Not the first and won't be the last time I say this....Im still pissed TB didn't get into the Rizzo talks. We could of easily out bid Chicago for a needed position.
Not the first and won't be the last time I ask this: I'd love to know why or why not Tampa Bay didn't make a play for him. If they did I wonder what the Padres were asking for and why TB didn't pull it off. And if not I wonder what their scouts said or saw. Rizzo did change his swing a bit in Chicago, lowering his hands to get to the ball quicker, especially vs. LHP so I wonder if something like that that scared TB.
Right..........baseball as far as hitting or missing on guys is probably the biggest crapshoot on all of sports.... ah bro, you might want to get somebody out before complaining...wonder if Ryan goes down into the clubhpuses and smacks him....I wouldnt put it past him actually.... http://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/story/...nhappy-situation-focus-on-big-problems-080612
I wonder if the Rangers will get dozens of articles about how players are unhappy with Washington and the coaching staff like they do with the Red Sox. Would be extremely interesting to see what would happen if the Rangers tank and miss the playoffs if they'd get a lot of press about it and wonder how it would effect Nolan Ryan's rep if that happened.
No, not at all. Look at the difference between media coverage between the Red Sox and Braves last offseason. The Braves got next to zero press nationally about their collaspe. I just think it would be interesting to see how the national media would react.
The media generally try to avoid talking about the Braves if they can help it. Despite the fact that the Braves consistently poll as having a national fanbase size under only the Yankees and Red Sox. The media want their northeastern big market teams. If the Phillies wouldn't have had the division locked up and would have been the team to hurdle the Braves on the last day instead of the Cardinals you would have seen more media coverage.
I'm sure many of you have seen this highlight, but this video cracked me up... [video=youtube;7PXj8m4yZyo]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PXj8m4yZyo[/video]
Giants outfielder Melky Cabrera has been suspended 50 games after testing positive for a performance-enhancing drug, reports ESPN's Jorge Arangure (on Twitter). [video=youtube;KQveng3Wxz8]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQveng3Wxz8[/video]
Well there goes EVERYTHING I have said about him......holy crap.....gotta love those Dominicans.... But hey on the bright side, 2M a year should get him now.... So Fink I thought Roids don't do much for ya?
What exactly did they do for him? His power numbers didn't spike up at all (in fact they're slightly down from last year), just his BA which had a lot to do with his high BABIP which for the most part is a lot of luck.
Huge news. Andrew Baggarly of CSNBayArea.com hears that the test happened around the All-Star break and has been hung up in the appeals process since.
Really grasping at straws there, no? How could you even prove that's the case? Normal for the appeal process as far as length of time goes. But that's probably why the Giants pushed to get Hunter Pence at the trade deadline. EDIT: Probably not, apparently the team doesn't get notified if a player failed a test until it's official.
Congrats King Felix! Deserved it! Pitched a hell of a game. Perfect games like this make me happy because it was an Elite pitcher that did it. So many times you see pitchers throw perfect games and they are average pitchers. Its nice to see the Randy Johnson, Roy Holidays and now King Felix throw the perfect games!
You cant 100% obviously, but again you cant prove 100% they do nothing either you know? His overall numbers for a guy of his talent level.....without yesterdays game he missed, he has missed 4 games all season.....you cant keep up those numbers like that all the way through Mid-August without being fresh....you seem to equate using PED's with power and eye popping stats, when it isnt about that, it is about being able to recovery quickly...he probably felt like it was April still....luck in April, May sure...but through August it is more than luck... His motive was the money in a walk year to use them, but he probably used them last year too....
I don't, the general public does, which is why (right or wrong) people assumed Brady Anderson took PEDs the year he hit 49 home runs. I'm not saying PEDs did or didn't help Melky (although I'd lean towards the they didn't help him camp), we have no way or truly knowing that answer. However my point was that his numbers simply fall in line with the rest of his career minus his high BA caused by a high BABIP. If Melky never got suspended we would have just chalked Melky's year up to extreme luck. If there's really no change in a player's numbers how can we tell if the PEDs really helped? Again Melky's BABIP are extremely high, but that's something a player really can't control, once the ball hits the bat it's up to the opposing team to catch the ball. In fact Melky's ground ball rate to fly ball rate is up almost a half a point higher than his career number, (his ground ball rate is up while his fly ball rate is at a career low) which leads me to believe, since I haven't seen many Melky at bats this year to really be the judge, he's getting a lot of seeing eye singles and balls that just happen to find holes in the infield. Do PEDs help that stuff? I should mention that his line drive rate is also at a career high, at a point and a half higher from last year. Again on the surface, simply looking at his numbers without knowing he took PEDs I would have just said, player is extremely lucky this year, good for him. You can't tell me for sure that it's simply because of PEDs that he's having the year he had. You're assuming too much. And why can't a player just simply have a lucky year? It's happened before. Aaron Small had a good year on the surface in what 2005 then never did anything of note after in baseball ever. It's baseball, it happens all the time. Remember the old "that's baseball Susan"?
He was never Top 5 in the MLB in hits ever in his entire career, he is/was (Jeter being number 1 ) this year nor was he even close....the avgs are a by product of him actually getting hits.....why is he getting so many hits? Luck? He has always been a decently low strikeout hitter, meaning whether for an out or a hit, he puts the bat on the ball and puts it in play.... Calling it luck is every bit a stretch as me saying ped's are used solely for recovery....he guys was aided, he remained fresh, while others brokedown....they helped him to the point, where he took them and he kept taking them, because he liked the way they made him feel......in his statement yesterday he didn't deny it, he admitted it....you dont take something if they dont help you...
Yes. You can't control the ball at after it leaves the bat, which is what BABIP helps quantify. You can control how hard you hit it but his line drive percentage is up all of two percent from his career numbers, which is negligible (like 10 extra linedrives a year). I'd agree with you if there was some other change but everything is the same outside of BABIP, which is outside of a players control.
This is another straw arguement. So what? You mean to tell me that the same 5 or 6 guys always lead the league in hitting each year and if someone breaks into that group it's because of PEDs? Freddy Sanchez was taking PEDs in 2006? He won the batting title that year. Juan Pierre was the NL leader in hits then. Rich Aurilia in 2001 led the NL in hits. Derrek Lee in 2005. Etc, etc. Sorry that's an extremely weak argument. And yes like Mainge said, Melky has been lucky this year, the numbers prove that. We at least have evidence he was getting lucky with the balls he put into play.
The second reply was ******ed, that's what it's worth. As he completely avoided the question. The only way to answer this would be to get the speed of the ball of his bat years he wasn't taking PED's vs the year(s) that he was.
How is he avoiding the question? He states that many of the known/suspected PED users didn't see an increase in their BABIP (which was basically the only major difference between 2012 Melky and 2005-2011 Melky). My question to you is let's say we did get the speed of the ball off his bat from this year and other years, how much of a MPH increase would be acceptable to say for sure PEDs played a role? 1 MPH difference? 2 MPH? 10? Would we count the hard hit balls that were outs or just the hits? All the balls he hit? Would the speed of the ball off the bat really be a good qualifier even? Couldn't a simple mechanic adjustment with a swing change the speed of a ball coming off a bat? Injuries play a factor? There's a lot of factors to consider with this, it's not just black and white. I actually think it would be an interesting study to just test the ball speed for a random clean player and see if the speed various from year to year. I would think that it would be extremely hard to get hard evidence or information from it since (I'm guessing as I'm not a science wiz) the ball would have to hit the bat at the same place at the same thrown speed to get real readings, otherwise the pitcher's speed, make/model/wood of the bat, weather, temperature etc would all play a factor in those readings.
The question regarded the speed of the ball off the bat. The reply was more geared toward "seeing eye singles" and made absolutely no sense in context to the question itself. I agree it would vary but if you sample every AB from the same batter and average it over his clean career vs dirty career (if that can be pinpointed) you could see if there was indeed an impact. You'd need a decent sample size though. I dont know whether PED do or don't help a player...but I'd like to see some good studies done not just using stats such a BABIP. There are tons of reasons your BABIP could be better on (certain) PED's but who knows if it actually is.
There aren't any good studies out there because it's almost impossible to know how much they truly help a player. When we think of PEDs we think of them helping players get more powerful, thus be able to hit more HRs yet in the case of numerous guys, like Melky for example, it didn't do a thing for him in the power department. And in fact Melky's overall numbers haven't changed much if at all, accept in a stat that a player has zero control in (BABIP). Someone like Arod, who admitted to taking steroids when he was in Texas (we don't know if he took them before or after), his numbers haven't changed much at all from his time in Seattle to New York, so did PEDs really help him that much? Or has he just always been on them even the years there was testing and he just didn't get caught? There's simply no way of knowing. For every Barry Bonds or Mark McGwire we get 10 Marylon Byrds, Melky Cabreras, Manny Alexanders, Jeremy Giambis. Again even your bat speed test might not be a good way of measuring because like I listed there are tons of outside factors to consider that could change the outcome of the testing.
