Coyote Blog

The other day I was listening to a national sports-talk radio show and they were discussing an prominent athelete's recent injury.  They were expressing concern that the doctor who was treating the athlete (succesfully, it seemed) had treated other non-ahtlete patients with HGH and steroids.

Well, duh.  This is what has driven me crazy about the whole steroid craze.  Steroids were not invented to as sports performance enhancing drugs.  They were invented because they had a variety of medical uses, including aiding recovery from certain injuries.   Is the sports world really better off if we deny, say, Tiger Woods the injury-recovery tools that any non-athlete would have access to?

I will add here, just to tick people off and highlight yet another area where I am grossly out of step from the rest of America, that I have no particular problem with PED's in sports.  It's fine if governing bodies for whatever reason want to ban them, but its not a straight forward case to me.  These drugs have dangers, but getting our panties in a knot about people's informed choices on these dangers seems hypocritical to me as we routinely attend sports that have been demonstrated to cause, for example, major brain damage in athletes (e.g. football, hockey, boxing).

I suppose I get the comparability issue (people like records from 1900 to be comparable to those today) but to some extent this is outright hypocrisy as well.  Don't modern training techniques, like altitude sleeping chambers, equally make a mockery of comparability?  Baseball cries the most about steroids messing up the record books, then it does stuff like lower the pitching mound to help hitters and add the DH.

On the plus side, isn't there value to seeing our athletes play longer?  Wouldn't it be nice (if you are not a Red Sox fan) to see Derek Jeter play a little longer?  To see Tiger Woods return quicker from injuries?

And don't even get me started on the government's campaign to throw steroid users like Barry Bonds in jail.  As I said earlier, I don't have a particular problem if private governing bodies choose, for competitive or marketing reasons, to ban PED's and enforce that ban within their community.  But throwing Barry Bonds in jail for choice he made with his own body?

Last year, Alex Rodriguez was Mr. Choke, because he was perceived as batting less well when the game was on the line.  This year, he has hit a few walk-off homeruns, and he is the new Mr. Clutch.

Clutch hitting is one of those baseball notions that are constantly argued about.  A short summary of the ongoing argument is:  Inside baseball guys swear it is a true phenomena;  statisticians generally cannot find it.  I tend to believe that few if any players have consistently elevated their hitting in clutch situations, but you can find players whose hitting is worse, where the mental stress takes a toll.   Tom Kirkendall points to this great blog I have never visited before called "Fire Joe Morgon."  I am presuming the name is a reference to the fact that former player Joe Morgon has effectively staked himself out as the defender of baseball conventional wisdom against the assault of the Bill James / Billy Bean statistics guys.  He has a great long post showing the absurdity of some of the clutch hitting claims.  This one got him started:

It was a week ago today, fewer than 24
hours after the Pirates had put down a sizzling St. Louis rally in the
ninth inning, that catcher Ronny Paulino reflected upon it and offered
this surprising tidbit.

"You know what the key was to that whole inning?" he said. "When David Eckstein got hit by that pitch."

Say what?

Hitting Eckstein -- not intentionally -- loaded the bases and,
ultimately, forced closer Salomon Torres to pitch to Albert Pujols with
a one-run lead.

"Doesn't matter," Paulino said. "Eckstein's the guy you don't want to face there."

There's
a lot of stupid stuff in this article. I am happy to say -- since I get
bored of disparaging journalists only -- that most of it is said by
actual baseball players. That's new and fun!

David
Eckstein's career EqA is .260, which is exactly league average. Albert
Pujols's career EqA is .341, which is easy, don't-even-think-twice Hall
of Fame shoo-in. Anyone who ever wants to pitch to Albert Pujols over
David Eckstein in any situation, including pick-up whiffle ball games
at family barbecues when Pujols has dengue fever and Eckstein gets to
use one of those over-sized red bats while Pujols has to hit with a
live cobra, is a goddamn moron of the highest order.

Derek Jeter is generally considered the hands-down clutch playoff hitter in baseball today.  Everyone in baseball, almost to a man, will say that Jeter steps up in the playoffs, so we see this:

Derek Jeter's Career Splits: .317/.388/.463

Derek Jeter's Career Postseason splits: .314/.384/.479

Mr.
Clutch is actually Mr. Exactly the Same No Matter What Month You Are
Talking About. He is Mr. Equally Excellent Hitting SS Every Month from
April to November. He is Mr. Outrageously Similar Statistics Every 30
Days.

LOL