Bill James follows up on a previous essay by explaining his system for sorting Hall of Famers (subscription required). In doing so he asks the question, “How many players are there who were obvious inner-circle Hall of Famers, based on their stats, but who have been denied entry to the Hall of Fame because of PED concerns?”
There are six: Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Rafael Palmeiro, Manny Ramirez, Gary Sheffield and Sammy Sosa.
Interestingly, Mark McGwire ranks as a second tier Hall of Famer in this system, which plays into the argument you sometimes hear that McGwire doesn’t deserve to go into the Hall of Fame despite the home runs, because the rest of his game wasn’t that good.
More importantly, Bill lays out clearly the main arguments for and against electing players with the PED taint:
THE steroid argument, when you think about it a little more, is actually at least three different arguments. There is the moral argument—that is, that these players are cheaters, that they dishonored the sport and harmed baseball, and they shouldn’t be in the Hall of Fame (despite their accomplishments) because they are unworthy of the honor.
There is also a completely unrelated argument, which has no moral component, which is that some of these players—let’s say Sheffield and Sosa—have what APPEAR to be Hall of Fame numbers, but do not actually have Hall of Fame stature when you remove their numbers from the inflated context of the steroid era. This is a normal “context” adjustment. We adjust hitting stats for the park, for the era; we adjust the won-lost records of pitchers for the performance of the team. We adjust for the inflated hitting numbers of the steroid era. That is very, very different from the moral argument.
There is, finally, the argument that “I will give these players credit for what they did based on their own skills, on their work and dedication, but I will not give them credit for the EXTRA things that they were able to do because of PED use. I am not casting aspersions upon their character; I am not banning them from the Hall of Fame as cheaters. I am merely not going to give them credit for the extra things that the steroids did for them.”
I tend to lean toward the third argument. Bill goes on from there to talk about more nuanced approaches. This is a site that is well worth the subscription fee, and this article is a reason why.
When the national press told the local guy to shut up about McGwire’s andro bottle, they lost the morality argument.
I’d vote in anyone up through Bio-genesis. Afterwards, ok now we are taking it seriously, two times caught with PEDS and you don’t get listed on the ballot. (excluding amphetamines, and I want some science on HGH being a PED.)
Well, the 3rd argument is impossible to quantify. Plus it ignores many of these hitters were facing pitchers who were also juiced.
Most importantly, the whole exclusion argument ignores the fact that for every player we think we know used PED’s for a period of time. it is only a drop in the bucket of the true scope of PED usage. We know of 1% of the players who used, but according to some, as many as 50-80% of players used at some point in their careers. Lot of these excluded players peers used PED’s. Maybe even some of the singles hitters since nobody really looked at them too closely and they made fewer enemies
At such high usages the moral argument completely disappears since players are not using to gain an advantage but to keep up with the competition and simply use to keep their jobs or at least their relative value among their peers (which translates into millions of dollars for some)
And as we vilify players who may be doing something as innocuous as increasing a naturally occurring hormone like testosterone (which declines with age), we accept enhancement to vision with surgery and arms with UCL replacement surgery and knee strength with stem cells and platelets.
I personally favor the theory that the benefits in PED usage are in part due to the motivation factor. When a player used PED’s and risked his health, he was motivated, but the real benefit comes from the motivation that drives him to spend more time in the gym in the offseason and take care of his body (nighlife, food, etc). There is also possibly a placebo effect and improves confidence and which may work in a negative fashion when a player stops using (and saps his confidence)
Some of those not using PED at any moment in time do not use simply because they have locked up a long term contract. They are not motivated. Spend less time working out. Maybe thats why so many of these LT terms are busts, especially when the testing makes it to dangerous for a player to maintain his PED usage (whereas pre-testing some of these players continued to use).