On the Usefullness of the Mitchell Report

The Mitchell Report contains information about players using steroids, HGH, etc. Here is the run-down of all former Dodgers (major league team only), and the quality of their evidence:



Kevin Brown: Radomski says he supplied Brown with HGH and steroids several times, and even produced a copy of a USPS Express Mail package. Enough to arouse suspicion.

Chris Donnels: Admitted to using steroids, HGH, and other drugs. Check included as well. Suspicious.

Eric Gagne: Mentions LoDuca bought him some the first time and later Gagne bought some himself. Includes USPS Express Mail receipt. Suspicious.

Matt Herges: Referred by LoDuca, wrote "Thanks!" in memo line of check. Probably true.

Phil Hiatt: Bought steroids and HGH, no checks or USPS receipts. Not compelling enough.

Darren Holmes: Told reporters he ordered HGH but never used it. Cut and dry.

Todd Hundley: Radomski sold him stuff and knew him since 1988. Donnels said he talked to him about steroids and Radomski when on the Dodgers too. Prett solid testimony, although physical evidence would be nice.

Mike Judd: Dodgers AAA strength and conditioning guy observed Judd and LoDuca inject each other with steroids. Compelling.

Paul Lo Duca: Letters to Radomski, records, 3 checks in the appendix, and mentions of referrals and injections. HGH and Steroids. A whole lot of stuff on this guy, most likely to go to jail (or at least deserve to).

Adam Riggs: Used HGH & Steroids. Referred by LoDuca. Moneygram and checks. Strong evidence.

F.P. Santangelo: Used HGH & Steroids. Checks. Referred Piatt. Doesn't look good.

Gary Sheffield: Use the cream on his knees, referred to by Bonds, Greg Anderson. Admitted to it, sort of.

Ismael Valdez: Reported by SF Chronicle to have bought HGH. Not enough to go on, but he sucks.

Todd Williams: Radomski said he sold him steroids once in 2001. Not too compelling, but suspicious.

It is particularly interesting how few sources provided so much information, which would lead one to believe that there is definitely more to be found. However, one has to wonder why so much inconsistency for receipt copies, checks, etc for some players over others.

Dodgers Year in Review 2007 - Pitching

For the starting rotation, you can categorize the pitchers in the following (ERA for that particular role):

Good Starters (518.3 IP, 85 GS)
Brad Penny (3.03 ERA) - helped most by allowing very few home runs (only 9), although his other peripheral stats (135K and 73BB in 208 IP) don't shine that much. Penny may very well regress a bit next year, but he has been more efficient, which may help that homer rate.
Derek Lowe (3.90 ERA)- tough luck year for Lowe, who went 12-14 with a 3.88 ERA, a weird record for a 118 ERA+. Lowe's sinker was sinking, his k rate was decent too. The big story was that he got injured for the first time in his career this year, and he might be getting a bit old.
Chad Billingsley (3.38 ERA) - in his age 22 season, Billingsley put up a 138 ERA+ in 147 innings. His three true outcome numbers all seemed to worsen a bit when he was put in the starter role, although his K rate remained good, and could reasonably be expected to improve in 2008.

Banged-up Starters (156.3 IP, 30 GS)
Jason Schmidt (6.31 ERA) - shoulder problems ended his season early, and affected his performance horribly. It is unclear what he will do in 2008.
Hong-Chi Kuo (6.75 ERA) - or Guo, to some people. Flashes of brilliance and a really awesome bat flip cannot change the fact that this Taiwanese lefthander is a constant injury risk with a history of elbow problems.
Randy Wolf (4.73 ERA) - sadly he came back from injury only to be injured again. When he was starting, though, he was generally good until he started to get hurt, as one can ascertain from his 94K in 102 IP. Nice curve, though.

Forgettable (242.3 IP, 47 GS)
Brett Tomko (5.56 ERA) - finally got released. He started 15 games for the Dodgers, and posted a 79 ERA+. Good riddance, although we'll miss his paintings.
Mark Hendrickson (6.13 ERA) - slightly better than Tomko. And taller. And left handed. But still, Hendrickson sucked and started 15 games.
Esteban Loaiza (8.34 ERA) - we bail out Billy Beane and pick him up off waivers. He really sucked and should go to the bullpen if he's even on the team. Big waste of money by Ned.
David Wells (5.12 ERA) - fat fat fatty. Nothing special as a pitcher, but made us all laugh by bunting his way on base.
Eric Stults (5.68 ERA) - an option down in AAA, but not one you would really depend on regularly.

Essentially, the Dodgers had 3 good starters and a lot of bad ones. If Kuroda can put up at least a 4.5 ERA and Schmidt can make 20 healthy starts, the rotation should be quite solid.

Bullpen

Didn't know you were here
Derek Lowe um yeah, he's a starter
Yhency Brazoban - the new dreifort
Hong-Chi Kuo - he should be a starter, when he's healthy
Eric Hull - not bad in a brief stint
Jon Meloan - didn't impress in the majors in a brief stint, but he's still young
Eric Stults - not really impressive here, but didn't do much out of the pen

Blah
Brett Tomko - Tomko sucked out of the pen too. He was decent in this role last year, but his failure here forced Colletti to release him.
Roberto Hernandez - what the hell? The dude is 40 and bad.

A List
Saito - awesome, awesome, awesome. Will make you believe closers matter again.
Broxton - A great pitcher at the back of the pen, and will be a great closer himself someday.
Billingsley - earned a promotion by being lights out in the pen

A-/B+ List
Beimel - Beimel continued to be a great piece to have in the bullpen, useful against lefthanders or righthanders, as a lefty relief pitcher should be.
Proctor - not bad, I'll admit. While I don't think he was worth Betemit, he still makes the bullpen a lot deeper.
Hendrickson - surprisingly effective as a reliever, including a K/BB over 4. As long as he doesn't insist on starting, he should be good.
Seanez - a surprise this year, pitching quite effectively at age 38 or so.
Houlton - not bad, but don't expect him to be a regular reliever.
Tsao - were it not for the injury, would be in the A list. Retired 24 straight batters or something and was phenomenal to start the season.

T.O. Makes excuses for his teammate

I'm not a general sports blogger, but this was just funny.

The headline was probably the real news here in this story:

IRVING, Texas (AP) - sportsminute Terrell Owens has a message for Jessica Simpson: Stay away. The 27- year-old singer-actress has become Public Enemy No. 1 among Dallas Cowboys fans because of a link being made between her appearance at Sunday's game and the poor performance of her new boyfriend, quarterback Tony Romo.

Could there possibly be another explanation?

The Cowboys lost 10-6 to the Philadelphia Eagles and Romo had what was statistically the worst game of his career, all while Simpson sat in a luxury box wearing a pink No. 9 jersey she proudly showed off for television cameras.

The problem for her is, Romo's previous worst game came last December at home to the Eagles when then-girlfriend Carrie Underwood was in attendance.

Way to go, AP, and Drudge for linking to this.

First Glance at the Mitchell Report

When you consider how many steroid users in baseball got their stuff from Kirk Radomski alone, it becomes apparent that this is but the tip of the iceberg. It's also quite staggering to see how many people left such and obvious paper trail - gives the impression that players weren't that embarrassed to be steroid users. Or that baseball players are the biggest idiots in the world - Larry Bigbie wrote "supplements" on the subject line of a check. What a moron.

The evidence itself ranges from hearsay to damning.

Clemens stands out in particular because his section is so long. Most damning is that he was particularly close to Brian McNamee, even convincing the Yankees to hire him in 2000. McNamee's story is that he stuck a needle in Clemens' butt multiple times to give him steroids.

The inclusion of checks, priority mail packing slips, etc, shows how much of a paper trail Radomski kept. Do all steroids dealers keep such extensive records? Seemingly, Radomski felt if he had to go down, he'd take everyone else down with him.

Setting up Shop

If you don't know who I am and you're here, it probably means you found the link on my Jason Schmidt page. Welcome.

Basically, I'm a senior at George Mason University, yet I have an irrational interest in the Dodgers. From what I can tell, it's a combination of playing for a YMCA-league t-ball team called the Dodgers when I was in first grade and video games with Mike Piazza. My parents are both Braves fans, which makes sense because we have cable tv and thus PBS, and I grew up in Richmond, where the Braves AAA team plays.

I tried to polish a couple things up here before getting actual traffic, and the archives should give you something to waste time with. I hope they don't drive you away. The ad box is new, but most of this has looked like this for a while. I'll try to update this at least a couple times a week, although a lot of this is on the basis of when there actually is content to talk about, but that's what the Mitchell Report is for (post coming after this has been the top post for a couple days).

Division of Labor

Now for those of you who know anything about sports, you know that ESPN is just plain stupid. I'm sorry, but it is. If you tune in to something like Baseball Tonight all you get is fodder for something like Fire Joe Morgan. But there is a puzzle here.

Anyone can have an opinion. But opinions are only relevant in discussing what is not already known to be fact. "The Dodgers did not hit many home runs this year" is not an opinion - they finished 15th in the NL. "The Dodgers had a bad year offensively" is an opinion, but it can be substantiated by the fact that they had a team OPS+ of 93, where 100 is average. "The Dodgers need to give up their best hitters for more pitching" is an opinion, and a very stupid one at that.

But I digress. Here's my old roommate on the subject:

If you read what Schreiber says about ESPN's coverage, it makes them look like a "worldwide leader" in sports, but little else. They lead the fray into a world of unsubstantiated reports, biased reporting by former athletes interviewing former teammates and players who played the same position (see: Irvin, Michael and Johnson, Keyshawn), and unseasoned reporters thrust into a position where they have to awkwardly negotiate their position as a former athlete and their current position as a journalist, which goes beyond ESPN (see: Barber, Tiki).

Apparently ESPN believes it needs not only frequent celebrity guests, but in fact needs celebrity hosts, not uncommon in sports. But ESPN was correct in stating their situation is not unique, but in fact the nature of 24 hour news, and that is the case for their shoddy news coverage, but reporters on Fox News and CNN are reporters, not ex-politicians. The creation of a larger opinion section for the 24 hour news networks seems to be the trend, because that's easier to use as filler.

But here's the problem - there are more useful opinions out there. Dodger Thoughts is a trillion times more useful than Bill Plaschke. Heck, I can even write a Bill Plaschke column (comment 226). Bloggers can also do research, cite facts and stats, and they are fact-checked by readers whom they are not too arrogant to ignore.

The mainstream media has advantages, just not what one would think. The old claim is it's professional, so it can screen writers for quality - a reasonably intelligent reader can screen for quality. More relevantly, the professional status means that reporters are paid to have time to devote to gathering facts, information and interviews. Reporters can ask experts for data and sources of data. Most significantly, reporters are most capable of unearthing new information credibly.

Bloggers pretty much have to cite reporters - often they just link to them and quote, if anything, only the most relevant parts - because not only do they have to satisfy the reporter that they're not plagarizing, but they have to satisfy their audience that they're not making stuff up. Bloggers have to have substatiated opinions - people are more skeptical of what other people have to say. Further, bloggers can use any hard data they see. Therefore, the most efficent division of labor would be for the mainstream media to do all the reporting and fact gathering and then for the bloggers to comment and analyze.

There are vast economic reasons you don't see this, though. If bloggers could summarize news stories just by citing newspapers and linking to them, how would newspapers make money? The best the newspapers would hope for would be increased readership, and they may limit how much of the article could actually be quoted on a blog. It would be a risky move, but a solidly journalistic news organization could prove to be the most linked to paper, and those who just want the whole story would go to that paper. As it is, this is the strength of the news business, and division of labor suggests you are better off specializing in your strength, even if you are better at commentary than bloggers (which these reporters are not).

O'Malley's Revolutionary Greed

But I'm a libertarian economist, so I think this is a good thing.

O'Malley moved the Dodgers West because he wanted a new stadium. What was wrong with Ebbetts, you might ask. Well, you can't fit anyone in it - it had about the seating capacity of Fenway Park, around 35,000 or so. The extra 21,000 seats in Dodger Stadium meant a lot, particularly for a team with a growing fan base that wanted its fans to actually get to see a game.
Ok, so greed probably isn't the right word with this example, but you can't say O'Malley wasn't the penny-pinching type. The story was the Dodgers didn't have names on the back of the uniforms until the mid 1970s so O'Malley could sell more programs, and he also didn't pay players for goodwill tours to Japan, and a dispute over that got Maury Wills traded. But the point is you can actually get tickets to a Dodger game, unlike a Red Sox game. And O'Malley even financed the park himself. But he moved west because the New York zoning nazi wanted the Dodgers to move to Queens. O'Malley said, hey, we're not the Brooklyn Dodgers anymore anyway, so why not be the Los Angeles Dodgers? Let's expand the league nationwide while we're at it.

But I'm happy he's in the hall of fame. Anyone in New York crying about this now is just plain weird. Especially with the internet - you can follow the team from the East Coast. You know, like I do.

Shut Up Plaschke

Seriously, the Dodgers signed Andruw Jones to a 2 year deal and Plaschke insists they keep Pierre now as a regular. But he's not joking.

The Jones signing was smart and efficient and will help folks -- including owner Frank McCourt -- forgive the terribly large contract and burden that Colletti placed last winter on Juan Pierre.

One mistake down, one to go.

Wait, what the hell? Did Plaschke just surprise me? I'm speechless! This actually would suggest the Juan Pierre signing was a complete and utter failure, and that Colletti has fixed a horrible mistake.

But that doesn't explain the rest of the article:

Now it's time to repent for the giant error that was Jason Schmidt.

Ha! I get it; Schmidt used to play for the Giants! That's so clever! So what should we do?

Colletti needs to use the outfield surplus created by the signing of Jones and do everything within his power to acquire a No. 1 starting pitcher.

Um, that means trading the good outfielders, who are about as good offensively as Jones.

When asked about his team's needs, has Joe Torre mentioned anything but pitching?

Joe Torre doesn't know who's on the goddamn roster. Hell, he probably has to ask what team he's managing every so often. Further, the Dodgers had a team ERA+ of 109 last year, which was a bit above average, and they had 3 good starters in Lowe, Penny and Billingsley. Penny with his sub-3 ERA* had a lot of people impressed, but then again, so did Jake Peavy. But Penny did finish 3rd in CY Young voting, if you think that matters. And Billingsley was superb, and he wasn't even in the rotation the whole year. Joe Torre said that because the Yankees always had problems with shitty pitching the last few years - they paid $10 million a year for Carl Pavano! Their bullpen had 2 good pitchers, and they traded one of them for Wilson Betemit. What Joe Torre doesnt' realize is that he now has a team with problems on offense, namely Juan Pierre, Nomar Garciaparra, and last year, Rafael Furcal.

The Dodgers' field personnel love Baltimore's Erik Bedard, an aggressive hard thrower who was third in the American League in strikeouts and fourth in earned-run average.

He is a left-handed version of John Lackey, only five months younger.

No, because he's far more injury prone, and his walk rates were far too high until about the last year and a half to fully qualify him as an "ace."

Also still available is the pitcher everybody loves, Minnesota's Johan Santana, and the Dodgers could still apparently sneak in and acquire him.

The Twins got Joe Nathan, Francisco Liriano and Boof Bonser for NATHAN PIERZYNSKI! HE ISN'T EVEN A GOOD BASEBALL PLAYER. FOR SANTANA, IT WOULD TAKE LIKE MARTIN, KEMP, BILLINGSLEY AND BROXTON!

Either pitcher would cost them Matt Kemp.

And like 9 other players too!

But either would put them in the playoffs. And, as Jose Lima would tell you, who knows what could happen then?

Yeah, you could be on a losing team because you traded away all your good players. And it would really suck if you failed - ask the Texas Rangers if trading for Carlos Lee was worth it. And there's more.

You say he won't be any better than the combination of Kemp and Andre Ethier? I say, in a post-steroid-era season in 2006, he hit 41 homers with 129 RBIs, so get real.

Ok. Let me humor you. I'll even compare 2006 for Jones to 2007 for Ethier and Kemp rather than 2007 for Jones. I'll even consider that RBIs matter. Kemp and Ethier combined for 23 HR and 106 RBI last year. If you pro-rated that for full seasons, though, say 550 AB each, and you combine for 35 HR and 158 RBI. Regardless of your HR to RBI conversion ratio, I'd say that's pretty good. But seriously, why do you have to compare Jones to a combination of these two, or even one of these two? Why not just put Ethier in left, Jones in Center, and Kemp in right? But Plaschke says this of Jones:

His position lets Juan Pierre become Juan Pierre

Someone who isn't good enough to be a starting centerfielder? Seriously, what is Plaschke saying here? How does getting displaced from his position put Juan Pierre in a position to succeed?

No, no, the Dodgers will not and should not trade the short-armed center fielder. Just because he was overpaid doesn't mean he lacked value. Did everybody somehow miss that he was second in the league in stolen bases and led the league in sacrifice bunts?

He had value as a bench player, but because he was overpaid meant that he was going to be used as a starter. Every day. By Ned's orders. And stolen bases are awesome for fantasy baseball, but in real baseball they don't matter as much, especially when you get caught. Pierre did steal successfully over 80% of the time, so on the whole his speed was a bit of an asset. But sacrifice bunts are what pitchers do on offense. Come on, that's nothing to be proud of - he got out on purpose more than anyone. What actually happened is that his speed has gotten worse and that's why he's no good for center anymore, and that's why his bunt hits percentage was down.

The Dodgers need to keep Pierre's speed and bunting ability at the top of the order. Goodness, it's one of the reasons Jones agreed to play here. But at least now, Pierre can move to a safer left field and be viewed for what he is -- a complementary player.

Yes, and he can complement the team very well as a late inning defensive replacement or pinch runner. But if Ethier and Kemp are better ballplayers, they should play ahead of him. End of story.

* - Penny actually had an ERA of 3.03 to end the year, but his ERA was under 3 for the better part of the season.