoInfo list and other lists like it, I figured I would try to flip the steroid speculation on its head and focus on the guys I think are clean, rather than waste time worrying about the guys I think may have cheated over the years. I will state again that I firmly believe every player is legitimately under suspicion; not necessarily that they are currently using, as I think testing has to have had a positive impact, but that they might have used in the past during the height of the PED era. With that said, there are guys that I believe in a lot more than others. So even though I’ve somewhat become an icon for negative steroid speculation (fair or not), allow me to tread for a few moments in the much less volatile and Rosenthalless ground of positive steroid speculation.

Here is my own personal speculative list of guys currently playing that I think have always been clean and still are (but that, granted, I still wouldn’t be totally shocked to learn dabbled in PEDs at some point during their careers).

Note: This list is not meant to be exhaustive. It only takes into account players who have played at a consistently above average level for a number of years and that I feel I could make a legitimate statistical and empirical case for in defending. Feel free to argue or add to the list in the comments:

• Albert Pujols
• Raul Ibanez (as said in the post linked above, after looking at even more statistical evidence that I’d originally neglected, I believe in his numbers much more than when I initially wrote the post.)
• Mark Buehrle
• Derek Jeter
• Roy Halladay
• Justin Morneau
• David Wright
• Grady Sizmore
• Mariano Rivera
• Joe Nathan
• Johan Santana
• Ichiro Suzuki
• Jim Thome
• C.C. Sabathia
• Ken Griffey Jr.

If you want to know how I arrived at this list, here you go: I clicked on each of the rosters in my fantasy league and went down the list, just going with my gut reaction. I tried to stick with more veteran guys who were around during the early parts of this decade. There were plenty of guys that “almost made it” (although I won’t name them so I don’t get accused of implicitly accusing them) but the guys above are the ones that I didn’t hesitate to add.

I suppose there are two ways to look at this list. I was actually surprised to find that many guys that I feel relatively comfortable with, but it still looks pretty paltry in comparison to the total number of MLB players. The list is only about half a roster’s worth of players. Congratulations once again Major League Baseball. The rotten fruits of your greed never cease to find new and exciting ways to manifest themselves.

Bringing things full circle, Albert Pujols does, in my mind, stand out as the “last great hope” of baseball fans who want to see records held by guys we believe in. I still consider Roger Maris to be the single-season home run king and I still consider Hank Aaron (my favorite player as a kid, even though he was retired) to be all-time home run king. Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez, etc., etc.; these guys are not worthy of such lofty status. If Albert Pujols ever achieves one or both of those marks, I believe he will be worthy.

(Good Lord I hope…I really do.)

* – Albert Pujols photo credit: AlbertPujolsFanClub.com

The Curious Case of Journalists Perpetuating “Pathetic” and “Ridiculous” Steroid Speculation

I don’t really know the best way to introduce the source material that I am about to comment on, so I’ll just copy/paste an excerpt and let it speak for itself before adding my own thoughts:

From a recent article by Jerry Crowe of the Los Angeles Times:

Thanks to Ramirez, Alex Rodriguez, Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, etc., fans outside St. Louis must wonder, ‘Do we celebrate Albert Pujols or suspect him?’ . . .

Pujols has batted four times with the bases loaded this season and three times has hit grand slams. . . .

In his only other at-bat with the bases loaded, the St. Louis Cardinals slugger delivered only a two-run single. . . .

Sadly, it makes you wonder. . . .

Now, being from the Midwest and never having lived in LA, I was unfamiliar with Jerry Crowe’s work before seeing this article. However, I have to assume that he has proper journalistic training and some level of understanding for the “professional ethics” and “standards of decency” that were trotted out time and again over the past couple of weeks since I wrote about Raul Ibanez.

Geoff Baker and Ken Rosenthal know what I’m talking about.

I honestly don’t even know what to say. It’s not like this article by Crowe is an isolated example of some mainstream sportswriter going rogue and speculating about specific players using steroids. As was chronicled in the myriad posts written about the Raul Ibanez “controversy”, there are countless examples of media members making claims very similar to what Crowe has written above and similar to the article I wrote that touched off such a fire storm.

And I am not highlighting Crowe’s article because I disagree with him or think he is wrong to speculate. Albert Pujols is in my own personal group of players (along with Raul Ibanez, Derek Jeter, and a few others) that I believe in the most, but no one would truly surprise me anymore. I don’t think that Albert Pujols is on steroids, and his statistical consistency as well as what I’ve read about his high level character are two reasons why; yet, I certainly can understand why people would speculate, and the thought has definitely crossed my mind that it’s a reasonable possibility.

So I have no problem with what Crowe wrote. That’s not the point.

What I just find to be hilariously ironic, especially after another viewing of the Outside the Lines video a couple of nights ago, is how righteous and arrogant Ken Rosenthal was and how many of his peers came across the same way in their responses to what I wrote. Believe me, I’m glad they did because it helped to drive traffic to our site and give us a brief little brush with “fame” and exposure, but their larger points about how the blogosphere is ruining sports writing just seem more and more laughable with each post I read like Crowe’s above.

For some reason, bloggers took a tremendous amount of external criticism in the aftermath of Raul Ibanez’s comments about my post. And, come to think of it, I wonder if Albert Pujols is going to publicly scream at Jerry Crowe for his “pathetic” speculation. Perhaps not, since I assume Crowe wrote it from the LA Times offices and not from the dark nether regions of his mother’s basement.

But the truth of it all is this:

1. Bloggers didn’t create the steroid problem in baseball, baseball did. So getting angry at me or anyone else who writes about it honestly and genuinely is terribly misguided. That’s like having a water pipe burst or break at your house because the plumbers did a shoddy installation job and getting mad at the cable guy for talking about how wet your floor is.
2. Bloggers certainly didn’t create steroid speculation on our own. Journalists have done it for years (it just came far too late, I’m afraid). As I said above, I don’t have a problem with it. I just have a problem with people accusing the honest, hard-working, passionate sports fans who blog of being “unprofessional” and “unethical” and “attention whores” and “lacking standards of decency” and the multitudes of other trite criticisms we hear, when the “journalistic standards” (whatever that term even means) to which we are ostensibly being held (although most of us never claimed to be setting out to uphold them) are not even being upheld by their own peers.

There are fair criticisms and critiques from professional writers that we should listen to because they can make our content better, but I just hope that if Ken Rosenthal or Geoff Baker reads Jerry Crowe’s column that they roll their eyes, think it’s ridiculous, and write 5,000 word articles lambasting Crowe for his lack of integrity. (And I wonder if Crowe reached out to Pujols before “hitting publish.” He has “access.” Sadly, it makes you wonder…)

It just makes the last couple of weeks look like a disingenuous charade from a group of people who feel threatened by bloggers and the uncertain future of their industry. And it makes all of the righteous indignation seem like nothing more than a bunch of verbose and ironic nonsense.

Tom Fornelli, the author of FoulBalls.net and a writer for FanHouse, said it best as you can read in the excerpt below. And since his article is the one that alerted me to this story, and is the reason I am writing about it, I will both mention him by name and link to his article. (You see, journalists, in the blogosphere we have our own code of ethics and integrity and *gasp* actually follow it!).

It does make me wonder. It makes me wonder what exactly the difference is between what Jerod Morris did on a blog and Jerry Crowe did in the Los Angeles Times. Frankly the only difference I see — aside from the fact Morris did actual statistical analysis and Crowe just threw his opinion out there — is that Crowe speculated about a specific player’s steroid use in a major newspaper that I’m sure has a far greater reach than MidwestSportsFans.com, yet for some reason I doubt there will be as much of a reaction to it.

I guess responsibility only applies to those without press passes.

I have nothing else to say about this story.

By the way, for a funny little anecdote about Sammy Sosa and his obsession with the Sammy Sosa Gun Show, here is another great post by Fornelli at FanHouse. Has a player ever fallen from beloved and respected to resented and laughed at more precipitously than Sammy Sosa? It would be sad if every problem Sosa has faced was not brought on by his own selfishness, personal choices, and the ineptitude of the union and league that he was a part of.

And if you still want more MLB content to read, the good folks over at Sparty and Friends put together a nice piece regarding MLB contraction.

**********

My apologies again for the lack of activity this week. Work has been extremely busy and my two best friends from college are in town so my time at night to write has been limited, but it sure has been great catching up. We ate dinner at Fogo de Chao last night. Ridiculously expensive and ridiculously worth it. See if they have one in your city and go right now. It’s amazing.

And on the very bright side, my previously ill dog is almost fully recovered from surgery and will be completely back bouncing around like his old self in about a week. Thanks again to everyone who sent emails and tweets with kind and supportive words. They were all very much appreciated.

Have a great day everyone.

The Day the Statistics Died…and the Jerod Morris Hex Was Born

I will allow my foray into blogger-self-absorption to continue for at least one more post. And really, when will I ever have this opportunity again?

I’m certainly not, however, going to acquiesce and provide an analysis for this guy, who is attempting to discern the reasons for Derek Jeter’s suddenly improved defense.

Jeter is one of the few guys, like Ibanez, that I think has never used any PEDs. But there’s no telling where another post with that as the hypoethesis could lead…

Besides, Derek Jeter is also on my fantasy team and I am enjoying his very solid season. The last thing I would want to do is put him at risk for…

THE JEROD MORRIS HEX!

(Cue: Ominous music…dum, dum, DUM!)

The good folks over at Circle the Bases have now compared me to John Madden and the infamous hex that accompanies his video game. With Raul Ibanez hitting the DL today, Circle the Bases is attributing it to the only possible explanation: the Jerod Morris blogger hex. And they have objective statistics that make this worthy of speculation:

Two weeks after setting off the latest mainstream-versus-blogger firestorm by freaking out over “some 42-year-old blogger typing in his mother’s basement” Raul Ibanez has been placed on the disabled list with a strained left groin. Coincidence? Of course. But still.

Ibanez, who had avoided the DL since 2004, was just 5-for-27 (.185) with 11 strikeouts since calling one of Morris’ blog entries about him “pathetic and disgusting” and struggled to run out ground balls recently, so the Phillies decided to shut him down for at least a couple weeks.

As I have chronicled ad nauseum, Raul Ibanez has been the centerpiece of my fantasy team’s great two-month start to 2009. Now that the Jerod Morris hex has struck him down, I will be missing one of the best bats in my lineup. And in case Ibanez still holds me in the same amount of contempt as he appeared to upon initially hearing of my post, he will be happy to know that my own hex has also hurt me, with Roy Halladay, Scott Downs, and Denard Span also being DL’d since I wrote it.

I am making light of this because the notion of a hex named after me is hilarious and ridiculous, but I am only doing so to mask my despondence. I was enjoying Ibanez’s start independent of his presence on my fantasy team. I’ve always liked him and he seems perfectly deserving of this type of career year. Granted, I was quite happy that he was doing so on my team, but now he will have to languish on my and the Phillies’ DL until his groin heels. And that’s not a positive for anyone.

Just bad news all around. And to think, if I’d just decided to write about the NBA Finals or the White Sox on that fateful Monday morning last we could have ostensibly avoided all of this.

Still, all was not lost today. On Deadspin’s weekly podcast called the “Deadcast”, famed blog lover Buzz Bissinger provided one of the funniest sound bytes I’ve heard in a long time. While discussing the Raul Ibanez-MSF story, he attempts to lay blame at the feet of the first entity that linked to the now-infamous post.

Unfortunately, Buzz does not seem to know the difference between Harold Reynolds — the man and former baseball player — and Hugging Harold Reynolds — the great blog written by white dudes.

However, as Dan Levy points out to Drew, his message might be somewhat lost as it appears Buzz hasn’t brushed up on his homework on the situation, and inexplicitly calls out MLB Network’s All-Star personality (and this site’s namesake), Harold Reynolds.

Buzz: “Harold Reynolds picks it up, and puts it up on his website. And then before you know it its all over the place. I think Reynolds was really wrong. I think it was, um you know, really sloppy on his part.”

Jump over to HHR to listen to clip in question. It’s beautiful.

On this sad day when the Jerod Morris Hex was born as Raul Ibanez’s incredible statistics died (at least for 15 days), at least laughter and levity didn’t die as well.

Raul Ibanez Hits the DL and the Decimation of Hitting Crean-Up Continues

Wow, talk about how things can change in 10 days.

A couple of weeks ago, my fantasy baseball team (Hitting Crean-Up) was flying high. I was in first place, my team was in good health, and all of the my sleeper picks had been playing tremendously well (i.e. Raul Ibanez, Mike Lowell, Jason Bay, etc.)

Then I speculated about many possible explanations for Raul Ibanez’s 2009 stats and everything — from a fantasy perspective at least — went downhill. I’m still sitting in second place, but take a look at the injuries that have occurred over the past 10 days:

• Denard Span started getting dizzy, missed some time, and hit the DL.
• Roy Halladay pulled his ground and went on the DL.
• Scott Down sprained his freaking big toe and hit the DL.
• Derek Jeter was hobbled and had to a miss game and is day-to-day (and hopefully will not hit the DL!)

And then today, the Philadelphia Phillies announced that my current team MVP, Raul Ibanez, had been placed on the DL with a strained left groin. And all of these injuries happened in the last 10 days!

This is still a developing story so I’m not sure how long Ibanez will be out, but I sure hope it’s not long. He has been an absolute revelation and has gone from a guy I was hoping could produce like a #2 OF to being a guy I’m counting on to produce like a #1.

Looks like Scotty Pods will be getting the nod for me today. I was thinking about starting him anyway (though for Lowell at UTIL, not for Ibanez) to hopefully pick up some steals, but certainly this is not a solution I want to employ long-term.

Get well and come back soon Raul. Your fantasy owners miss you already.

If I didn’t know any better, I’d think Bud Selig and the MLB gods had placed a curse on my team. But then again, that would be the thinking of a Cubs fan. These are the stretches during baseball’s dog days of summer that separate winners and losers. Time to suck it up, strap it down, and hit the waiver wire. And then hope that Raul and the rest of my walking wounded make it back healthy soon.

* – Raul Ibanez photo found at The Bleacher Report, photo by Greg Fiume/Getty Images

Jerod Interviewed by Sid Rosenberg, Shay Roddy, and Drunk Jays Fans

For those of you who are not yet sick of my pasty mug and listening to me discuss the Raul Ibanez story yet, I had the much appreciated opportunity to discuss last week’s controversy with a few other bloggers and media members interested in the story.

Earlier this morning, I appeared with Sid Rosenberg at his OpenSports.com video blog entitled “Insurance Runs.” Rosenberg is a sports media veteran and has never been one to shy away from controversial topics nor to speak his mind.

He was kind enough to provide me a forum to further explain the reasons why I wrote the Ibanez post in the first place, as well as some thoughts on the fallout.

And I appreciate Sid and his producer Jason being flexible with my schedule today with my dog’s surgery coming up at the last minute. But going on the show with Sid was a welcomed diversion and a great experience.

In addition, late last week I did an interview with blogger Shay Roddy of Phillies Phanatics. And while Shay respectfully disagreed with me on certain points, he was both fair and open-minded throughout this entire week and on the podcast and is one of the primary reasons why I implore you not to buy into all of the stereotypes out there about Philly fans. Here is the link to the podcast at Shay’s site:

http://shayroddy.wordpress.com/2009/06/13/jerod-morris/

I linked to this before but I’ll link to it again in case you missed it. I joined Dan Levy on his On the DL Podcast last week.

http://www.onthedlpodcast.com/Blog_Podcast/Blog/Entries/2009/6/11_Jerod_Morris_Rosenthal_Gonzo.html

Dan has one of the best podcasts out there, and was in attendance at the first Blogs With Balls conference in NYC this past weekend. Here is another recent podcast Dan did before BWB with Bethlehem Shoals of Free Darko and then a recap of the conference:

http://www.onthedlpodcast.com/Blog_Podcast/Blog/Entries/2009/6/12_Bethlehem_Shoals.html

http://www.onthedlpodcast.com/Blog_Podcast/Blog/Entries/2009/6/15_The_Official_Blogs_With_Balls_Review__What_Was_Answered_and_What_Questions_Came_Out_Of_A_Fantastic_Event.html

And yes, I’m being extremely lazy with links today because I’m going to have to head out of here soon and trying to get this posted as quickly as possible.

Finally, I had a great time talking with the guys at Drunk Jays Fans this weekend. The podcast does not appear to be up yet, but I link to it as soon as it is.

Update: The Drunk Jays Fans podcast is up.  I knew that this was going to turn out well, as the guys from DJF are both cool and knowledgeable about sports (even sports south of the border!), but I had no idea how much I would be grateful for the opportunity to go on their podcast until I heard the intro music.

Seriously, any podcast that starts out with “The Final Countdown” makes me infinitely proud to have been a part of.  (And the South Park excerpt of the “Jared the Subway Guy” song was spot on as well.)

http://www.drunkjaysfans.com/2009/06/boners-up-djf-2009-11-guest-jerod.html

What I Learned During the Most Bizarre Week of My Life

As many of you know, I wrote a blog post earlier this week that created a little bit of controversy.

Apparently, White Sox 1st round draft pick Jared Mitchell did not appreciate me comparing him to former White Sox CF Mike Cameron, calling it a “pathetic” and “cowardly” comparison made by a lazy “42-year old blogger living in his mother’s basement in Wrigleyville.” Mitchell went on to say that if he was white I never would have compared him to Cameron.

Well, duh Jared.

Actually, the truth is that…well, if you actually read this blog, or any blog for that matter, I’m sure you know the truth. A baseball player did call me “pathetic”, “cowardly”, and make false accusations about my age and living arrangements, but it was not Jared Mitchell. In fact, I think Mitchell would have been quite pleased by my post-draft profile of him. At least I hope so.

Of course, I never thought I would be vilified for speculating that Raul Ibanez, like all major leaguers, might using steroids when I originally wanted to disprove speculation that he might be using steroids. So what the hell do I know?

And that is the purpose of this post.

I don’t know a whole hell of a lot, but I feel like did learn a lot this week. This was easily the most bizarre week of my life (and I use the term “bizarre” with the most positive connotations possible) and if I sailed through it without picking up a few useful lessons along the way, I’d consider it pretty lame on my part.

So here we go. In no particular order (expect the last one being the most important), here is a hodge podge of things that I learned and realized during this wild and crazy week.

1 – I have learned that people, including professional writers and journalists, do not like to (or cannot) read. However, this does not stop them from commenting, nor does it stop people from making judgments and forming opinions based on their comments.

2 – I have realized that this can lead to misunderstandings that sometimes explode into completely unnecessary and surprising stories into which the principal players get swept up, even if it soon thereafter ceases being about the specific individuals but rather what the individuals are purported to represent.

3 – I have quite happily learned that such situations can drive a ton of traffic.

4 – I have realized that since Blogs With Balls occurred during the tail end of my 14:59 minutes of fame, and I foolishly did not attend, I quite possibly missed out on a great opportunity to parlay my “fame” into getting some quality ass…whoopings by any Philly fans, mainstream media members, and other bloggers already sick of “Jerod Morris” who happened to be in attendance.

5 – I have also realized that I am 100% comfortable with everything I have written and said, but not 100% comfortable with such broad notoriety. It’s a mind trip that is simultaneously still sinking in as it fades away.

6 – And I’ve further realized that my self-consciousness at the notoriety stems from a feeling of guilt. There are plenty of better and more established blogs than MSF, plenty of better writers than me, and there were even other posts speculating about Raul Ibanez and steroids before I wrote mine.

7 – However, I have learned that asking the question “Why me?” (mind you, without a hint of regret nor complaint) is becoming exceedingly rhetorical.

8 – Although, there is one last thing I’ve learned about the kind of random and viral notoriety that has come my way this week: by starting a blog, publishing regularly, and pouring your heart and soul into genuine and honest posts, you are thereby purchasing a figurative lottery ticket. And sometimes the mainstream media picks your numbers, even though you have the same ticket and odds as everyone else. That’s what happened to me and Midwest Sports Fans this week.

9 – And I’ve learned that I am grateful for it, but that the true relevance of Midwest Sports Fans will be defined by what we write and where we go from here, not the particulars of the Raul Ibanez controversy that got us here.

10 – I just learned that at halftime of Game 5 of the NBA Finals, Stan Van Gundy thinks that the Orlando Magic will win the game.

11 – And I realized that I disagree with him based on what Jeff Van Gundy said about Kobe Bryant playing out of his mind immediately after they returned from the shot inside the Magic locker room.

12 – I learned this week that the passion of Philadelphia fans is everything that it is cracked up to be.

13 – I realized that many Philly fans live up to their oft-discussed reputation for being vulgar and combative.

14 – However, I also realized that stereotyping a fan because he/she is from Philly is a mistake; many are in fact objective, level-headed, and fair while never compromising the passion they have for their team.

15 – Overall, I learned that I respect Philadelphia fans as a whole and that Shay Roddy is right at the top of the list.

16 – I learned that the sports blogosphere is a tight-knit group that will rally around a fellow member whom they feel is being unfairly attacked. My appreciation for this fact goes beyond any words I am capable of writing.

17 – I realized that a divisive canyon still exists between some in the mainstream media and their blogging counterparts.

18 – I also learned that this canyon often manifests itself in the completely unnecessary and arrogant practice perpetrated by many in the mainstream media who will discuss a blog post that is thought- and/or controversy-provoking (and take advantage of it to drive traffic to their sites) yet feel empowered to say things like “…this week a post by a blogger who we will not name, lest we lend him any credence or relevance…”

19 – And I learned that in the same post they will mischaracterize what you say without providing a link so people can read it and decide for themselves.

20 – And I realized that though not many things truly make me angry, the haughty hypocricy of such actions pisses me off to no end.

21 – I also realized that, like Philadelphia fans, stereotyping mainstream media members can also be a mistake. Though much of this week’s debating has revolved around mainstream media members who I and many others believe are unfair to bloggers, there are just as many in the MSM — if not more — who are accepting and inclusive of blogs and blogging.

22 – I learned that Joe Posnanski continues to rock.

23 – I am realizing as I write this that my statements about being careful not to stereotype Philly fans and MSMers seems to fly in the face of my stated belief that it’s okay to stereotype baseball players as possible PED users. And the way I reconcile it is this: it is okay to speculate about baseball players being PED users because such general suspicions already rightfully exist based on historical evidence and anecdotes; but, just as I hope to be wrong about Raul Ibanez, speculating always carries the inherent risk of proving to be misguided and erroneous. That’s why it’s called speculating and not accusing nor claiming. One is open-minded and inquisitive while the other is closed-minded and definitive. It is my personal mission to always be the former and never the latter, whether it’s steroids in baseball, fans from Philadelphia, the mainstream media, or anything else.

24 – However, I learned a long time ago that there are at least two things about which I am and will always be unapologetically closed-minded and definitive: the Cubs suck and Purdue swallows.

25 – I learned that Twitter, for all of its over-hype and potential to be a time drain, is a great way to begin developing real relationships in the blogging community.

26 – However, I realized that in five minutes at Blogs With Balls (had I gone) I could have accomplished the same level of networking as I’ve accomplished in all of the time I’ve spent on Twitter.

27 – I realized that I am grateful for Scott Reister and his Anchor’s Desk column because we needed an opposing viewpoint to the Raul Ibanez story here at MSF and he provided a great one that is based upon his real-world (i.e. non-basement) experience.

28 – I learned that Raul Ibanez thinks I’m 42 years old, that Daulerio thinks I’m a “kid”, and that to the majority of the world who was interested in this story I am just “that pale Midwest blogger.”

29 – And I realized that each of those is infinitely better than being called “the freaky guy on the left.”

30 – I learned that it is always a good idea to write and edit your posts with the expectation that each part could be excerpted by a major news source and that tens of thousands of people could end up reading it.

31 – And I realized that had I done this before publishing the Ibanez post, I would have changed what will forever go down in my mind as the single most inaccurate, erroneous, and ripe-for-criticism brain fart of a phrase I’ve ever written — “…unstated speculation…” — especially in a piece of content that I am, overall, very proud to have had my name attached to.

32 – Yet I learned that there will be no shortage of people who will point mistakes like these out to me.

33 – And I realized that I appreciate it because such constructive criticism, as provided by Rob Neyer for instance, will make me a better writer.

34 – Because I learned that bloggers do not have to immediately become defensive when they are attacked or critiqued by mainstream media members, and that the opposite is also true. Many mainstream media members, though sometimes misguided and often arrogant, do sometimes offers bloggers bits of information that can help us become better at what we do. If we as bloggers forget who the messenger is and parse the message carefully, we can find nuggets of wisdom that can make us better.

35 – I realized that one of those nuggets of wisdom that I found was offered up in perhaps the most scathing critique of me and my article that I stumbled upon this week. I give the writer — I won’t mention his name because I’m reluctant to give him his 15 minutes — credit for being honest in his opinion, no matter how misguided I thought some of it was. Here is the aforementioned nugget: “…be prepared to defend your reputation in any forum.”

36 – I’ve realized this week that as blogs gain more more relevance and exposure, the veil of anonymity and relative invisibility that the majority of blogs once operated within is quickly being pulled back no matter how “new”, “irrelevant”, or “under the rader” you think your site is. And this is a good thing, so long as we write what we genuinely believe and understand that we may very well be called to the matt in a forum fare more public than our own comment section to defend the positions we take.

37 – I’ve learned that if we write just to drive traffic or for any reason other than expressing a genuine opinion — sports or otherwise — such a defense of our position could prove difficult. If we write what we honestly believe, and have genuine and open conversations with our readers consistently, then defending our positions is easy and more traffic will come in the long-term anyway.

37 – I also realized that I do not believe in the “eye-for-an-eye” theory of retribution and that instead of stooping to the level of certain MSMers, who will ride bloggers thoughts and posts for their own benefit without attribution, I will attribute the above nugget of knowledge to Geoff Baker of The Seattle Times in the lengthy piece he wrote about this week’s Raul Ibanez story.

38 – I did, however, realize I absolutely do agree with one more thing Baker said. Actually, it was more of a question, and I believe it’s a question that all bloggers should ask themselves before hitting publish: can you look somebody in the eye? And by somebody, Baker meant the subject of your piece. As bloggers, we do not often have the access to look the subjects of our posts in the eye, but we certainly should be able to believe in our hearts that we would if we could.

39 – I’ve realized that the #1 reason why I absolutely do not regret publishing the now-famous (and in some circles infamous) post about Raul Ibanez is that I would absolutely look him in the eye and defend my post, while also unequivocally being able to tell him that I think he’s clean, hope he’s clean, and count myself among his fans (and admittedly, this week has helped to develop that). In fact, this is still a conversation that I’m hoping to — and trying to — one day have with Ibanez.

40 – And, finally, I have learned that even though incredible confluences of events can occur like what occurred this week, and it can completely turn your life upside down and inside out in ways that you never imagined — in this case, almost all of them good — the most cherished opinions can actually be the opinions of those who do not judge you at all.

And to wrap up this post and this final lesson I feel I’ve learned, I would like to pay tribute to a special individual whose love and support I cherish, and who has never said one thing nor cared about Midwest Sports Fans, Raul Ibanez, Outside the Lines, bloggers versus the mainstream media, or any of the other topics that many of us spent so much time analyzing this week.

If you’ve been following my Twitter feed, you may have an idea of exactly who I am referring to: my dog Rebel.

On Wednesday I fulfilled a life’s dream by appearing on ESPN. And it wasn’t in a crowd shot, it wasn’t in Blog Buzz (though that’s always awesome too!), and it wasn’t through some type of Sports Nation comment. I was asked to come on ESPN to analyze and provide my opinion on an important sports topic. Just typing that sentence is still somewhat unbelievable to me.

Over the next 72 hours, I kind of ceased being just “Jerod Morris”, even to my friends and family, and nearly every conversation I had felt as if it revolved totally around the Raul Ibanez story. And in so many ways — nearly every way — this was great.

Although it was never an explicit goal when I started Midwest Sports Fans, I think all serious bloggers would probably agree that somewhere in the back or even in the front of our minds we all aspire to get caught up in something like what I got caught up in this week. As I said above, for reasons primarily related to happenstance, I just happened to win the lottery and get to have this experience.

But when I drove home Wednesday night, and every night for the balance of the week — always excited but usually exhausted from the whirlwind of attention — I knew that Rebel was waiting for me, ecstatic about my arrival home, and interested in my presence and what I had to say for no other reason than just because it was me. He didn’t have an opinion on the Ibanez post, nor any idea about ESPN, nor any clue that every five minutes a new Google Alert on “Jerod Morris” or “Midwest Sports Fans” was hitting my inbox. He was just there, with his tail wagging and his adoring eyes following my every move as I walked in the door, with one thought on his mind: take me for a walk.

I can’t really put it into words, but when I came home that Wednesday night Rebel put everything into perspective for me, as he often does. And because I know I won’t find the right words to express the feeling, I won’t even try to speculate on the best way to define it. Hence, that point I will leave as unstated speculation.

Unfortunately, when I came home tonight Rebel wasn’t here to greet me. He’s currently at the vet, sedated with an IV in his little leg, awaiting a serious and risky surgery that will take place tomorrow to remove his infected gallbladder. Without the surgery, his infectious energy and perpetual smile likely would not be long for this world. With the surgery his prognosis is good, and the expectation is that everything will go well and he’ll be back to normal in a few weeks. But, as I’m sure anyone who has a dog can relate, it’s still somewhat disconcerting knowing what my boy faces tomorrow and being powerless to do anything more to help him but show up at 8:00 am and sign the papers.

The vet who is taking care of him is fantastic though, and the surgeon is highly recommended, so even though scary and unwanted thoughts pop up I am not finding it difficult to fend them off.

The truth is, in addition to trying to espouse whatever wisdom I feel I’ve gained this week, the real purpose of this blog post has been to distract me from the silence and isolation of my new apartment, which just isn’t the same without its happiest and most spirited tenant. I know that he’ll be okay, that tomorrow’s surgery will be a success, and that he’ll be hopping up on the couch again, and demanding walks again, in no time…but I miss the little guy, even if just for tonight and the next few while he recovers.

While my short and fleeting bout with notoriety and recognition has been exciting, and has been the product of a controversial post that I do not regret writing, there is at least one issue of immediate importance for me that, without hesitation, would make me retroactively delete the Ibanez post before ever hitting “publish”, thus erasing all of its myriad and mostly positive impact before it ever got started: a simple guarantee that tomorrow’s surgery for Rebel will be a success.

Because while this past week taught me a lot, nothing has taught me more than the last 36 hours at the emergency pet clinic. And what I’ve learned is that it’s oftentimes the little things in life, not the big ones, that make it worthwhile, that sustain us in purpose and optimism from day to day, and that provide real fulfillment long-term.

And there’s no more important little thing in my life than my boy Rebel.

Keep on fighting little buddy, and come home soon.

(And I swear, if anyone picks on him for being small I will bust out some of the lessons I learned this week from the Philly commenters and emailers who showed, shall we say, less decorum.

You’ve been warned.)

The Anchor’s Desk: The More Legitimate Blogs Become, the More Responsibility They Need to Assume

A Web log, also known as a blog, can be written by anyone. You can blog about your feelings, your cat, or whether you think it’s fair to suspect Raul Ibanez of using steroids, which is what JRod famously did last week.

Blogs have taken off, and now we’ve got a problem. The lines have blurred.

What happens when bloggers get together and create a site like Midwest Sports Fans, updating it with news, and making it look and feel like a news site? Are they now journalists with the same standards?

With mainstream media being consumed on the web more and more each day, it’s tougher to discern what’s journalism and what’s “just some guy writing.”

If you go on a newspapers’ website to get the news, it looks like a website, has a banner on top, and some columns and news items. If you go to a blog site, like Midwest Sports Fans, it may look pretty darn similar, with the basic web design, sponsor links, and columns. The difference is that the columns on this site don’t have the same journalistic standards.

This has become a pretty slippery slope.

As sites like Midwest Sports Fans explode in popularity, they become more legitimate-looking. Therefore, such sites’ readers treat then more as “news” as opposed to “wanderings of the mind.” Does this mean higher ethics and journalistic standards need to be exercised?

In the case of Raul Ibanez I think it does.

When you have Raul Ibanez reacting to it, and Jerod Morris (JRod) appearing on ESPN, you know your site has arrived. There is a responsibility to balance your right to blog with journalistic principles of fairness.

Here’s an analogy: If you tell a group of four friends that you suspect Mr. Smith is gay (and why), you’d feel okay, because you’re just telling a few people. But would you stand in a crowded opera house of 1,000 people and announce that with a megaphone? Probably not. You’d have to feel a little funny about that.

That’s the difference between writing something in a chat room or e-mail, versus placing it on a huge blog site like MWSF.

When talking about journalistic standards, the lines are blurry of course. Newspaper writers who blog for their own papers’ websites have let their standards slip. A decade ago, you would never print rumors or hunches unless you could confirm them. Nowadays, for some reason, the same legitimate journalists will post just about everything, thinking its okay because it’s “just on their blog.”

They put something on the web and then say…“but I haven’t been able to confirm it.” Then can you really say it at all?

However, I still know they would not go as far as to drag a stand-up guy like Ibanez into the steroid discussion, out of the blue. I’m a journalist, and I wouldn’t have. Mainstream media members have their reputations and relationships to maintain.

The subject of who has to stick to journalistic ethics and standards boils down to how you present yourself. If Jerod wondered about Ibanez’s possible steroid use in a chat room, it wouldn’t matter. But since MWSF has a huge following, Jerod (JRod) has turned himself into a quasi-journalist and needs to be careful. He told me on Friday that he doesn’t regret writing about his Ibanez-steroid theory (and naming him), he only regrets he wasn’t more careful with the tone and the title of the story. In other words, bloggers should have the right to say what’s on their mind, but he does sense that there is a level of responsibility that comes with it.

Remember bloggers, you’re not just talking to your friends anymore. You’re sharing this stuff with 50,000 people or more, larger than some newspapers’ entire circulation.

Jerod wrote a piece, basically saying it’s sad that in this day and age we have to suspect aging sluggers of steroid use. He speculated that Ibanez could very well be using.

If a member of the mainstream media wrote that piece, the author would not be ethically able to name Ibanez as an example, unless he was getting Ibanez’s reaction on the topic of “the blanket of suspicion.” There was an SI article on the same topic, using Albert Pujols as the focus. The reason that article was okay was that Pujols was discussing how sad it is that there are doubts. Plus the article wasn’t done in a way to ignite speculation.

JRod said he would have asked Ibanez about the topic, but bloggers don’t have the same access to the players as regular media. I believe that makes it not okay to name names.

When JRod was on Outside the Lines (picture courtesy of Awful Announcing), Ken Rosenthal blasted him for not showing any decency and writing whatever he wanted. John Gonzalez of the Philly Inquirer took more of a middle ground, saying bloggers are the “wild west of journalism,” and they have to be careful. I agree with John to a point. People can blog about whatever, but when blog sites start to look like news organizations, there have to be some standards.

JRod did not come out and say Ibanez is using…he just said there is reason to doubt him in this day and age. That doesn’t sound terrible, but because JRod’s following is so huge, it certainly created a huge backlash, including from Ibanez himself.

MWSF has the burden of popularity. It has become legitimate. It has become a place people come to for insight and information. It is very easy for someone who is reading online material to forget they are on a blog site as opposed to mainstream media website.

At the end of the day, it’s up to each blogger to realize they have a level of responsibility to fact-check and not spread rumor. JRod found out the hard way that your tone and the way you present facts can do a lot of damage. While he says he doesn’t regret naming Ibanez, he says it has made him think about being careful. I also credit Jrod for reaching out to Ibanez after the story broke in Philadelphia and trying to explain himself.

That’s the type of responsibility, accountability, and decency that needs to be on everyone’s mind next time they blog.

———-

Scott Reister is a featured contributor to Midwest Sports Fans, as well as Dallas Sports Fans.

He is a Sports Anchor for the NBC affiliate in the Tri-Cities and Spokane, WA. To learn more about Scott, visit the Scott Reister bio page on Midwest Sports Fans or check out the Local Sports page on KNDU.com.

To contact Scott: sreister@hotmail.com

Amending the Previously Incomplete Research of “THE” Ibanez Post

Since the proverbial “S” hit the fan on Wednesday regarding my Monday morning blog post on Raul Ibanez, I have been encouraged and empowered by the reaction from so many observers of this hot button story. The most common refrain I have heard is: apologize for nothing. Certainly it is not the only response I’ve gotten, with some being more colorful than others (just read the comment threads), but at least in terms of the people contacting me directly and the cross section of posts I’ve read on this subject, that has been the majority response.

And generally I agree, and I believe my public comments since Wednesday show this.

In my initial reaction to hearing Raul Ibanez’s comments, I did offer up a small but sincere apology for the simple fact that the Ibanez-steroids speculation had advanced to the degree it had. And while I believe that I was justified in what I wrote in the original post at the center of the firestorm, and that the true catalyst for this story blowing up was the mischaracterization of it by the Inquirer piece and other mainstream media observers, there are two important facts that I feel need to be understood and that have made me feel more “apologetic” — for the outcome as it relates specifically to Raul Ibanez, not the actual story, its content and speculation, or its intent — than many have advised me that I should be:

1. I personally do not think Raul Ibanez is on steroids, only that such speculation is warranted for every player in Major League Baseball.
2. I personally do not want to see Raul Ibanez ever test positive or be explicity implicated (which, remember, I did not do) in steroids. Under no circumstances will that make me feel one iota of vindication or satisfaction. None. The realist/pessimist in me cannot overlook that last 15 years of Major League Baseball and exonerate anyone in my own mind; however, the optimist in me sees Raul Ibanez as possessing as much potential as any current player to be a catalyst for restoring fans’ trust. And that is what I want to see happen, and that was actually at the foundation of the original hypothesis for my post, which you may recall was that Ibanez is not on steroids.

With that said, like most writers I know do with pieces they write, I look back on the original Raul Ibanez piece and see plenty of opportunities for it to be a stronger piece of writing. In the interest of full disclosure, honesty, and accountability, here they are:

1. Understanding now how many people skimmed or did not even read the article, I would more clearly and emphatically state what I said above in #1: that I personally do not think Raul Ibanez is on steroids, only that such speculation is warranted for every player in Major League Baseball.

I actually think I am pretty clear on this point, but I do somewhat believe that specifically with respect to how I constructed the article I could have been more clear about this fact for those who only read the title or gave the article a passing glance before passing judgment. This does not in any way mean, however, that I think the article in its current form is inappropriate. The truth is, I could look at any post I’ve made on Midwest Sports Fans, with or without external critiques, and find a way that I think makes it better. In that sense, the Ibanez post is like any other post you’d find scrolling through the archives.

2. In reference to the point above, I do not believe the title is 100% relfective of my own personal feelings on the Ibanez debate. It is in some ways more suggestive and speculative than the article itself when the full article is considered in totality. I could have been more respectful of the fact that titles often frame the mindset with which readers view the contents of an article. This could have helped to stem the tide of mischaracterization that I believe occurred with the article, especially for those who didn’t read it or only skimmed it. Again, I fully stand by the title as is, as I do with the article. But might I change it hindsight knowing what I know? I’d certainly consider it, but definitely wouldn’t feel obligated to do so in any way.

3. Rob Neyer, among others, pointed out one specific phrase I used in the article that I’d like to have back, mainly because it simply does not make sense within the context of the article. This point really has nothing to do with Raul Ibanez. It’s just a spot where I think I was lazy in making sure I was putting forth my best effort as a writer. In fact, every time I read it I hear nails-on-chalkboard in my head. Here is Neyer’s comment, from his Sweet Spot blog on ESPN.com, which I agree with 100%, and said so in his comment thread:

That’s not a particularly good piece of writing, because when you say you’re going to leave the speculation unstated and then spend three paragraphs essentially stating the speculation, you’ve written yourself into an uncomfortable corner. Aside from that single clause, though, has Morris — who’s 27, by the way — written anything here that’s unreasonable? Players cheated. Players have lied about cheating. The players fought for years against any efforts to limit or eliminate the cheating.

I’m sorry, players, but you just don’t deserve the benefit of the doubt.

I left that last part in there because it speaks to my higher point. The article, in some ways that I recognize and acknowledge, is not a particularly good piece of writing, and certainly not what I would consider my best work. (In fact, to be honest, strictly as a piece of writing I think it pales in comparison to the post I wrote today about Frank Thomas and the Chicago White Sox, which will unfortunately get 20,000+ less views and 300+ less comments.)

4. The last area that I would love to have a mulligan on is that I wish I had given myself longer than my usual window of 7:00 am – 9:00 am to research, develop, and write the post. Once 9:00 hits I typically move on to my non-sports blogging work out of necessity, but I do enjoy the daily morning challenge of finding a topic to write about so the content stays fresh on MSF. In this case, had I expected the article to be viewed by more people than the buddy in my fantasy league I referenced and 300-400 other people, I would have gone into far more depth researching it. That I can very honestly say.

So those of you who have criticized the article for not going as far as it could have gone in examining statistical reasons to explain Raul Ibanez’s start to this season, I acknowledge your critique. However, I will say in my own defense that many, many other articles have been written that speculated about individual steroid use without the following attributes that my article contained:

• An initial hypothesis of disproving steroid speculation about an individual.
• Objective statistical analysis of more than just topline numbers. I didn’t just cite Ibanez’s HR rate and SLG% and conclude that it was reasonable to suspect PEDs could possibly be an influence because Ibanez is an MLB player and all MLB players, regardless of if their numbers are up or down, are up for speculation. I tried to give specific analysis of the park factor idea that many have alluded to but that not many have specifically outlined with numbers. The truth is, I think the majority of the people who read through the entire article noticed this and have recognized this.

All that said, in the time since I wrote the article I have found a plethora of sources who have taken what I started (and some who had done it before I wrote my piece) and looked deeper into the possible statistical explanations for Ibanez’s numbers. In the interest of complete fairness to Ibanez, here are some of the most illustrative and objective analyses I’ve found, a few of which I mentioned in a previous post:

This first post, from We’re The Team to Beat, was written before my post was even a consideration in my own mind. Notice in the excerpt how the author acknowledges an ongoing debate regarding Ibanez and steroids (as does this post from the blog It’s All About the Money, Stupid, which was also published before I’d even considered tackling the topic for those of you who think I started this debate):

In one of the topics I’d be chatting in, people discussed Raul Ibanez so I mentioned the piece I wrote yesterday about steroids and good guys like Raul. Of course there are few who believe that Raul honestly did steroids so they kicked around a few other ideas. The most intriguing one I saw mentioned is the split in Raul’s stats between hitting with runners on and no one on base (credit to joboggi).

The author goes on to cite some very compelling numbers showing that Ibanez is historically a much better hitter with men on base, a situation he finds himself in more often with Philly’s potent lineup surrounding him. Thus, an increase in his overall numbers, specifically his AVG/OBP/SLG line and RBI toal, should have been expected this season.

For more proof of just how much better a lineup Ibanez now hits in, consider today’s post from Tom Verducci entitled “Mariners’ offense historically bad…“. Here is the most telling excerpt:

Indeed, the Mariners are a fascinatingly bad offensive team, especially for a team that is playing .500 ball. It’s hard to construct a team in this era, in a league with the DH, that has this much trouble scoring runs. They are last in the majors in runs; yes, worse than the Giants and Padres.

Surely, with a player of Ibanez’s caliber still in the lineup, the Mariners would be better. But these two analyses are very telling of just how impressive Ibanez’s 3-year averages in Seattle were, and how much more protection and run-producing opportunities he has now that he is in Philly.

Update: I forgot about something while initially writing this post. Raul Ibanez has gone from the AL to the NL and that alone provides valid reason to expect his numbers to jump. A commenter on the original post pointed out what should have been obvious to me but wasn’t. I was able to find some numbers to back it up, including the ones below (from this NBCSports.com article) that show the disparity in stats between the leagues during Interleague Play:

Interleague comparison:

Statistic	AL	NL
BA	.275	.251
Runs	1,249	1,014
ERA	3.69	4.55

As a White Sox fan and a guy who always roots for the AL in the All-Star Game, these stats are both expected and exciting. The AL rules.

Another point I’ve cited before, though not in the original article, was made by Dan Levy on his On The DL Podcast. Levy mentions that many players have been implicated or suspected of steroid use because of huge statistical jumps during contract years. Ibanez signed a 3-year, $30 million contract with Philadelphia before this season started, so one line of thinking suggests that he should be less motivated to use PEDs.

Of course, there is a flip side to this line of thinking, and relates to Alex Rodriguez. ARod has said that part of his motivation to use steroids was to live up to the massive contract given to him by the Texas Rangers.

Thus, we have legitimate evidence on both sides of this argument, essentially making it a moot point.

But here is another analysis that is anything but moot.

Joe Posnanski, in an article that I have lauded several times since Wednesday, provides multiple examples of 50- to 55-game streches over Ibanez’s career during which Raul Ibanez has had stretches comparable to how he has started this season. The examples span Ibanez’s full career during his stops in Kansas City, Seattle, and now Philadelphia.

And as I acknowledged in my original article, such stretches are magnified when they begin a season:

Personally, I am withholding judgment until we see a full seasons’ worth of stats. Many players put together terrific runs of 150-250 ABs in the midst of otherwise normal or just slightly above average (based on their career numbers) seasons. Ibanez’s terrific 219 AB run since Opening Day is just magnified right now because it came at the start of the season.

Joe P.’s article simply lends more empirical credence to the idea that Ibanez has proven to be one of those players capable of incredible runs over short sample sizes, and that this should be considered when speculating about the reasons for his hot start.

I also found yet another great statistical explanation for Raul Ibanez putting up much better numbers with the Phillies than he did with the Mariners. The analysis, by Zach Fein of FeinSports.com, includes a discussion of the park factor idea in a manner that is actually more mathematically intricate and in-depth that my own more surface-based analysis of the numbers.

Here is an excerpt of Zach’s discussion of the expected influence of Ibanez changing home parks:

If we adjust his 2006-08 stats from Seattle accordingly, his previously good batting line is now great: .308/.376/.541, with 31 home runs and 116 RBI per year.

His current OBP of .380 is in line with his adjusted OBP, but the slugging percentage is where the major differences lies—an actual .671 versus the adjusted .539.

Why is the disparity so large? Ibanez has hit 20 home runs in just 80 fly balls, a HR/FB ratio of 25 percent. The league average falls around 10 or 11 percent; Ibanez’s was 10.7 and 10.9 percent each of the past two years, respectively.

From 2006 to 2008, Ibanez’s HR/FB percentage was 12.7 percent. Our estimate for his HR/FB percentage this year is about 14.6, which includes a 20 percent increase and a slight regression to the mean (15 percent, to be exact).

Which means that we would expect 11 or 12 home runs in 80 fly balls for Ibanez. (By the way, if we prorate 12 home runs in his 255 plate appearances to average of 681 in his last three years in Seattle, we’d get an average of 32 homers per year. We previously estimated 31 home runs in Philadelphia for Ibanez.)

If we then take away eight of his 20 homers—and add four doubles, assuming half of those eight are outs and half are doubles—his slugging percentage falls to .566 and his OPS to .946. And if those eight non-homers turned out to be all outs, his actual performance this year would actually be worse than what his adjusted stats estimated.

(By the way, my apologies to Zach for including such a large excerpt but I do feel a sense of responsibility to fully present relevant statistical analysis that could help explain Ibanez’s start. I definitely encourage everyone to hop over to Fein Sports and read the article in its entirety…a practice that I am now much more appreciative of than before for reasons that should be obvious.)

After the excerpt above, Zach goes into a detailed explanation of how Ibanez’s current 2009 numbers could also be influenced by random fluctuation, concluding with this definitive statement:

The stats show that aside from his insanely high HR/FB rate (20 home runs in 80 fly balls), Ibanez’s current stats are not too far off from his true talent level. Both his on-base percentage and home run percentage are within one fluctuation of his projection, something we’d see 68 percent of the time, and his batting average is within 1.3 SDs of his projection.

Steroids? Nope.

I know that I have also come across other statistical analyses, but I regret that I did not save the links. Please feel free to post them in the comment section should you know of other good statistical breakdowns of Ibanez’s numbers in 2009. The ones above were the ones that struck me as the most illustrative and persuasive, which is why I have included them here.

So what does this all mean?

Well, looking at Zach Fine’s conclusion, he was able to definitively state what I had hoped to state when I initially set out to write my article: that steroids need not be speculated about as an explanation for Raul Ibanez’s fast start because there is such overwhelming evidence to the contrary. And while I have always maintained that I think Ibanez is clean, and that there are reasonable explanations for his fast start, I will happily admit that I am even more strongly in possession of this thought and belief now.

The great posts referenced above are in many ways more detailed and expository than even my own original post, and I’ve always been open-minded to any analysis or argument that perfectly natural factors are influencing Raul Ibanez’s start.

Still, I guess you could say that I just don’t have the same overall level of trust in Major League Baseball that Zach Fine appears to have. Perhaps his trust extends only to Raul Ibanez and only because he examined it in such a methodical way. Either way, I envy Zach because he accomplished what I wanted to accomplish but ended up failing to do: find enough objective statistics and explanations to overcome my pervasive distrust of Major League Baseball and all of its players, who — in my own mind, and in the mind of others — have been colored with varying shades of reasonable suspicion and speculation.

What I came to realize while writing my original article about Raul Ibanez, and in studying the statistical analyses I’ve found since, is that there is no level of objective analysis that will lead me to completely trust a Major League Baseball player save for a line of urine cups sealed and certified with dates and some synonym for the word “clean” on them. It has nothing to do with Raul Ibanez specifically, and in fact he is one of the guys I believe in the most, even moreso thanks to intelligent analyses that Zach Fine’s.

I continue to withold judgment one way or the other on all players, including Ibanez, until definitive proof is presented of steroid use. Honestly, I hope that by adding the statistical evidence above to what I already presented Monday that many other baseball fans can be persuaded to believe in Raul Ibanez specifically.

I will always be honest and provide my opinion on the topics I cover here at Midwest Sports Fans, because that’s what I believe the duty of a blogger is, but just because I’m skeptical doesn’t mean that I want others to share my skepticism.

Because the skepticism sucks, to be honest with you.

The summer of Big Mac and Sammy was awesome when it happened because we all believed that what we were seeing was legitimate. Only in hindsight do we now look back on it with shameful eyes (even though, remember, that Sammy Sosa has never been explicitly linked to steroids…except by Rick Reilly, of course), and I’d give anything as a baseball fan to return to the innoncence I had then. Contrast your visceral feelings during that summer with your feelings when Barry Bonds hit 73 or when Bonds was chasing Hank. We all know how much of a difference there was with that experience, and in many ways it ruined it for so many of us who live and breathe baseball during the summer.

And, by the way, for those of you who think I am opportunistically jumping on this steroids issue now and making a big deal about it because of the exposure I’ve recently received from the Ibanez story, watch the video below. I wrote the lyrics to this song while hungover one day when I was visiting KVB in Miami. KVB, for the record, is the one who who gets all the credit for masterfully finding the pictures and editing them together. This was somewhere in the neighborhood of 3-4 years ago during January…though I can’t remember the exact date.

What I am trying to show is that steroids in baseball (and football too) had already eroded my trust by that point and pissed me off to the point that it was the first subject I wanted to tackle when we created Flash Sports Tonight. This is a subject about which I am passionate and that I take very seriously, so you’ll have to forgive me if I get a bit defensive when people attack my motives as being anything less than genuine.

Anyway, here is the video, which still sums up by anger and disillusionsment with Major League Baseball.

(And for the record, because we have had a problem this week with people making snap judgments without reading or listening to what is actually said, the video is NOT purporting that Derek Jeter was a steroid user. Listen to the lyrics: “…but not Yankees #2…”. And Kenny Rogers’ appearance has nothing to do with steroids, but rather with how the pine tar incident from the World Series was yet another example of a player cheating his peers to get ahead. I hope think that should be all the clarifications that are necessary.)

So, sadly, thanks to the many cheating liars who have shamed the game of baseball, I continue to fight the whispers of doubt in my own head that persist even for the guys I believe in the most, like Raul Ibanez and Derek Jeter — both of whom would be among the players whose implication in any type of PED use would shock me the most.

To conclude this post, I will excerpt from my own post from last night (in which I discussed how much I want to regain trust in Major League Baseball again), because it sums up my prevailing thoughts on what I hope to see happen moving forward:

…And though that evil little whisper of skepticism mercilessly refuses to purge itself from my ear, I’m still going to fight to be optimistic. And I’m still going to root for Raul Ibanez, as I have been all along, to someday prove to be one of the explicit justifications for that optimism and a foundational test case upon which that optimism can endure.

And to those of you who made it all the way here to the end, you have my utmost and most sincere appreciation.

Have a great weekend everybody.

Baseball Has Become a Joke; Attack the MLB, not Bloggers

Although my area of expertise is fantasy football, I could not leave this subject alone. After taking in the ESPN Outside The Lines debate on Jerod’s article regarding Raul Ibanez, I feel compelled to write in defense of someone I have great respect for.

Over the past five years, we have watched Major League Baseball fall apart right before our very eyes. Decades of baseball players and fans have been destroyed by the widespread disaster of Performance Enhancing Drugs, which has tainted every record broken in the 90’s and beyond, as well as iconic players’ images. In my very own house, I have to deal with the issues of Performance Enhancing Drugs because of these players and their decisions, which affects my children greatly.

Growing up, I idolized Roger Clemens. I wore his number when I played. I tried to pitch just like him, and collected whatever had his name or number on it. My oldest son, only 12, idolizes Manny Ramirez. As he currently plays baseball and is only a few years from high school, I have to explain to him and pray that he does not follow in his idols’ footsteps to get an unfair advantage over his competition.  My youngest son, age 10, worships Alex Rodriguez. He also plays baseball on a traveling team, 44 games a summer. This league is extremely competitive, and again, I fear the worst with what his decisions will be when he reaches more competitive levels of baseball as he ages.

I found out about Clemens at an age where I know better, and can make educated decisions on what should and should not be done to my body. But if I found out my idol did this at the influential age of 10 or 12, would I be so smart? Could my decision-making of what is right and wrong be stronger than the influence, positive or negative, that is displayed by those I look up to?

With that said, how in the hell can anyone look at Ibanez’s numbers and not think exactly what Jerod wrote. He did not say he was on PED’s, but after the likes of Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire, how could you look at this in any other light?

Manny testing positive was the capper for me. If he could test positive, one of the purest hitters in all of baseball, ever, I have to believe that everyone could be on them.  Think about Brady Anderson and Bret Boone. These two went from single digit home run totals one year to hitting 51 home runs and the other batting clean up in the All-Star Game.

Major League Baseball is tainted, and will be for years to come. Jerod spoke on what everyone else thinks, and yes, this is America, where we still do have freedom of speech. He did not accuse Ibanez of taking PED’s, but based on his numbers, how can you not speculate until the positive tests stop coming forward?

If we have this speculation now, wait until the 100+ names from the Alex Rodriguez list are published.

Jerod handled himself with class while the mainstream media tried to beat on his writing to justify their own existence. Jerod was dead on in his writing and his comments. Baseball is a joke, and the negative influence this has on our youth is frightening.

Jerod, my hats off to you for saying what everyone else thinks!

* – Photo Courtesy: BlissTree.com

———-

Kurt Fraschetti

Profootballinsight – Now on Facebook

profootballinsight@live.com

Raul Ibanez Hits Game-Winning Homer in 10th to Lift Phillies Past “Choke Artist” Mets

Remember how many observers, including me, acknowledged recently that Raul Ibanez’s blistering pace to start the 2009 season with was beginning to slow? Well don’t tell that to Raul Ibanez, because he’ll smack a three-run homer on you in the 10th inning to prove that he is not cooling off at all.

And that is exactly what Ibanez did tonight, giving the Phillies a 6-3 victory over the New York Mets.

Ibanez went 1-5 with his lone hit, his 21st home run of the season, driving in the winning run plus two extra, giving him 58 RBIs on the season. The hit also extended Ibanez’s current hitting streak to 11 games. Ibanez’s homer also allowed the Phillies to extend their lead in the NL East to four games over the Mets, who lent credence to Cole Hamels’ recent statements that the Mets are choke artists.

(Oh, and because I’m unnecessarily obsessed with my fantasy baseball team for anyone interested, Ibanez led an offensive explosion by my fantasy team tonight, putting me ahead for the week in my current matchup.)

Well done Raul. Despite the oft-perpetrated perception that I’m a hater, I have been and will continue to be in your corner, rooting for your success to continue despite my indefatigable doubts about MLB as a whole. There is nothing you nor any Major League Baseball player can do right now to have my total trust in your accomplishments, except to keep putting up great numbers, be transparent about your testing, steadfast and upfront in your denials of any and all speculation, and never fail a test. And that is what I hope happens.

Because then, like with any process of rebuilding lost trust, it’s just a matter of time. And while that clock has begun, but the long hand still trails the short one by a little too wide a margin — for me at least.

But nothing would make me happier than for the entire situation of the past week to somehow lead to Raul Ibanez being the poster child for fans regaining trust in baseball players. Sure, it’s speculative to assume that he could be that guy, but no more or less speculative than my optimistic initial hypothesis or my speculative non-conclusion conclusion from Monday.

Because here’s one nice thing about speculation: it can cut both ways. And for whatever reason, probably just sheer exhaustion at dwelling on so many negative aspects of baseball — a game I love — this past week, I’m in the mood to be as positive and upbeat as I can be.

And though that evil little whisper of skepticism mercilessly refuses to purge itself from my ear, I’m still going to fight to be optimistic. And I’m still going to root for Raul Ibanez, as I have been all along, to someday prove to be one of the explicit justifications for that optimism and a foundational test case upon which that optimism can endure.

* – Photo Courtesy: Kevin’s Blog

The Debate Shifts: Who Is the Freaky Guy on the Left?

As the 24-48 hour sports news cycle chews up and spits out the Raul Ibanez story that I’ve unexpectly found myself at the center of this week, the debate is now shifting to far more important topics that whether speculating about individual players being on steroids is valid or how bloggers and the mainstream media will ever co-exist.

And the most important question was recently posed by a commenter over at Awful Announcing in their take on the current steroids speculation debate, in reference to the picture above (courtesy of Awful Announcing):

shacky316 said…
Who is the freaky one on the left???

I’m going to assume that I was in the process of talking at the point where that screenshot was taken, because I don’t remember hawking a loogie at the camera at any point during the interview.

Either way, I’d like to extend my heartfelt gratitude to Daulerio over Deadspin for shining a bright light on my most sensitive of insecurities: that rather then being your garden variety white guy from the Midwest, I appear to be bordering on a skin pigmentation of clear during the OTL interview. While making many relevant and important points about the OTL interview, Daulerio makes perhaps his most relevant when he says:

Jerod Morris has to go outside. Seriously, son, you’re making us all look bad if you don’t spray tan yourself before you go on national television to get yelled at.

I also have to say that I personally found their screenshot of the OTL interview to be far more amusing, for a number of reasons. Poor John Gonzalez does not appear to be as intense as me or in quite the state of ecstacy as our dear friend Ken Rosenthal.

I would like to personally thank my friends over at Cleveland Frowns for chalking up my “freaky” appearance to the obvious lack of makeup that was offered to me before the interview in their post earlier today. However, the truth is that I probably wouldn’t have worn any anyway, and would have been better served by getting a haircut sometime in the last three months and, as Daulerio suggests, emerging from beneath my laptop to behold the glory of the sun every once in a while.

I guess if I’d known that I’d end up on ESPN I would have been more proactive about these issues. But the truth is that I probably would have procrastinated about doing anything about them to analyze a White Sox draft pick or have some unnecessary fun with Photoshop.

And I mean really, when you’re just a blogger who is living in the glorious age of the MLB Network, Gamecast, and Hot Clicks, who needs the sun?

Supporting JRod: Rosenthal and Gonzalez Misguided in Their Criticisms

Any sports fan with a TV probably watched JRod on Outside the Lines earlier today and his dominant stand against the biggest turds: John Gonzalez and Ken Rosenthal. The entire interview consisted of a one-sided argument against my brother’s punctual points and objective speculation, which is justified in this day and age.

Jerod was thrown into the lion’s den and asked to defend his own while being assaulted by Gonzalez and Rosenthal. First of all, the entire interview was one-sided as they only scolded Jerod and his actions.

In the most considerate way imaginable, Jerod did what he does quite well; He searched through facts, made careful and well-assimilated conclusions, and wrote to the general sports fan public about an arguable statement.

Did Jerod ever say “Ibanez is on steroids”? No. He handled everything in the most respectful and non-subjective way possible.

Scroll down in the comments section of the article Jerod posted today and you will find this comment:

Philly Fan said:

I am a Philadelphia Phillies fan. I thank you for your articulation and class in handling this whole situation.

Let me preface this by saying I have no suspicions of Raul Ibanez. I have watched him play all season, and he’s just a flat-out fantastic hitter. One of the best I’ve seen in a few years, and it’s a shame I didn’t get to see more of him before this year.

You have had the unfortunate displeasure of being the first guy to tackle this issue that everyone’s had in the back of their mind. Everyone around the Philly area’s been saying, “He’s clean, I’m sure, but everyone’s gonna bring it up since he’s doing so well.” We knew it was coming. You were just the first.

I am not a fan of Gonzalez’s work at the Inquirer. He seems like the Howard Eskin of the Philadelphia print industry: for lack of a better term, a “shit-stirrer.” His attempt is to be tongue-in-cheek, but he rather seems to just come off more like someone saying something to get a rise out of people most of the time.

My guess is that Ibanez got the spin-doctored version of this story from Gonzo or someone who read Gonzo, which is unfortunate. He doesn’t have the time to check back and read your specific article and understand the context, and I think that is the fault of the Philly media.

I had heard everything about this article of yours, and felt the need to read it myself. It was actually a much better article than I anticipated based on the reports, and your conclusion, to me, seemed to be more in line with, “There’s a lot of good explanations aside from PEDs” than with “he’s probably doing them.”

I don’t know how much this matters to you, but I just wanted to say that I find no fault with you or Ibanez, simply fault with the middlemen in the Philly media who poorly reported on this.

Wow. Gonzalez what is your response to that? One of your own called you out as being a “shit-stirrer”. The man that should be attacked wasn’t. He just sat there like the ignorant, ill-informed writer he is. Rosenthal attacked based on the fact he has nothing to say except constant questions about his sources. IT’S A BLOG no one has a source when they talk about speculation and thoughts from one fan’s perspective.

Have anything to say? Post it here. I will gladly refute any of your simple, barbaric, and tacky comments. This is because 80% of you idiots haven’t even fully read the article you’re leaving comments in, let alone the articles written in response to Ibanez by Jerod and John Gonzalez. Foolish. Ignorance is the stepping stone of too many naïve accusations and scoldings, just like the fools who are attacking JRod on this website.

Mainstream Sports Media Scared Stiff and Not Sure of Next Move

After viewing and reviewing today’s episode of Outside the Lines, I could not help but begin to wonder why Ken Rosenthal and John Gonzalez were feigning such outrage towards Jerod’s post regarding Raul Ibanez.

It became easier to understand once I realized that Rosenthal had not even read the post before appearing on television to discuss its significance (now that’s what I call journalistic integrity).

Rosenthal admits and agrees that, “all players today must face this kind of scrutiny because of all that has happened in the past.” Apparently, he meant all players except for Raul Ibanez.

The fact of the matter is, ALL players; even players who are NOT performing unusually or particularly well; should be scrutinized for two reasons:

1) Several of them have already been caught cheating.

2) The Collective Bargaining Agreement protects players from being blood-tested.

So Ken Rosenthal feels that JRod’s post (which I believe he neglected to take the time to read) was “wrong” and “unfair”. He went on to illogically back up this point by saying that this never would have happened 10 years ago. Nice logic, Kenny.

Next, Rosenthal interrupts Jerod with some more of his brilliant logic. While JRod is explaining that his article carefully separates accusation and speculation, Ken chimes in with, “then how did we get here? How is Raul Ibanez responding to this yesterday?”

Those questions are so stupid and illogical, that I dont know where to begin. It is my estimation, that “we got here” because mainstream media is forced to sensationalize stories to stay afloat. That, and the fact that neither Ibanez NOR Rosenthal took the time to read and digest Jerod’s post. Gonzalez may or may not have misunderstood Jerod’s article; but he mis-characterized it nonetheless. Ibanez was NOT responding to Jerod’s blog, as Ken Rosenthal mistakenly points out. Ibanez was responding to the SPIN that Gonzalez put on JRod’s blog. Spinning things to suit one’s argument is very easy. Check this shit out:

JOHN GONZALEZ ACCUSES RAUL IBANEZ OF BEING “PAINFULLY OUT OF TOUCH”

(Ibanez referred to the blogger as a 42 year old living in his mom’s basement —> Gonzalez said on TV that “people who think bloggers are irrelevant and living in their parent’s basement are painfully out of touch” —> Gonzales thinks Ibanez is out of touch.)

When prompted to explain the “simple standard of decency” that Ken Rosenthal thinks all bloggers & journalists should adhere to, he spews out the following rule of thumb: “Would you want this written about yourself?”

Brilliant. Apparently, journalists are only supposed to report good news and present positive opinions and editorials. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Bob Woodward.

I think i figured out why these guys were so pissed. Newspapers are dying. Bloggers and blog sites are growing exponentially. It is ten times harder for John Gonzalez to get people to read his column than it would have been say… 10 years ago?

Here’s an example. Television used to be monopolized by ABC, NBC, and CBS. If you were on TV, you had a HUGE audience, no matter what. Now that TV viewers have the option of hundreds of channels, dish networks, and the Internet, it has become increasingly difficult to grab the attention of a large market share.

Similarly, the emergence of the blogosphere has quickly taken away the audience and influence of old-world “journalists” like Ken Rosenthal. The Internet has slowly turned sports journalism into a meritocracy, where information is sought out by the people, and not force-fed to them by the few. People now have options when it comes to where they will get their sports news and info, and that scares the shit out of the “boys club” that is old-school mainstream media. Ken Rosenthal is a whiny bitch who needs to spend more time honing his craft, and less time trying to eliminate the competition that can only make him better. I can call him a bitch for two reasons:

1) The 1st Amendment of the United States Constitution

2) I’m pretty sure he doesent read articles all the way to the end.

Initial Reactions After the Outside the Lines Taping

I just got back from the studio that ESPN sent me to for the taping of Outside the Lines this afternoon. I have not watched it, and could not see either Rosenthal or Gonzalez during the taping — just stared into a camera with a mic on — so I look forward to seeing how everything looks when I go home and watch it.

Update: The video is posted on ESPN.com now. I’ll probably post again later with more thoughts, because after watching it I definitely have a few more things to say. Anyway, here it is:

Here are my initial thoughts and reactions (written before I had a chance to watch it):

Great experience and I appreciate ESPN allowing me to come on and be accountable for and defend my post.

The most consistent reaction I am getting from people who watched it is that they felt like Ken Rosenthal and John Gonzalez were attacking me. I have to admit that it is hard to assess that with the mic in my ear as my only link to what was going on, but I did feel like my post was being unfairly characterized as being more accusatory than it was. I don’t particularly have a problem with this because, well, it is what it is, but that is the reason why I a) kept coming back to the point that I never accused Raul Ibanez of using steroids, only stated that I thought speculation was reasonable; and b) tried to bring the discussion back to the larger issue of why genuine and well-intentioned sports fans like myself would write such a post: the recent history of Major League Baseball that has conditioned us all to suspect the worst.

One point I did want to expound upon further and I’m not sure how well I explained it on the show draws on what Ken Rosenthal said about it being a different era than it was 10 years ago. Your darn right it’s a different era. Whereas before players, teams, and owners had to do more guesswork about how fans were reacting and responding to the stories published by the MSM and the events on the field, blogs give them a direct view into the heartbeat of the group of people who make the games possible: fans.

And guess what? The reality is that whether it be in stadiums, on the radio, in sports bars, in private conversations, on message boards, on Twitter…everywhere…sports fans, and especially baseball fans, are disappointed and frustrated that we can’t trust what we see, and an era has emerged in which everyone is suspected. Guilty until proven innocent may be the burden proof in a court of law, but innocent until proven guilty has become the reality of the sports world with respect to baseball and its fans. I, nor any of my fellow sports fans and bloggers, should apologize for living in a reality created by the players, owners, union, and Major League Baseball. We’re just reacting honestly to what we see.

As I said on the show at the beginning, though I think I stuttered a bit because I was nervous, if Raul Ibanez read only the Philadelphia Inquirer account of my piece, I understand why he’s upset. It characterized my post as calling out Ibanez out for being a steroid user. How ironic is it, then, that I state in my post that my entire goal in writing it was to debunk the steroid spectulation that I’d heard elsewhere?

And even if Raul Ibanez had read my piece, and maybe he has — I don’t know — I would assume that he’d be upset to have his name associated with steroids. My entire point is wondering whether I’m really the person he should upset with.

Update: I do want to make one more point regarding Ibanez. I absolutely applaud him for standing up and addressing the speculation right off the bat. Good for him. And if really is willing to take a test right now and everything else he said, I applaud him even more. It is no guarantee of anything, because we all remember Rafael Palmeiro shaking his finger at Congress, but it is a hell of a lot better than so many guys who have just sat back and said nothing. I’ll say again what I’ve said before: I am rooting for Raul Ibanez, I like him and respect him as a player, and absolutely hope he is clean. I think he misunderstood what I was trying to express in my post, but regardless, I applaud him wholeheartedly for being proactive in responding.

Baseball has had a problem with steroids for a long time, and what’s happened over the last 48 hours is proof that the problem lingers perhaps moreso than we all even thought. But instead of the players or Major League Baseball having to wonder what people are thinking, their most die-hard fans are publishing their thoughts every day in sports blogs. What a tremendous opportunity for the leagues and players to listen to the people who pay for and support their profession.

Get upset that the steroids story won’t go away; I don’t blame you. But I didn’t create the problem and I certainly didn’t start the speculation. Tell me how my post is all that different from the story in Sports Illustrated from earlier this year about Albert Pujols? The story addresses steroid rumors that have circulated about Pujols while stating the plight current baseball stars face because of the inevitable cloud of suspicion that accompanies great on-field production:

But this is not a great time to be the best anything in baseball. Barry Bonds was the best player, and now he is facing federal perjury charges. Roger Clemens was the best pitcher, and every other day another newspaper story takes him down one more notch. Mark McGwire was the best home run hitter, and after telling Congress that he did not want to talk about the past, he has all but disappeared into a Pynchon-like seclusion. Alex Rodriguez was the best player, and now he tentatively admits guilt while A-ROID! headlines splash and fans heckle and a hip injury shuts him down.

…

This is the uneasy state of the new baseball hero. Albert Pujols knows he cannot prove to people that he has never used steroids. He knows that there will always be doubters.

That article was written by Joe Posnanski, who I’m a big fan of, and by no means am I attacking him. Quite the contrary, I think the piece was great and addressed an issue that most, if not all, baseball fans have either discussed or thought about. I just want people who think I went out on some crazy limb and who accume me of being some whack blogger to understand that even the MSMers are acknowledging the cold, hard reality that Major League baseball faces.

That was my intention as well. I wish that a fresh comment from Raul Ibanez had accompanied my original post, as Posnanski has from Pujols in his article, but the truth is that I did not feel it would be possible for me to get one. So I linked out to the ESPN article in which Ibanez has denied steroid use in the past and was objective as I could possibly be. And I emailed the Phillies after the fact to open up Midwest Sports Fans for him to say anything he wanted in response.

In the end, however, the sad reality of baseball won out; and even for a guy that I wanted to completely exonerate from speculation, I could not honestly bring myself to do it. As I’ve said repeatedly, I personally think Ibanez is clean and I’m making no judgments whatsoever based on 250 ABs. All I’ve ever said is that the speculation was out there — it’s out there for every baseball player — and try as I might, I was not able to provide enough concrete evidence for myself to personally shut the door to the speculation.

Is that wrong? Some people apparently think so. I just look at it as the reality of the situation, and we can either hide from it and pretend it does not exist, as we all did — fans and media — during the 90s and early 00s, or engage in genuine debate about it. Look at the comments to the article. Because I write my piece, plenty of Ibanez fans have come forward with more compelling statistical evidence that I didn’t even think about. If anything, when you combine Ibanez’s strong rebuttal of the mischaracterized notion from the Philadelphia Inquirer that I’d accused him of using, and the great number of defenders who have discussed his character and provided additional statistical reasons for his success, I think more people may now be inclined to believe in his numbers that perhaps were before. Who knows.

The truth is, as I’ve commented on the posts here at MSF, I personally believe in him more now. Not totally — I don’t believe in any baseball player totally — but moreso than when I hit publish on the original article.

So all of the anger in the world can be directed at me. I guess on a certain level I understand it, and I can understand Raul Ibanez erroneously speculating that I’m a 42-year old blogger who lives in my mother’s basement — I guess that if Ibanez is really clean you could say we’re even on speculation that turns out to not quite match reality — but don’t let anger and emotional reactions divert your attention from the main point:

Major League Baseball has reached a point where everyone, including two of its most high character, consistent, and hard working players, are the subject of general speculation by genuine baseball fans about whether or not their numbers are legit — baseball fans who want nothing more than to believe in their heroes whose mighty on-field exploits are a daily obsession for so many of us.

Say what you will about my post, about me, and about bloggers in general. But to me that is the saddest fact of all.

Update: One final thought, as people are calling and texting me about what was said on Around the Horn. Apparently Jay Mariotti, who I’ve been very hard on in the past here on MSF, agreed with me or defended me to some extent. I haven’t seen it, but this is what I’m being told. If so…I’d like to extend my wholehearted appreciation to Jay for the support.

Raul Ibanez Addresses “Pathetic and Disgusting” Steroid Speculation

This morning in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Jim Salisbury reports about an “angry” Raul Ibanez who is apparently a little peeved at “cowardly” comments made by a “42-year old blogger typing in his mother’s basement” regarding the possibility that Ibanez’s fast start in 2009 could be chemically enhanced.

Though not cited by name, I have to assume that the cowardly idiot in question is Midwest Sports Fans’ very own…me.

A quick recap of the events of the last 48 hours:

A couple of days ago my buddy posted on our fantasy baseball message board and strongly implied that Raul Ibanez must be on something to be playing so great, and that any objective analysis would come to this conclusion.

The next morning, I decided that my blog post for the day will be to prove my buddy wrong by finding as many objective objective statistics (park factors, lineup effects, etc.) as possible to explain Ibanez’s start and debunk the steroid speculation in a perfectly reasonable and objective way.

While researching and typing the article I realized that no matter how much I wanted to completely remove steroid and PED suspicion from my mind, it was impossible for me to do so. Whereas the discussion of Citizens Bank Park and Safeco Field offered specific statistical evidence to draw conclusions from, there was nothing similar for me to draw such a conclusion from regarding steroid or PED use, save for the fact that Ibanez has not failed a test. And while this fact is certainly a strong testament to my personal opinion that he is clean (remember, all I said was that the speculation itself was justified, not that I personally thought he was using) many people would have said the same thing about Manny Ramirez during his ridiculous run last season: that he’d never failed a test. And speculation about him would have been (and perhaps was) shot down as unfair and “cowardly.”

Yet, look what happened at the start of this season to Ramirez.

Among other speculative statements in my article about Raul Ibanez, I wrote the following:

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.

The next morning, yesterday, I woke up to find that John Gonzalez of the Philadelphia Inquirer has taken me to task for the article with his own rebuttal titled “A cheap shot at Ibanez.” You can view Gonzalez’s article here.

In all, somewhere in the neighborhood of 10-15 other sites linked to the Ibanez article here at MSF and at least one podcast discussed it for 5-10 minutes. I also began receiving hate mail from Philly fans calling me a “scumbag” and using the f-word like it’s a conjunction. (This does not really bother me though. I appreciate their passion and willingness to defend their guy. If someone had written a similar article about Jermaine Dye, though I like to think I would have used more tact, I would have argued with them too simply because he’s “my guy”.)

After exchanging a few pleasant emails with John Gonzalez about both of our articles, I contacted the Philadelphia Phillies to let them know about the article I’d written and to provide Midwest Sports Fans as a forum if Raul Ibanez or anyone from their organization had something to say in response. I was not sure if they choose to use Midwest Sports Fans as a forum for such a rebuttal, but I had not been trying to make nameless or faceless accusations completely out of reach from the one speculated against.

(And for the record, I’m a 27-year old professional writer and sports fanatic who contributes to Midwest Sports Fans, not a middle-aged guy banging away at a computer in my mother’s basement as was speculated in today’s Philadelphia Inquirer. But, since I speculated about Raul Ibanez, I don’t begrudge him for speculating about my existence. And like I hope to be about my steroid speculation, he was wrong about me. There is a lesson there somewhere I’m sure…)

Then this morning, upon arriving at the office and thinking the whole Ibanez thing was over, I opened up TweetDeck and noticed a decent amount of @JerodMSF messages from Philly fans such as this one: “The idiot who started it all was @JerodMSF. There was no “speculation” until he caused it with the stroke of a key.” The fan who tweeted that then sent me a link to today’s article in the Philadelphia Inquirer in which Raul Ibanez responds to my article.

Here are a few of the highlights:

“I’ll come after people who defame or slander me,” he said before last night’s game against the New York Mets. “It’s pathetic and disgusting. There should be some accountability for people who put that out there.”

“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,” Ibanez said. “I’ll give you back every dime I’ve ever made” if the test is positive.

“I’ll put that up against the jobs of anyone who writes this stuff,” he said. “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.”

“It’s unfair because this story should be about how hard work, determination, and desire trumps chemicals and shortcuts,” he said. “That should be the message: desire, character, work ethic. But some guy who doesn’t know me – one idiot – says something like this. They should be held accountable. It’s cowardly.”

And now I would like to offer up a response of my own.

Here is what I feel bad about: that my post became a lightning rod for speculation about a guy who very well could be totally clean, about a player who I like and admire, and about a player who by all accounts is a high character, hard working, team first player. And I do agree that such speculation is unfair as it relates specifically to Raul Ibanez, who has said in the past that he has never used PEDs and who has never once been implicated in any investigation or failed any test (which I acknowledged in my post).

If someone wants to call me cowardly or idiotic for bringing the question up and adding another public forum to an in-progress debate that may have no basis beyond speculation, I’m fine with that. When you publish content for public consumption about public figures who are real people, there are potential consequences. I’ll be honest and say that I did not consider the potential fallout from the article. I had a hypothesis to start from (that objective analysis would show no reason to suspect Ibanez) and did not find enough statistical evidence to support my hypothesis. So I wrote what I felt. And I feel bad that it’s cast a negative light on one specific individual who most likely does not deserve it.

Plus, I’ve found more statistical evidence since I wrote my article that further explains why Ibanez might be off to such a great start. This article shows how much better Ibanez is hitting with men on base, a situation he finds himself in more often with Philly than he did with Seattle. And the podcast I mentioned above that discussed the story, On the DL, brought up another good point: a lot of guys who were implicated for steroid use in the past did so in a contract year. Raul Ibanez already got his contract, which means there is ostensibly one less reason for him to feel incentive to use PEDs.

Had I considered these two facts when writing my article, its speculative nature probably would have been a bit less…although, admittedly, not completely removed.

So I’ll accept some level of accountability and offer a sincere apology to Raul Ibanez for advancing a public debate that, in his specific case, is very likely unfair and perhaps even unnecessary.

However, I’m not accepting complete blame and accountability for being the person who started this. I just tried to do my homework and write a cogent response to speculation I had heard from other sources, and to comment on what I considered to be a thought-provoking and engaging topic that was already being discussed publicly and privately. The post did not even receive much pub or traffic until it was mentioned in the Philadelphia Inquirer yesterday, but based on the response and the comments the post has received, it seems to me to have proven to be both thought-provoking and engaging.

And that, to me, is what the blogosphere is about.

Midwest Sports Fans is obviously not part of the mainstream media, but rather is a public forum for grassroots discussion of topics that are of interest to sports fans in general, and topics that are not typically discussed by the MSM. As one of the main contributors of MSF, it is my job to direct the discussion to topics that are interesting and compelling and that are not always simple regurgitations of what readers could find elsewhere. In addition to our regular schedule posts that are aimed at simply providing useful information, I try to open up discussions that I might have with my buddies sitting around the table at BW3s.

That is where blogs and MSM sites differ, in my opinion: blogs are, by their nature, more interactive and more open — and oftentimes more controversial — and are more reflective of the sensibilities of real sports fans; whereas the MSM is usually more geared towards reflecting the sensibilities of reporters and informing sports fans of the facts by which we develop our thoughts and opinions. The best MSM sites have learned how to incorporate the interactive, fan-centric qualities of blogs and vice versa, but clear distinctions still exist.

When you look at the post about Raul Ibanez in particular, what it was was not, I suppose, was “safe”. It is not the type of story you would expect to read in the Philadelphia Inquirer. But much of it was based on facts and was an attempt to research and be objective about a subject, PEDs in baseball, for which emotion and subjectivity so often frame the discussion. And as you will see if you read the comment thread, I am clearly open to opinions that differ from my own, and to arguments that attempt to further debunk the Ibanez steroid speculation (my original aim in the first place).

Whether or not I accomplished my goal of being objective, thought-provoking, and compelling is up to the individual people who read it. From my standpoint, minus the anger that Raul Ibanez clearly feels towards the post, which I regret, I think it was a success.

I will stand firm by the statement I made yesterday in my own post’s comment thread and in the comment sections of other posts that discussed the Ibanez story: if Raul Ibanez, or any other player who is speculated about for putting up great numbers, is upset at the speculation, the majority of their anger and venom in my opinion should be directed towards their past and present peers who used steroids and PEDs.

I’m not coming out of the blue by speculating that an guy in his upper-30s who is putting up numbers that are outrageous by his own career standards might have used PEDs. In fact, there are so many examples of this happening over the past decade that it’s mind-boggling. This is not Raul Ibanez’s fault, which is why I even described my own post as potentially unfair in its title.

However, in the immortal words of Rasheed Wallace, it is what it is and it do what it do.

If you’re an aging baseball player and you explode out of the gate with a HR rate more than double your career average, a great many baseball fans are going to wonder whether everything is on the up and up. The testing policy recently instituted by Major League Baseball has helped to mitigate that somewhat, but the mental and emotional conditioning to suspect steroids that baseball fans underwent took 10-15 years to develop. It’s not going away in 2 or 3.

And there is another place where Raul Ibanez and other players like him who are caught in the steroids crossfire can direct their anger and frustration: at their own union and Major League Baseball. Those two entities allowed steroids and PEDs to consume baseball and sully the reputation of all players, even the clean ones, by not agreeing to a testing policy sooner. I certainly blame both of them for my guarded and suspicious mindset when I see numbers like what Raul Ibanez is putting up this year. And honestly it pisses me off a little bit, and it should piss of Raul Ibanez and other such players who vehemently claim their innocence and who value their reputations and obviously are forthright in defending themselves.

I also will not apologize for my article in totality because I did not write it simply to drum up speculation or to attract attention. In no way was I trying to be sensational for the sake of being sensational. I was just trying to write an objective, well-researched article. I was being completely honest in how I felt about a very nuanced and complicated situation.

Over the past two decades we have repeatedly seen the media come under fire for falling in love with, for instance, the Big Mac-Sammy story back in the day and not asking more questions. Now, when those questions are asked, they are “cowardly” and “idiotic”? I understand why Raul Ibanez would specifically consider me to be these things, and perhaps I picked a terrible example to speculate about, but in the grand scheme of things isn’t this what baseball fans and even players were clamoring for?

Maybe I’m falsely lumping my own post into an altruistic bucket in which it does not belong, but I thought we had all agreed that there was a new responsibility on the part of the media and fans to not just blindly sit back and allow Major League Baseball to pull the wool over our eyes.

(A quick aside: Look, for the record, I don’t consider myself part of the mainstream media by any means. I’m a blogger, and while the lines are becoming more blurred, I believe the distinction still very much exists – but that bloggers do have a responsibility to be accountable even when, like me, they are just creating second hand reports for a grass roots audience, and opinions that are based on the work of others and statistics in the public domain, and publish them for public consumption.)

In an effort to be more vigilant and suspicious, won’t our speculation sometimes produce false positives? If Raul Ibanez really is clean, then my post included speculation — which, I remind you, did not originate on Midwest Sports Fans — that will turn out to have no basis. But in many, many other past and perhaps even future cases, taking a player of the same age with similar statistics, the speculation would have proven true. So I may have erred in the player I chose to analyze and speculate about, but — and here was one of the main points of my article — is such speculation really that unjustified?

In the specific case of Raul Ibanez, perhaps it is. But for baseball players in general, sadly I think that it is justified. I’m sorry, but the way I see it the burden is on the players and league to regain the trust of the fans; it is not the burden of the fans to once again place blind faith in the players and a league that for all intents and purposes gave its implied approval for steroid and PED use to run rampant.

I would have defended Manny Ramirez against anyone. He was one of those guys that I honestly thought never took steroids. Well, that rug got pulled right out from under me (and, granted, also proved that the new testing system is starting to work). If Raul Ibanez never fails a test, my trust in him will grow. But I’m not just giving it blindly anymore. Perhaps I should have been more careful in publicly expressing such thoughts about a specific individual — I’ll grant you that — but in general, I am not going to offer a comprehensive apology for discussing speculation that did originate on Midwest Sports Fans (look here, here, and here), especially when my initial goal was to objectively explain away the speculation in the first place.

So, in summation, I offer my apology to Raul Ibanez for upsetting him with the words I published two days ago. As I’ve said numerous times since posting it, I am a big fan of Raul Ibanez as a person and a player, I considered him a huge sleeper coming into this season and expected better numbers from him this year, and he is one of the primary reasons that my fantasy baseball team is at the top of my league’s standings. I certainly have nor had no vendetta against him.

But to the larger issue of simply saying that I believe the curious ongoing speculation about the reason for his torrid start is justified, I will not apologize; and though not all baseball fans will agree with me, especially Philly fans in this specific case, I do think that the majority of baseball fans will be on my side. We’ll see I guess.

It is my sincere hope, however, that as more time passes we as baseball fans we can find ourselves placing more trust in Major League Baseball’s testing system and, in turn, more trust in numbers like what we are seeing from Raul Ibanez thus far in 2009. Though I specifically discussed Raul Ibanez in my post, it is this more general conclusion that I came to: that sadly, we are simply not a place where such trust has been reestablished…yet.

I look forward to the day when we get there.