Format for waiver wire watch:

• 50-75% Owned- Player qualifies for 10-team league
• 25-49% Owned- Player qualifies for 12-team league
• Less than 25% Owned- Player qualifies for 14-team league

Again, these percentages are found on Yahoo! Fantasy Baseball.

10-team league hitter to watch

Gaby Sanchez, FLA, OF

After showing great power potential during his rookie season with the Marlins, Gaby Sanchez has built upon his 2010 success by turning in a solid 2011 campaign.

His power production has been above average again this season, as he has belted 18 HR, while driving in 72 and scoring 68 runs.  Sanchez has especially pounded left-handed pitching this season by batting .302 against them with a .417 OBP and .500 SLG.  Also, Sanchez has started to pick up the pace again after having a subpar month of August.  He has 6 RBIs in his last 7 games, and his OBP has risen by 8 points during that span.

It seems likely that Sanchez will finish the year strong, so he is someone to keep an eye on as he can hit HRs in bunches.

10-team league pitcher to watch

Edwin Jackson, SP, STL

Since being traded to the Cardinals mid-season, Edwin Jackson has been very impressive for St. Louis.

In 9 starts with the Cardinals, Jackson has a record of 4-2 with an ERA of 3.39.  In Jackson’s past 4 starts, he is 2-0 with an ERA of 2.08.  Thus, he has been especially good of late.  He has posted an overall ERA of 2.77 in September, and has also struck out 13 batters in 13 IP during this time.  Furthermore, Jackson has thrown 5 quality starts in his last 7 starts, and he has lasted at least 6 innings in all but 1 of those games.

Jackson is in a great groove right now, and he also can add stability to any fantasy rotation at this point in the season.

12-team league hitter to watch

Raul Ibanez, OF, PHI

Raul Ibanez has been one of the more underestimated MLB players over the course of the past decade, and in 2011 this veteran has proven that he still has some gas left in the tank.

After being pretty inconsistent for the first 5 months of the season, Ibanez has gone crazy so far in September.  He has a BA of .370 for the month to go along with a .414 OBP, and a .593 SLG.  It is also noteworthy that Ibanez plays in one of the best ballparks for offense in Philadelphia.  At Citizens Bank Park this year, Ibanez has batted a solid .293, with 13 of his 18 HR, and 52 of his 72 RBI.

Ibanez has been known to go on crazy hot streaks every once in awhile and it looks like he might be in the midst of one right now.

12-team league pitcher to watch

Jason Motte, RP, STL

Jason Motte has thrived in closer’s role ever since taking over earlier this month.  Overall, Motte is having a brilliant season out of the Cardinals’ bullpen as well.

He has a 4-2 record with an ERA of 1.61.  Righties are batting a minuscule .165 off of Motte, and his road ERA is 0.90.  Thus, Motte is obviously capable of performing well under pressure.  He is also in the midst of a streak in which he has allowed just 1 earned run since July.  Motte has been perfect in his saves opportunities since taking over the closer’s role as well.

It is extremely rare to see a lights-out closer available this late in the season, so take advantage if you can.

14-team league hitter to watch

Jesus Montero, C, NYY

Jesus Montero is one of the more hyped prospects that the Yankees have had in a while.  Before the season, Baseball America rated Montero as the 3^rd best prospect in the MLB.  That is pretty big hype to live up to, but in his first month in the Major Leagues, Montero seems to be everything Yankee fans had hoped for.

In 8 games this season, Montero is batting .308 with 3 HR, 6 RBI, and 6 runs scored.  He also has an OBP of .400 and a SLG of .654.  In parts of 5 minor league season, Montero has a cumulative BA of .308, an OBP of .366, and a SLG of .501.  He has the ability to hit for power and drive in runs.  This makes him a dangerous fantasy weapon for the remainder of the season, and in the future as well.

14-team league pitcher to watch

Wade Davis, SP, TB

Wade Davis has quietly put together a solid campaign for the Rays this season.  He has a record of 10-8 with an ERA of 4.36.  However, Davis has been especially good of late.

In the month of September, Davis has a record of 2-0 with an ERA of 2.87.  In addition, his WHIP for the month is 0.96, and his BAA is .200.  In Davis’s last 5 starts, he has thrown 4 quality starts and 2 complete games.  Another very telling statistic of Davis is that the Rays have won 7 out of his last 8 starts.  This seems to indicate that Davis has the potential to earn a few more wins for your team during these last couple weeks of the season.

But just one day after rubbing some dirt on the injury, White was in the Louisiana Superdome competing at a high level in a game versus the New Orleans Saints, and he would go one to play the remainder of that season including the playoffs.

At the time Reggie credited his religious faith along with divine intervention for being able to return to the football field. A more secular view would have Reggie as an absolutely freakish physical specimen who was able to withstand a tremendously high pain threshold. In these parts here in Wisconsin, most took Reggie White at his word, attributing his staying on the field to a combination of the two possibilities.

Which leads us to the current saga of Albert Pujols, who has returned to the St. Louis Cardinals lineup (Cowboy Bob Orton wrap and all) just two weeks after sustaining a broken forearm – far ahead of all conceivable timetables. Two weeks from now we could be talking about how Ryan Braun wound up missing more time with his current sore calf.

Not surprisingly, Albert’s return has been met with skeptics. Recent entries by the fantasy sports site Rotoworld were filled with comments such as ‘Maybe the guy isn’t human after all’ and ‘We’ve run out of adjectives for the guy’.

Then came Jeff Passan’s piece on Yahoo Sports on Wednesday, a mainstream writer on a mainstream outlet. The article was titled ‘Skeptics View Pujols’ Return as Unnatural’

Passan explains in the piece that Albert’s return to the lineup is being held under the microscope in baseball’s post-PED era, with players such as Pujols and Jose Bautista as targets who now have to deal with unfounded speculation.

In this era, a baseball star simply cannot win. In 2004, Jack McDowell, then himself a writer for Yahoo, speculated about Mark Prior’s Achilles tendon injury, noting Prior’s slow recovery as a ‘tell-tale’ sign of a player whose muscles got too strong for his tendons. Days later Dr. Blackjack was forced to backpedal from that diagnosis.

Nancy Grace would even be hard-pressed to put MLB players under the coals like some so-called experts and mainstream media do.

The evolution of the social media world has changed the landscape greatly in just the two short years since the infamous Jerod Morris/Raul Ibanez firestorm. As Passan mentioned in his article, Twitter is now the vehicle for anyone to speculate anything about sports – or anything else. Two years ago it was Jerod’s piece that wound up getting Ibanez’s attention. Put Ibanez’s torrid start in 2011 v. 2009 and Raul would be speculated on social media well before Jerod’s long, thought-out piece.

Earlier this year Chicago Bears quarterback Jay Cutler didn’t have to wait until the next morning or even the post-game talk shows to hear himself labeled as a ‘quitter’ after the NFC Championship Game; many of his own NFL brethren were doing that long before the game ended.

It comes with the territory now for athletes and other figures in other professions: guilty before being proven innocent, then perhaps still labeled as guilty.

Lance Armstrong is a perfect Exhibit A in that regard. I don’t like commenting much about Lance because, to be honest, I don’t know much about cycling except that biking over 2,000 miles up and down mountains for three weeks straight has to be the most grueling thing imaginable.

But six years after his final Tour win, Lance still faces the music from those who continue to attempt to connect the PED dots throughout the French Pyrenees. Other cyclists have gotten busted. Floyd Landis got busted. French newspapers say he’s taken stuff. And now this year one of Armstrong’s former teammates called him out. As Tony Soprano would say, ‘The hustle never ends…’

Which leads us back to Pujols, who remains on pace to challenge baseball’s all-time career records in home runs (762, possibly around 800 by the time A-Rod gets through) and RBI’s (currently 2,297), and doing it playing his home games in unfavorable home run parks through his career. This is Pujols’ eleventh season in the majors. Making a rough guess that he may have been tested ten times per year since PED testing began in MLB, it’s conceivable that Albert has been tested close to a hundred times by now.

And he has come back clean all hundred times.

100-0 would be a pretty good record. But if Albert wants to play through 2020 he better be sure to finish his testing career at 200-something and 0. Because if Pujols fails just once, then he immediately gets thrown into the same discard pile as Sosa, McGwire, Palmeiro, Man-Ram, A-Rod, etc., etc., etc….

And Albert’s slate has to remain clear past retirement and beyond. A legacy could even be stained in the future by, let’s say, someone who was a briefly a teammate saying something in some piece many years from now.

It’s very unfair, but unfortunately it is the nature of the beast that has been created. The culture of performance-enhancing techniques in sports is not clearly marked in black and white either. Even coach Bob Knight referred to something as simple as Gatorade as a ‘performance enhancer’. The reference was over the top, but not totally crazy. In the court of public opinion amateur attorneys can twist things any way they can see fit.

A professional sports career is supposed to follow a distinct and logical curve. It begins in a player’s early 20′s, peaks somewhere in the late 20s, then settles in slightly below that peak during the early 30s before declining slowly until even the best performers are forced to give up the game in their late 30′s/early 40′s at the latest. Any deviation from that curve (See McGwire, Bonds, and Clemens late-career), and eyebrows are immediately raised.

Apparently now eyebrows are also raised simply by coming back earlier than anticipated after an injury, or perhaps simply being ‘injury-prone’ as the Blackjack-Prior case showed; there seems to be no escaping the inevitable ‘smell test’.

The good news is that Bud Selig and Major League Baseball no longer turn a blind eye like they did from the mid-90′s-early 2000′s when the problem was ridiculously obvious. The players are now regularly tested, and I’m personally one of those who gives all performers a clean slate and considers them innocent until proven otherwise, and not the other way around.

Albert Pujols and other superstars at least deserve the benefit of that doubt.

An interesting place to focus this week is in the outfield. Many players that are rarely owned have been seeing a lot of playing time lately and may continue to see more as managers evaluate their teams heading into the second half of the season.

Catcher

Just as the hype over Miguel Olivo started up, it has died down. For those managers who have been taking a chance on his services behind the plate, watch for his MRI results. That string of 0/4 games, four in five days, to go with a bad hammy is disheartening. 

Josh Thole…Josh Thole.  Might as well say his name twice because chances are you have missed him before now. As the Mets’ second option behind the plate, don’t be afraid to have him in your lineup as he is batting .317 this month with a good mix of power as well.

It wasn’t until the past week that managers have noticed A.J. Pierzynski’s worth compared to Kurt Suzuki, who has a higher owned percentage but doesn’t produce much at all.  Give A.J. a chance while it is time to sit Kurt, that is if you haven’t already. 

Russell Martin has an overall decent hitting game but his batting average is a red flag, proceed with caution for the upcoming week.

First Base

During the month of June alone, Carlos Pena has hit 10 home runs to go along with his 20 RBIs. His availability is just about soaked up, but if you can acquire him he will not disappoint (so long as you temper your expectations for batting average).

There is one word to describe Freddie Freeman’s hitting and that would be streaky. He had a good week,  but if his personal trend continues the production may dip this scoring period.

Ever since taking over at 1^st Lance Berkman has seen his average dip continuously.  Although it’s not too alarming, be noteworthy of his play and hopefully his bat returns from the doldrums.

Adam Lind has a tough stretch of games on the way against the pitching of Boston and Cleveland.  Don’t be shocked if his production falls.

Second Base

Brandon Phillips has had his name in the airways recently and it’s not just because of his new twitter friends. With favorable matchups over the next scoring period this Red looks like he is going to assert himself as one of the best 2B options in the league.

While the other Cabrera makes flashy plays deep in the hole, Orlando Cabrera has shot up the fantasy board as a decent option for your team.  His steady play is not always appreciated but it would be wise to give him a shot.

Chances are you have been victim to Dan Uggla’s “flirty” play and have been let down.  Yes he has some decent numbers in certain areas, but the multi-strikeout games and the sub .200 average just are not getting it done. 

Dustin Ackley has been making the most of his time since being called up to the bigs.  Reaching base every game to go along with a .300 average poses the question.  What’s not to like?

Third Base

Will Edwin Encarnacion continue to hit as the Jays’ DH now that his time at 3^rd is up? Who knows, but if he is granted that coveted steady playing time then the production should raise.

There are too many 0-for games for Scott Rolen to have a spot on your roster.  Try and drop him if you can. 

Placido Polanco’s pinky should be just fine after getting hit on Tuesday, so there are no worries there.

The X-ray on Kevin Youkilis’ foot came out negative he should be back to full strength come Monday.

If you are looking for some unexpected health, look no further than Alberto Callaspo.  Since he has earned some steady playing time, his numbers have been solid across the board and could be a good addition in case any untimely injuries occur.

Shortstop

Jose Reyes is making a claim to be the MVP in 2011, hopefully he is on your team.

Two highly owned players are not having a very good week and you should proceed with caution during the upcoming scoring period.  Alexei Ramirez and Jimmy Rollins are ranked 33 and 34 respectively at the position over the last seven games and actually had negative production.  The matchups that these two players will be facing are less than favorable. Ramirez is hitting sub .200 against the Twins and Rollins is batting sub .200 against Atlanta this year. If there ever was a time to be bold then it is now so show them the bench.

Now for some good news: Ronny Cedeno is riding a hot-streak that has his batting average back up over .250.  Add his runs scored and RBI production and he could prove to be a smart option if he is needed there.

With Derek Jeter returning to the lineup, it looks like the Eduardo Nunez show is over.  Honestly, the production really wont differ all that much between the two.

Outfield

B.J. Upton looks as if he is living up to the expectations he received before he came into the league, although it’s difficult to judge his play.  The home run, RBI, and runs scored numbers look great, but with a batting average below .240 the risk sometimes overshadows the reward.

At 90% owned, Angel Pagan may be available to you. He went on a bit of a slump since returning from injury but now his production looks to be back on track.

While lacking in the power department, Nick Markakis has finished the month of June with a 19-game hitting streak, and don’t be surprised if it goes into July as well.

As always, there are some big names that need to see the bench due to reasons such as matchups, injuries, etc.  Johnny Damon, Melky Cabrera, Jacoby Ellsbury and Raul Ibanez could see production slip this week.  On the flip side, Andy Dirks, Cameron Maybin, Ben Revere, Austin Jackson and Jonny Gomes have seen much more playing time due to their production.  If you can, ride these guys while they are hot.

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* – Brandon Phillips photo source: The Ghost of Moonlight Graham

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

First off, we love baseball here at MSF, and this podcast, which was inspired by Jayson Stark’s weekly appearances on ESPN Radio, is going to be a great biweekly feature on the site for all of the fellow baseball lovers out there.

Secondly, there are prizes! We are going to be able to reward one weekly winner with a $20 gift certificate to Chili’s each week, and at the end of the season we are going to be giving one grand prize winner an iPad and a subscription to MLB.tv for 2012.

And thirdly, specific to this week, one of the most well known and controversial moments in MSF history (a result of this article) will come full circle as Ken Rosenthal joins me and Ari on the first MLB Trivia Challenge Podcast.

This will be fun.

Before you listen to the podcast or jump to the quiz below, I implore you to read the MLB Trivia Challenge Rules and Information page. Only your first quiz submission is counted, so you want to make sure you know what’s going on.

Use the player below to listen to the MLB Trivia Challenge Podcast sponsored by Generational Equity.

In addition to tackling some deliciously difficult trivia questions from Ari, Ken and I look back at our appearance together on Outside the Lines, look forward at the future of sports media, discuss the topsy-turvy AL Central, and so much more. Enjoy.

Click here to take MLB Trivia Challenge Podcast Quiz #1

Link above skips you to the bottom of this page where quiz is embedded. Podcast will continue playing.

A few quick notes:

• The MLB Trivia Challenge is available on iTunes. Listen and subscribe here.
• Be sure to follow the MSF Trivia Challenge Podcast on Twitter: @MLBTriviaMSF. We’ll provide links to the latest episodes as well as periodic trivia questions that don’t make the final cut for the show. Why? It’s a long summer…you can never have enough MLB trivia.
• If you like the intro and outro music, and I know you will, it was provided to us by the Twin Cats out of Indianapolis. We encourage you to like them on Facebook or check out their music here.

On behalf of everyone at MSF and our sponsor Generational Equity, I extend my sincere thanks to Ken Rosenthal for taking the time to join us. I encourage you to follow him on Twitter, where he is often found tweeting out juicy nuggets of baseball information.

Quick Reaction to Rosenthal Conversation

I promise we’ll get to the first quiz in a moment, but I do think at least a couple of final thoughts on the entire MSF-Raul Ibanez-Ken Rosenthal-Outside the Lines situation are in order.

A lot of people have seem surprised that Ken and I have “patched things up” and have a solid relationship now, but I’m not. Ultimately he was just responding to his interpretation of words written by someone he didn’t know, and he has apologized both privately and now publicly for going a bit overboard with his indignant tone. I appreciate that and, of course, accept.

I will say that, based on listening to the podcast while editing, I’m still not completely sure he realizes that I never actually accused Raul Ibanez of using steroids and that I did try to seek out alternative explanations. (I probably should have asked a follow-up question about this.) But I also understand his larger point that you have to tread very carefully when “naming names” in association with steroids and PEDs when all you have to go on are numbers, and he’s right.

Overall, I learned a lot that week, as I detailed in this post. In particular, I learned about the potential for massive amplification that even an unassuming post on a small site can have. I also learned that with that potential comes a lot of responsibility. While I certainly felt that Ken’s public rebuke of me and my work was unfair, the constructive and informed parts of his message did not go unheard nor unheeded, and it made me a better blogger and MSF a better (and certainly more well-known) site. For that, and for his graciousness in helping us kick off the trivia challenge, I thank Ken.

Your Turn to Compete and Win Prizes

Now onto the fun stuff: your chance to match wits with the “experts” (which certainly was not me or Ken, but rather Ari and his fun but challenging questions) and win prizes.

As explained on the rules and information page, we will be rewarding one winner each time a new MLB Trivia Challenge Podcast and quiz are posted. This winner will be awarded as follows:

• Each correct answer nets you one point. Most points wins.
• In the event of a tie, we will choose from the top group at random.
• The winner receives a $20 gift certificate to Chili’s*, which is perfect for a Chili’s Lunch Break.

• Weekly winners can go bold with the new six-dollar lunch break combo at Chili’s. Choose a house made soup or salad and then pick a half Texas Toast sandwich like the Southwestern BLT smothered in cilantro lime mayo.
• See all the great Lunch Break combos at Chilis.com.
• Note: You have ONE WEEK from the day the podcast is posted to submit yours answers and be eligible for the weekly prize. The next Thursday at 11:59 pm CT, entries are closed and we award a winner.

In addition to the weekly prizes, a grand prize winner will be chosen at the end of the season. Simply put, the grand prize winner will be the person who tallies up the most points throughout the season, regardless of when the quiz is taken.

A few final notes you need to know before we let you have at it with the first quiz:

• LISTEN to the podcast; each week we will be including one bonus question taken directly from our discussion.
• ONLY your first entry counts, for the weekly prize and grand prize.
• MAKE SURE you use the same UserID throughout the season. This is how we will keep track of your scores.
• PAY CLOSE ATTENTION to the instructions after each question. Due to the parameters of the quiz program we are using, and our inability to hand-grade thousands of quizzes each week, we must request that you very specific and particular in how you answer the questions. Thus, you MUST spell names correctly, you MUST separate multiple response answers with commas, and oftentimes we request that you list responses in alphabetical order. Think of it this way: attention to detail is paramount in baseball, so shouldn’t it be part of the challenge? Absolutely.

And now, drumroll the please, we give you your chance to answer. There are only six questions this week whereas there will usually be 10 or 11. Have fun!

**********

Obviously we cannot post the answers because this is an ongoing trivia challenge.

Check back in two weeks when we’ll post the second MLB Trivia Challenge sponsored by Generational Equity. Remember: someone is winning an iPad and a subscription to MLB.tv when this is all said and done…it might as well be you.

* – Chili’s gift certificate good in U.S. only.

But this morning a couple of thoughts occurred to me.

First, my good buddy @WorldofIsaac sent me a link to the following tweet from Greg Wyshynski (aka Puck Daddy):

Has Jerod Morris opined on Damien Cox not getting same “Outside The Lines” treatment he got for steroid speculation? Would love to hear it.

As Isaac reminded me, few individuals in the sports blogosphere are as revered as Greg Wyshynski. I’m not even a hockey fan and I know that. Thus, I immediately thought that it would be wise for me to pay attention to such a call for opinion.

The second thought that occurred to me was, what exactly is so wrong with being recognized for the Raul Ibanez story from last year? Sure, if I was ashamed of the story I’d hide in the shadows and hope it faded from memory. But I’m not ashamed of it, not by a longshot.

I was neither malicious nor cunning, I held firm where I felt I should and admitted fault where I felt I should, I learned a tremendous amount, and was able to be a part of volcanic debate about bloggers and the mainstream media that was influential and a long time coming. It was an unlikely series of events that brought the debate to my doorstep, but as the great philosopher Rashed Wallace once said during a post game interview: it is what it is and it do what it do.

So, for those interested, I will now weigh in on this season’s steroid speculation story, which involves the red hot Jose Bautista, a hockey blogger named Damien Cox, and a pretty obvious double standard in how it’s being covered.

First, the background (quickly), in case you missed the story.

As any fantasy baseball player knows, Jose Bautista is hitting out of his mind this year. We are not even in September yet and Bautista has 40 HRs, 95 RBIs, and an OPS of .973. His previous full season career highs for these three stats are: 16, 63, and .757 (all of which occurred in different seasons).

To say that Bautista’s power surge has come out of nowhere this year would be a tremendous understatement.

Well, this past Sunday Damien Cox, a hockey columnist and associate sports editor for The Toronto Star, decided to put his spin on the story. Cox is described on his blog as someone who “takes turns stirring up trouble and chuckling at the foibles of the sporting world.” Thus, he decided to stir up some trouble:

For the following unpopular question, blame Major League baseball and all the nonsense it has spewed over the past decade.

Don’t blame me.

When it comes to Jose Bautista, how is it exactly that at the age of 29 he’s suddenly become the most dangerous power hitter in baseball?

Chance? Healthy living? Diet? New contact lenses? Comfortable batting gloves?

Anyone reading about the Roger Clemens perjury case this week, which of course brings up all of baseball’s tawdry steroid history, should at least be willing to wonder about Bautista’s sudden transformation into the dinger king.

He continues on for another half page or so, essentially reiterating these thoughts in different words.

For comparison’s sake, here is what I said about Raul Ibanez last year:

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.

If you just read that excerpt from my post and compare it to what Cox says about Bautista, you might conclude that we essentially said the exact same thing; and, at least in part, we did.

• Cox’s main idea: Jose Bautista is performing well above his established norms; he’s a baseball player; we have been conditioned to wonder if he is using a PED and it’s reasonable to pose the thought.
• My main idea: Raul Ibanez is performing well above his established norms; he’s a baseball player; we have been conditioned to wonder if he is using a PED and it’s reasonable to post the thought.

The difference, of course, which is obvious if you just glace at the two articles, is that I spent 85-90% of the time actively trying to disprove the then-commonly discussed notion that Ibanez might be juicing. The genesis of the post was another manager in one of my fantasy leagues posing the question. I wrote the article to find objective reasons to disprove it, finally concluding that I couldn’t, which led to me making a blanket statement about all baseball players while using Raul Ibanez as the microcosm.

Cox, on the other hand, simply tosses out the question that he’s “gotta” ask, includes names like Roger Clemens, Troy Glaus, and Brady Anderson for good measure, and leaves it at that.

A recent post at Drunk Jays Fans summed it up best:

Fortunately for my conscience, Jerod’s piece proved to be mostly an analysis of possible reasons for Ibanez’s incredibly hot start (park factors, competition) that concluded with a lament about the inevitable PED speculation that would come. Cox, on the other hand, offered up counter-theories only in the most sarcastic, piece-of-shit-like way. So, while there may be a tinge of hypocrisy in my defending Morris and not Cox, I really do think that, if you actually read what Jerod wrote—which, if I recall correctly, was kind of the major fucking problem with how the media treated the Ibanez in the first place—he’s hardly being accusatory, if at all. Cox totally is.

I agree, and continue to wish that more people had actually read my piece before passing judgment last year. But alas, this is the Internet we’re talking about here. I used a title that was far more provocative than I intended it to be, and most people never read any further. Actually, I’m not sure most people even read the entire title. They saw “The Curious Case of Raul Ibanez: Steroid Speculation…” and then dropped everything to email John Gonzalez that some Midwest blogger was accusing Ibanez of using steroids…even though I didn’t.

But this column isn’t so much about reliving last year’s news as it is about gauging how the coverage and overall landscape have changed now that a similar story has popped up this year. The most obvious aspect of how the Cox-Bautista story has been covered differently as last year’s Ibanez story is the striking double standard that has been applied to Cox’s comments.

We have established, and I’m not really sure it’s debatable, that Cox’s comments about Bautista are far more flippant and accusatory than mine were. Yet, where is Ken Rosenthal decrying Cox’s disrespect for the written word? Where is the Outside the Lines special analyzing the giant schism between bloggers and the mainstream media and — oh, that’s right; Cox isn’t technically a blogger. He wrote his comments on a blog, but he’s a sports editor for The Star, meaning he’s part of the in-crowd.

Yes, I think that has a lot to do with it. Part of the reason no one is out to tar and feather Damien Cox on national TV, as good ‘ol Ken was clearly attempting to do to me, is because of his position. There simply is no other reasonable explanation. And plenty of bloggers, as well as commenters and tweeters, are taking up the fight and pointing out this clear example of mainstream media hypocrisy, of an obvious double standard being applied.

But to simplify the issue down just to that would be foolhardy.

I think another contributing factor is that things are different now as compared to last year at this time. The landscape is different, the tone and amplification of the blogger/MSM debate is different, the steroids issue in baseball is different.

And, honestly, I think people may just be tired of it all.

I know that I’m sick of talking about steroids, as evidenced by the fact that you’ve heard nary a peep about the subject from me on this blog since last season. And as the lines continue to blur between what a “blogger” is and what a “mainstream media member” is, what’s the point in continuing to shout at eachother about varying shades of gray?

Because of the daily grind of the 24-hour sports news cycle, and moments like last year’s Ibanez story and the Leitch-Bissinger debate before that, the sports media and sports blogging community have slowly but surely reached an uneasy alliance that, for the most part, benefits everyone involved. The online landscape is still quite Darwinian in that survival of the fittest necessitates a constant race for pageviews, but people are also coming to the correct understanding that pageviews are not a zero sum game. Working together can in fact be beneficial and all boats really can rise together.

Mix all of it in – Cox’s job title, steroids fatigue, less blogger/MSM sensitivity – and it creates the much more muted response to Damien Cox’s post than what mine received last year.

I’m certainly not bitter about it or upset in any way. I didn’t ask him too, and I certainly didn’t think it would be the case at the time, but Ken Rosenthal did more for the credibility and exposure of Midwest Sports Fans than anyone has in the 2+ years of this site’s existence. Sure, I had to sit there on national TV trying to get a word in edgewise while looking like a recluse who’d never seen the sun, but it was a tremendous experience that I’ll never forget nor would I ever trade. Damien Cox should be so lucky so have such righteous indignation heaped upon him.

And as for Cox’s words, no I do not think he is inherently wrong to raise the question he raised.

My brother has Jose Bautista on a couple of fantasy teams and we’ve randomly joked a few times about whether his numbers are legit or not. I haven’t looked, but I would assume that there have even been other blog posts or message board forums that have mentioned and discussed this. (Last year, people overlooked the fact that I was actually the third blogger to mention Raul Ibanez and the possibility that he could be on steroids. I just happened to win the Lottery of Internet Exposure Serendipity when John Gonzalez mentioned my post.) When a guy goes from a career high of 16 HR to 40 before September, steroids will be brought up. It’s inevitable, despite baseball’s history of outliers that Keith Law astutely brought up recently.

Here is where I diverge from Damien Cox, however: I would have raised the Bautista question differently, with what I consider to be more tact and fairness; and I can say that because I did. As mentioned above, even though Cox and I essentially concluded the same general point about baseball, I spent far more time trying to disprove my hypothesis about the individual than prove it. That matters, I believe, and manifests intent.

Which is a perfect segue to my concluding topic.

Of all the articles I read yesterday dealing either directly or tangentially with this topic, I actually appreciated Geoff Baker’s the most. Baker, you may recall, was one of my harshest critics last year, but also the person from whom I learned the most when looking at what I’d written through the prism of his criticism.

Here is what Baker wrote yesterday:

You’ll remember how we engaged in one of our typically healthy debates back then about Jerod Morris, a blogger who seemed to suggest in a headline and the text of his post that Raul Ibanez was taking steroids.

That spurred all type of arguing back and forth, but the more depressing upshot I took away from it was that there are thousands, if not millions of people out there who believe that blogs are not held to as high a standard as traditional media when it comes to truth and libel law and that just about anything can be written on the internet.

Not true. And the story I’ve linked to spells that out.

Let’s not get into the technicalities of what was written in the whole Morris thing again. I know some of you don’t feel that he intended to accuse Ibanez, while some of us think he tried to soft-pedal his way in there and did so sloppily. That’s ancient history and only the reminder I’m using to bring up the greater issue here.

That even though the public at large now has the power of the written word in its hands like never before, it’s a power that must be used wisely.

What was most interesting to me about reading Baker’s piece yesterday is that it doesn’t mention Cox or Bautista at all. His post was written as a commentary on this article, which details the increasing liability risk faced by people who write blogs and even comments.

Baker and I disagree on what my intention with the Ibanez piece was, but his article, my email exchange with him afterwards, and the entirety of the Ibanez story taught me a valuable lesson about considering the potential impact of hitting the PUBLISH button and putting a piece of content out there on the Internet. I may not write for ESPN or FanHouse or even the Toronto Star, but that doesn’t mean that people don’t take the words written on Midwest Sports Fans seriously, especially the subject of them.

And for all bloggers, Baker’s point is a good one. Too often, we disrespect ourselves by thinking that our words don’t carry the weight that they do, both in terms of influence and, increasingly, potential liability. A normal post on MSF may only get a few hundred pageviews, but it only takes one link from a big site or one mention from a ballplayer to turn a few hundred into 50,000; and you never know what post it will be, so you might as well just assume that it could be any one of them. Hence, it’s a good idea to consider the probable reaction of the masses, of any individuals explicitly named, and to be prepared to defend your words and point of view should you get called on to do so.

I have to imagine that Damien Cox had a pretty good idea that the question about Jose Bautista that he had to ask publicly would create a strong reaction. He’s been in the business too long not to understand what will create a firestorm and what won’t. Steroids + Player Name x Source is a good equation for figuring out how great the firestorm will be, but there will undoubtedly be a loud and swift reaction to any such story.

In Cox’s case, the reaction just happened to be far more swift and vociferous from commenters and bloggers, rather than his mainstream media peers. The reaction to my story was different, for all of the reasons I’ve addressed in this post. In both cases, the players were able to address the issue publicly; in Ibanez’s case, everyone moved on; and in Bautista’s case, everyone will too.

The ubiquitous reality is that there is always another sports news cycle just around the corner, ready to chew up and spit out the latest hot story. Honestly, I’m just glad I got to be a part of one, double standards and all.

**********

* – Jose Bautista photo credit: Jamie Squire/Getty Images North America via Zimbio.com

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.)

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

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.

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

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Kurt Fraschetti

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profootballinsight@live.com