The Raul Ibanez PED Blog and Subsequent Over-Reaction

Here’s the blog mentioned in the last post regarding Raul Ibanez and the possibility of PED’s explaining his hot 2009 start.

I will note for the record, that I wrote a piece earlier this season in which I listed Raul Ibanez as the biggest surprise in baseball among hitters in 2009.  For a couple of reasons, I did not make any reference to PED’s as a possible factor for his 2009 success, although the possibility had occurred to me.

First, I don’t recall ever reading anything that identified Ibanez as someone linked to steroid allegations during the fall-out from the Mitchell Report and the arrest of Kurt Radomski.  Since he has not been linked, it did not seem appropriate to me to raise possible PED use as a reason for his hot start.

Second, ballplayers, being human beings, are subject to a great deal of individual variation.  Ballplayers, as a group, peak at age 27, and very few players have their best career season after age 31.  However, just because very few players have their peak year at age 37, it does not mean that Ibanez is not one of those very few.

The fact is that a few players have had great years later in their careers, where we can rule out PED’s entirely.  Ibanez has played extremely well for years late in his career, and he has moved to a better hitter’s park in what is probably an easier league for Ibanez to hit in.  Further, aside from PED’s, players’ careers have been lengthened substantially in the last 30 years as a result of more money in the game, better nutrition, and better training regiments (and probably also less heavy boozing than was once part of the game).

Although I did not necessarily feel it was appropriate for my blog to raise this possibility for Ibanez’s sudden surge in performance, I don’t necessarily feel it was inappropriate for another blogger to do so.  In this day and age, PED’s are part of the game.

Because Baseball did so little to prevent PED use; many, many players used PED’s between 1995 and 2005, including most of the game’s top power hitters.  Barry Bonds, Mark McGuire, Sammy Sosa, Juan Gonzalez, Alex Rodriguez, Miguel Tejada, Rafael Palmiero, Jose Canseco, Jason Giambi, Manny Ramirez, Gary Sheffield, and Ivan Rodriguez.  The list goes on and on.

The consequence of this rampant abuse, is that any player over age 32 who has a break-out power year is going to be suspected of possible PED use, no matter how innocent he may be.  This is Baseball’s stain, and although a few players like Raul Ibanez, may be unfairly and wrongly suspected, they are part of Baseball and have achieved incredible wealth and fame as a result of their connection to Baseball.

If clean players have to put up with suspicions of using PEDs, that’s just the way it is.  Baseball’s owners and the Players’ Association have made their bed, and — guess what? — they are all going to have to lie in it.  This includes Raul Ibanez.

You can’t blame a blogger for raising an issue that everyone knowledgable about the game has at least considered.  That is the proper role of weblogs: to raise issues and ideas not covered by the professional media.  Further, blogs are only interesting if they are opinionated and raise controversial issues not adequately addressed in the mainstream media.

Most people familiar with the internet know that you have to take blogs with a certain grain of salt, because they are not subject to the same standards as professional news reporting.

In fact, this post about Ibanez would have made the internet rounds and faded into obscurity if Philadelphia Inquirer reporter John Gonzalez had not seen the opportunity to blow it up into a major controversy and thus national news.

Gonzalez’s article above disingenuously attacks the blogger for his “Cheap shot” against Ibanez, but it was Gonzalez’s article that really made this issue go viral.  The Inquirer then got a second big story out of this imbroglio, printing Ibanez’s angry, over-reactive response when approached about the issue. (Doth Raul protest too much? to paraphrase someone well-versed in human nature.)

In a better world, perhaps, baseball players, with a nod and a wink from owners, would not have abused steroids for more than a decade; bloggers would not speculate about steroid use by players about whom no allegations of steroid use have yet arisen; sportswriters would not turn molehills into mountains in order to generate readership; and ballplayers would not over-react to baseless allegations.

That is not the world we live in, however.  Deal with it.