New York Nine: Wait a minute...Barry Bonds took steroids????

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Wait a minute...Barry Bonds took steroids????

This report just came in a few hours ago, but honestly who the hell needed to hear this to know Barry Bonds did steroids. According to new evidence revealed by the judge for Bonds' perjury trial Barry's urine tested positive for steroids in a 2003 test which of course seems to be pretty damning evidence in the case. To backtrack a bit Bonds testified in the now famous BALCO case that he had taken the "cream" and the "clear" but he did not know that they were performance enhancing drugs, but when asked point blank whether he had ever taken steriods his answer was a pointed no.

Obviously if the attorneys for the state know what they're doing this should help their case and help them win a case that has been going on way too long. I don't perticularly like Barry Bonds and in fact you could say I loathe him but I think the prospect of him going to jail for a very long time because he took steriods seems very silly and ridiclous. Especially when you consider that so many people have admitted to having done them it seems kind of crazy that one of those guys could spend the rest of his days in a state penitentary for it.

Then again, perhaps this is just karma coming back at Barry, many others admitted to doing it, like Giambi and Pettitte, and while they were criticized they were pretty much forgiven for their past trangressions. Guys like Bonds and Clemens who very clearly were using PEDs to break records were given a chance for penance they refused, and in fact they threw it back in disgust that they would even be accused of it. So in return these greatest of cheaters are seeing their sins paid back ten fold, forever disgraced and despised for trying to cheat the system and the game so many love. Maybe a conviction in a perjury case is a bit extreme, but Bonds deserves some sort of punishment for the mockery he made of the game and I hope he gets it.

0 comments:

Some Key Terms to Know When Reading

I throw around a lot of numbers and stats so I figured I should probably explain some of them:

wOBA - a new one I'll be using, short for weighted on-base average is essentially an improvement on OPS. Scaled to average OBP (with .330 the league average) wOBA more properly weighs on-base percentage higher than slugging percentage and more accurately weighs extra base hits (a double isn't worth double of that of a single which is what SLG does) to give a better picture of a batter's worth.

.000/.000/.000 is the industry shorthand for the split stats for batting average, on base percentage, and slugging percentage, in that order, these are some of the more commonly used stats to indicate how productive a hitter is.

OPS - shorthand for On-Base Percentage Plus Slugging is becoming more in vogue in the mainstream media to get a better idea of the raw production of a hitter, instead of saying how often they get a hit OPS shows how productive those hits are.

BABIP - Batting Average on Balls in play, its pretty much what it says, how often that a batter puts in ball in play that it becomes a hit, its a stat that shows if a hitter is just having a lot of bad luck or a hot streak is just fluky. For instance a BABIP of .200 is considered unlucky its not that he's not hitting, he just isn't hitting where the fielders are not there.

OPS+ - as the name implies, OPS+ is OPS but with adjustments to park effects and other outliers to normalize the data. Indeed, as most people know some parks are harder to hit at than others, which this stat compensates for, 100 being the baseline of league average

WAR - Wins Above Replacement, as its name suggests, provides an exact number of wins a particular player is worth above what your average AAA player, or replacement player would provide in his absence. Although this is a very difficult stat to explain (I don't totally get it personally) the stat is beautifully simple in that it provides a precise value of either a pitcher or hitter to his particular team, which enables teams to monetize their worth and properly assign a dollar value.

ERA+ - similar to OPS+ its a more highly sophisticated way of evaluating a pitcher's performance adjusted for park effects, this also is on a numerical basis with 100 as league average.

FIP - short for fielding independent pitching, FIP measures the only aspects of the game that a pitcher has total control over, strikeouts, walks, and home runs. Scaled to ERA, FIP gives a truer indication of a pitcher's true talent by removing the luck apparent with balls in play.

WHIP - Walks and Hits per innings pitched, a little more well known stat, but a good indicator of how effective a pitcher is. Chances are if a guy is walking a lot of guys and giving up a hot of hits, he's not pitching all that well.

xFIP- a variation of FIP which normalizes home run rates as a way to discount aberrational home run rates that are either too high or too low to reasonably sustain.

UZR- Short of Ultimate Zone Rating, this is the number of runs above or below average a fielder is in both range runs and error runs combined. This is a difficult stat to understand because it's not one of those stats you can figure out at home, because it includes a bevy of factors including park effects and speed. As a consequence, its not a perfect stat, but its the best defensive stat we have. Also seen as UZR/150 is the Ultimate Zone rating per 150 games.

RngR - Range Runs is defined as the number of runs above or below average a fielder is, determined by how the fielder is able to get to balls hit in his vicinity. Also not a perfect fielding stat, but one of the many fielding stats that help as as fans get a fuller picture of a player's defensive prowess.

New York Nine

Baseball the way it was meant to be, down and dirty with brutally honest analysis

Wait a minute...Barry Bonds took steroids????

0 comments:

Post a Comment

About me

My Blog List

Some Key Terms to Know When Reading

About Me

Blog Archive

Followers

Blog Archive

Search This Blog