THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Apparently he’s not even going to appeal it. For a guy who seems to love his money, losing a third of it for this season doesn’t seem to be making him too upset.

If you have someone to take out your laundry, and someone to park your car, can’t you have someone to verify the drug, double and triple-checking it?

Really, should Boras’ company have a staff dedicated for this?

Manny loses 8MM, which means Boras loses 400K.  He could hire a couple of people to track Manny, and all his other clients.  They submit their drugs, the staff checks it, it is double-checked by the drug czar on staff, and Boras signs off on it.  Peace of mind. 

Stoopid as-is.

Craig says that this is an opportunity for enlightment:

http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/mannys-suspension-less-a-crisis-than-an-opportunity/

I agree with the whole thing, that basically, this is the workplace playing conditions, so deal with it at that level.

I canot comment about Manny’s specific situation, but there was a line in Craig’s post with which I completely disagree:

“a relatively swift and automatic system that isn’t bogged down by union maneuvering and litigation any time a violation is found”

That is NOT a good thing.  Well, let me rephrase that.  It is probably very good PR.  It is not a good thing if you have any interest in ensuring correct outcomes.

A swift process can never be a fair process in these situations.  The athlete will receive a package of documents from a laboratory (the WADA laboratory in Montreal in the case of MLB’s Major League program).  Most of the time that package will reflect good work.  Some of the time, as can be seen in the case of Floyd Landis, among others, it can reflect very poor and unreliable work.  Luckily for baseball, it does use the two best WADA laboratories available - Montreal for MLB and UCLA for MiLB.  That those labs a very good, however, does not make them flawless.

There is also a matter of the system as a whole - the testing system that is.  Some tests have a far greater probability of producing error or false positive results - mostly I am referring to IRMS and the “double-blotting” technique for EPO detection (and, if it ever gets off the ground, the immunoassay for hGH).  The WADA world - in which baseball has chosen to work in as far as testing goes (but, very wisely, not as to anything else) - is a closed world in which open opinion necessary for legitimate scientific discussion is not encouraged once WADA has made a decision.  Often - well, almost always, actually, those decisions end up be “right” or at least close enough.  But WADA is a political body more so than it is a scientific body, so there are many many flaws in this process.

The point of all this rambling is that for Craig’s celebration of a swift process to be good, the labs and the science behind the labs must be infallible.  They are not.  They are generally good (at least the ones Baseball is using), but they are not close to infallible. 

Eventually, MLB will experience a Floyd Landis - an innocent person will be accused.  MLB’s system, like WADA’s system, is not set up to handle that.

Paul—I don’t think that I really disagree with you, and will grant that I probably oversimplified what I was getting at with that line.  I do want a system that protects players from bad testing and science and that builds in sense and a logical appeals process, etc. 

What I was getting at was public perception. Certainly what we have is not ideal, but there’s at least some component of it that is automatic (i.e. as the ball gets rolling) and low key enough to where it remains behind the scenes.  A test is administered, results are shared among relevant people, decisions on appeals and stuff are made, etc. before it turns into a giant issue.

We can tweak the details all we want to make sure justice is being done. I just think the public wants to avoid Clemens-style situations in which every action is met with a circus-like press conference, threats of litigation, actual litigaton, and the sport basically held hostage for a long time. 

I think we’re moving in that direction, and even if there are problems witht he specifics, we can contintue to have the process stage managed in an orderly fashion so as to create confidence in the system.

Craig,
Ok.  I can agree with all of that.  In my mind, the best anti-doping system is one that does a good job of preventing doping (with a full recognition that it won’t prevent all of it), never punishes someone who did not dope, and remains largely behind the scenes. 

I think your concern of litigation, however, is probably misdirecting the problem.  Its litigation in the press that is the issue.  That is what Congress and Selig have brought to baseball.  Sure, Clemens can take his share of the blame too.

MLB might be going in the right direction, but someone inside MLB is pushing a story to the press (through Mark Fainaru-Wada)and that is not good.  If it is an isolated incident, then hopefully MLB can find its leak and fire them (and hopefully sue them as well).  If the “leak” is “from the top” then MLB is behaving much like the Olympic Movement.  If that is the case, then MLB is most certainly not headed in the right direction.  The last thing the fans, athletes and teams should want is anti-doping modeled after the Olympic movement.  In Olympic sport, PED use dominates the coverage of the sports, not the sports themselves.