CY: John Harper stumps for Mo’s CY. Nice thought, though as of today, it would be a travesty to give it to Rivera over Greinke. But low win-totals this year for Greinke and other contending starters may make it easy for BWAA voters to overlook the performance of those starters. Consider Greinke’s five starts in July: 32IP, 33H, 9ER, 10BB, .266/.328/.395. You’d take that line for your team, I’m certain. His record for that month? 0-3. He’s also thrown three shutouts and three other complete games on the year. With New York steamrolling right now and Mo hurting, I would guess (and begrudgingly hope) we will see significantly less of Rivera to let him recover for October, making the whole thing moot.
CC: George “King Of The Ring” uses boxing metaphors to describe last night’s “tense” (at least until the ninth) contest. Burgess Meredith in the corner telling C.C. to work the body ain’t gonna make it any more interesting beating up on the poor Orioles.
SC: The Player’s Association will have to wait to finally do what they promised by destroying (yeah, and while you are at it, try and re-pack Cheez-Whiz) the 2003 test results until the Feds decide if they are going to appeal to the SCOTUS. gerbil still does not care about steroids. However, it is interesting that those tests have now become a Constitutional matter regarding rights of property and search and seizure precedent with the twist of their relation to digital records. When the Feds say they have a “plain-view” right to the records, the ears prick up. When there is this much money and attention available, all the pricks are up. All the way up to the 9th Circuit, and now perhaps up to the Supreme Court, if the Feds choose to push it. First blush was “don’t they have something better to do?” Maybe this is something better to do after all.
9 replies on “CY, CC, SC”
As someone who has Greinke on his fantasy team, I absolutely agree that it will be a travesty if he doesn’t win the Cy Young. He’s well ahead of everyone, and it’s not even close.
I don’t see how the Feds have a right to the results of a drug test given by your employer. If that is the case your employer can’t give you as a drug test as it would violate your 5th amendment rights.
Gerb, I completely get the degree to which you challenge the BWAA’s inclination to consider wins rather than performance. Greinke has been the best pitcher across the entirety of the season. Though in the recent period you cite, CC has been even better using any metric (except weight). CC’s last 6 starts:
44.1 IP, 33 H, 9 ER, 7 BB, .206/.237/.306
Of course, he got 5 wins and one ND for that effort – just reinforcing the point you make in the post.
IH– yes, I did indeed cherry-pick that window. The Royals scored all of six (SIX!) runs in those five consecutive starts by Greinke. That’s got to be tough to stomach when you give up only 9 earned (2, 3, 1, 1, 2) over 5 games. If I read the logs correctly, the Royals gave him a lead _just once_ in that whole stretch, for one inning and which he held, only for the pen to blow it the next inning when he came out. I’m not trying to make him a martyr, but that does make me weep for Zack’s Sisyphean trials of being an ace for such a piss-poor team.
Sisyphus piss. Say that 10 times fast.
> I don’t see how the Feds have a right
I am agreed, Joe, with the observation that the Players’ Association wasn’t the employer. Still, there was an understanding and guarantee of privacy (which it seems they could not legally or reasonably make) in the testing procedure which ostensibly was to further principles that everyone would agree were good ideas — kids, don’t take roids… baseball players, don’t cheat outside the lines… — This whole thing is much more interesting to me from the perspective that privacy rights may now be addressed (and hopefully sustained) that would not have had traction without so much for the prosecutors to gain (and lose). For the Feds to get slapped for over-reaching would be a positive, albeit late, outcome of this clusterfuck.
Sorry Joe, I made a mistake and agreed with you too quickly regarding the Feds having a “right” to drug test results. They absolutely do have a mandate in many professions, and it’s a very sound idea that I agree with completely. In THIS circumstance, it’s not nearly so clear.
Of course, based on the court’s ruling we can unequivocally say the feds in this case absolutely did not have the right. Unless or until the ruling is overturned, anyway.
Why didn’t the PA burn the results and save everyone a lot of hassle?? Is baseball better off today for these revelations to have been made?
I think at the time of the A-Rod outing it was said that the PA did not destroy the results because they wanted to find out if some positive results could – for whatever reason – be removed from the list so that the percentage of positive tests would fall below the line above which mandatory testing would be introduced.
In other words: the PA is – or was at that time – not in favor of testing for banned substances. I know that a union is supposed to look out for the interests of its members but I think with this policy the PA is doing its members a disservice, at least those players that are not using banned substances (and I believe there are clean players). Because if there is no testing the cheaters have a better chance at the bigger contracts and the non-cheaters will be lumped together with the cheaters because the general assumption is that all players are cheating anyway and that the PA is condoning this.
And yes, I know that even with the current testing program not all the cheaters will be caught so they still have an unfair advantage. It’d still be nice if the PA took a stronger position in favour of attemps of cleaning up the game.