I might have mentioned this around here before, but the hockey puck deflection is one of the most subtle, amazing plays in all of sports to me. The speed those things are flying at and the precision required to execute such a move always blows my mind a little.
Good game by the Wild last night.
I wasn't able to watch last night, but just checked out some highlights. That Karl Anthony-Towns fella is pretty good at the basketballs.
pretty nice game from McDs as well.
Is anyone else listening to That 90s Baseball Pod? I’m really enjoying the interviews with former players, and Gregg Olson is a pretty natural cohost.
Barry Bonds probably would have lost his job to Doug Glanville if not for the 'roids.
Well, maybe not Barry Bonds, but Manny Ramirez? Who can say?
(Emphasis added.)
My wild guess is that Manny Ramirez was a more talented hitter than Doug Glanville. But can we really know?
If not for steroids, I bet Steve Chilcott would have been a better hitter than Reggie Jackson, too!
No doubt PEDs can help conditioning, and some definitely help with injury recovery. But so far as I know, PEDs* don’t enhance elite skills like coordination or eyesight. Maybe MannyBManny or Bonds hit harder or recovered faster than Glanville, but we can’t exactly claim that they didn’t possess exceptional talent in areas that made them legendary hitters.
That said, Glanville’s not wrong to point out that both players are the extreme examples of a cadre of players who likely did take roster spots — jobs— from players who were clean. Viewed from the perspective of clean players who might not have otherwise lost a roster spot to guys like Chad Allen, RonDL, Jason Grimsley, Glenallen Hill, Fernando Viña, or Jay Gibbons, it seems justifiable not to feel a grave injustice has been perpetuated by Bonds et alii not being inducted into the HoF. As he points out, the success of all of those players came at the expense of others, some who were inevitably on the margins of the game and couldn’t afford an unfair playing environment:
Inducting Seligula was the true travesty. He passed the PED buck, was rewarded with a plaque in Cooperstown, and has since Frankie Frisch’d an election that got Harold Baines in the Hall as a favor to his buddy Reinsdorf.
* Greenies or therapeutic drugs like Ritalin might help with focus; there is definitely PED-like abuse of Ritalin & associated drugs by students in higher ed.
It is more true like you say that guys like RonDL kept guys on the margin out of the bigs. Guys on the margin, however, make league minimum and are imminently replaceable by players of similar caliber. In other words, the guys who lost jobs were replacement level players. They got cheated out of a year or two of time in the bigs and several hundred thousand dollars, which is a lot if you don't have anything. And that's a valid point.
But, MLB was perfectly happy to have guys hit 50, 60, 70 HRs in a season and they were plenty happy to count the money they were raking in precisely because guys like McGwire, Sosa, Bonds, Clemens, et al. were doing fantastic things that made the game fun to watch. I'm pretty sure that if they could have continued the PED hit parade to this day, they would have done it. So, it starts with, like you say Selig and it pushes downward. Punishing Bonds et al. by not putting them in the HOF doesn't really hurt them. It does, however, make the Hall less interesting.
Also, there's no maybe about it. Ramirez should have been drafted ahead of Glanville.
The Twins drafted David McCarty third overall in that same draft…
Thinking about this a bit more, it seems possible the Hall is caught between its missions (baseball museum & shrine) & primary constituents (fans & players) here. We fans may have a view of PED Era induction that diverges from contemporaneous players because our relationship with the game simply is different.
Glanville’s view cannot help but be shaped by his experience playing the game. The Hall is the ultimate record of individual career achievement; if he believes some players achieved their incandescent fame unethically and are emblematic of those who succeeded at others’ expense, he’s going to see some justice in those symbolic figures not earning the Hall’s recognition of their achievement.
Meanwhile, fans are invited to marvel at players’ individual achievement. There was certainly a great deal of unprecedented achievement to marvel at during the PED Era. It’s clear the league tacitly encouraged the unethical competitive conditions that inflated our interest and then profited from the fraud; they had every motivation to do so after earning collusion penalties and the losing fans during the Strike. If we have an uncharitable view of ourselves, that makes us marks. If we instead view the achievements as matters of historic record that occurred in a specific context, we might expect that those with the most notable achievements are recognized as in any other era...but that view draws us into conflict with players who were active during the era and see their peers’ achievements in a different light (and as a lifelong ill-gotten income stream).
There’s a really good segment of Effectively Wild where Ben Lindbergh & Meg Rowley talk to a museum ethicist as Ben weighs whether to vote in this year’s election, his first year as a voter.
As a baseball player, Glanville is a good writer.
Sure, PEDs mattered at the margins. If we look at the very quantitative sports like track and field, weight lifting, and swimming, PEDs undoubtedly pushed the frontiers of achievement. By very small percentages, which is all it takes to make a difference against the clock or the tape.
Baseball, OTOH, is a very strategic competition. Mixed strategies (randomizing across pitch selections, guessing on pitch selection) matter as much or more at the margin than the extra mile or two per hour on a fastball or extra couple of feet on a fly ball, all else constant, I think. PEDs won't help much with pitch location or launch angle or spin rate (I think) or squaring up on the pitch, even though they will help with bat speed and pitch velocity.
I get it that at the margin, the PED guy will slightly outcompete the guy with equivalent skills and abilities without PEDs. I just don't think it will tend to bridge the talent gaps. If everyone is doing it, PEDs don't matter for competitive opportunities, just like if nobody is. So the real questions have to do with the natural talent gradient (are there qualitative gaps between most MLB-level talents and the marginal guys, or is the talent distribution smooth enough that PEDs really affect rosters up and down the line?) and effects on durability and longevity (do they prolong effective careers or make them more precarious?).
Obviously, I am hypothesizing that the talent gradient isn't very smooth in MLB. There's stars and then there's journeymen and flashes in the pan. I don't know that PEDs has changed the empirical distribution of stars and journeymen on rosters. The economics of the game changed so much from before the Reserve Clause was broken, which hugely incentivized guys to improve their longevity through diet, training AND PEDs.
I think the main thing they do is keep guys on the field late on their careers. No way would Bonds be putting up those numbers at the age he did.
I agree. Bonds had quick hands and great strike zone feel -- not sure how much PEDs help with that -- so he's going to have some quality numbers regardless.
Bonds is a huge outlier, as have been a handful of other all-time greats (which is what makes them outliers, of course). It is hard to judge how much impact PEDs had on his longevity as a quality player.
But look at his BABIP after age 39. 3 of the worst 4 years of his career. And his LD pcts were the lowest since his early Pittsburgh years (2000 excepted). Obviously, he still was a high-impact player, thanks to leading the league in IBBs at ages 41 and 42 and still slugging in the mid-500s.
Still, there's only so much training, diet, and PEDs can do, even for a player as great as Bonds. I would suggest that it is harder to see that PEDs did much to extend other guys, like Jason Giambi, Jose Canseco, and even Manny Ramirez. (sorry if I am beating a dead horse here; not my intention)
Given our limited knowledge of the specifics, there’s too much noise to say conclusively. It’s probably a matter of all PEDs not being equal, duration of usage, individual tolerance for a specific regimen, and dedication to non-narcotic forms of conditioning & physical therapy. Guys who were already inclined to incorporate Pilates workouts or underwater training or something probably in the early Aughts aged better than guys started roiding out & pounding iron in the Eighties or who used PEDs to end-run some of the higher intensity workouts that might have kept them more nimble/supple as their connective tissue aged.
Wild extend Jordan Greenway, 3 years/$9M.
First of all, that's probably pretty close to what he's worth as a defensive, third-line winger with some pretty good results in the last couple years. He's 24 years old, so probably this contract will cover his most productive years in the NHL.
Where this gets tricky is how this affects the Wild in the salary cap, because now if they sign Kevin Fiala to an extension before next year, they are pretty much over the salary cap for next year if they field a full roster. I feel like they had four question marks about next season's roster, and this answers one of them, but also leaves the others very much up in the air.
1. Who plays with Eriksson Ek and Foligno next year? - now we know it'll be Greenway and not Dewar or Duhaime who will both likely be on deals <$1M and start out on the fourth line.
2. What happens with Kevin Fiala's contract? - Unknown. Do they go to arbitration again for a one-year deal? Sign him long term? Sign him and then trade him? Let him walk?
3. Who plays in the defensive corps next year? - Goligoski is a free agent and Dumba and his contract (one year remaining after this year, $6M value) is probably the most tradeable asset the Wild have. With Greenway now added to next year's payroll and Merrill already with an extension, lots of questions arise about both Goligoski and Dumba coming back next year. Addison will almost surely be in the NHL next year, and Spurgeon/Brodin/Kulikov/Merrill all have contracts signed already.
4. What's the plan with the backup goalie spot? - Kahkonen is a restricted free agent next year. How much he will cost and how much the Wild have to spend probably depends on the answers to questions 2 and 3 now.
I think the Dumba situation will be very interesting. He's taken a step up this year, MHO, so can be an integral part of the blueline, but trading him for draft picks or low contract prospects really helps with the cap issues for next couple of years.
From Chris Jaffe:
Today Britney Spears is exactly as old as John Lennon was on the day he died
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huh.
Yup
the real question is how will the Pitchbot handle this?