Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 218: Paralysis by Biogenesis

Episode Date: June 6, 2013

Ben and Sam discuss the latest developments in the Biogenesis saga.

Biogenesis. Biogeny. Biogenesis. Biogeny. Biogenesis. Biogeny. Biogenesis. Good morning and welcome to episode 218 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives. I'm Sam Miller with Ben Lindberg, and today we're only going to talk about one topic. Ben Lindberg, and today we're only going to talk about one topic. We're going to talk about biogenesis, I guess. I actually have never heard it pronounced out loud. Yeah, neither have I, but I don't know how else you would, unless it's like exegesis or something. And yeah, anyway, off to a good start. Biogenesis. Yes, this start. Biogenesis. Yes.

Biogenesis. Yeah, a lot of people would have talked about this yesterday when it was in the news, but we have our priorities right. We had to talk about the wall and whether it's a going thing. And if we had talked about it yesterday, we probably would have said completely different things. And maybe if we talked about it tomorrow, we would say completely different things. Before we start, can I say a couple things about other things? Yeah. So I felt like we should probably say that had Yasiel Puig's second game, or had his debut been more like his second game, we would probably not have talked about how the coverage was overblown. Oh, certainly not. Yeah. That was a day deserving of hype. Yes. Yes, it was. And the other thing, someone tweeted at us, Stephen Adler tweeted at us

about the Mariners-White Sox game, which was yesterday, if you're listening to this, on Thursday, and asked us if it was going to be a topic. And it's not, but I wanted to mention it because we recently talked about, I guess, what the greatest thing that could happen is in a really, really long game. And that might have been the greatest thing, I guess. It was certainly up there. That's what we said at the time. Yeah. Yeah, it was a game-tying Grand Slam in the 14th, right?

Bottom of the 14th inning, Kyle Seager hit a game-tying two-out Grand Slam. So that, as we said, we always root against any team taking the lead. But if a team takes the lead and then the other team ties it, that is the best case scenario. And that happened in a way that I don't think had ever happened before. Should we? The great thing about it, too, is the very best thing about it, I think, is that in these modern times, managers hold their closer for that last inning,

even though it seems arguably very silly to do so. And so if you score one in the top of the 14th, the manager feels real smart because now he's got his closer to protect a one-run lead. But A, a lot of times you score five in the top of the 14th, or sometimes you do, and then you're like, oh, great, now I've got to use my closer to wrap up a five-run lead. And B, what if your closer gives up five? You have nobody else.

You've used your long man for one inning. And now you've gone to your closer. It's retied. You're going forward again. And so Addison Reed had to throw like 50-some pitches because they had nobody else. And it worked. Yeah. So between that and David Murphy pitching for the Rangers the day before and throwing a knuckleball,

this has basically been the best week ever for long games. You know what I just realized today? My favorite single play in baseball, this is totally off topic, but I think my favorite single play in baseball, if I can, is the play where there's a ball hit foul down the line and the fielder has to decide whether to catch it or not, knowing that the runner's going to tag. Yeah, that's a good one. That's a great one because you just you don't have you don't have the time to really do the math and it's just it's so exciting not you know not knowing what to do and what he's going to do i

vaguely recall that happening like maybe in like the 87 playoffs which was the first the first season i was really into baseball uh and i'll see if I can find that sometime. But yeah, that's an exciting play. Anyway, do you want to do the news summary? Sure, I guess so. So I've read so many things about this in this past day that it's hard to keep it all straight because new things keep happening. But basically, there was an ESPN Outside the Lines report that came out, I guess, on Tuesday night, that basically said that MLB is seeking to suspend 20 or so players for their involvement with the Biogenesis Clinic and taking PEDs. And the new spin, we've known that MLB has been investigating these players for their involvement, and we've talked about it on the podcast before.

But the new spin is that the owner, the operator of that clinic, Tony Bosch, I guess is how you pronounce it, is now going to cooperate with MLB. cooperate with MLB. Basically, it seems because he was afraid of the lawsuit that they, the prospect of the lawsuit that they kind of came up with, it seems like maybe to compel his cooperation in this investigation. So to get out from under that, he is going to talk to them. He is, well, we don't exactly know what he's going to do, but presumably he's going to confirm that the various documents tying players to this clinic are legitimate and maybe give some extra details about that. So I guess the initial report was that MLB was going to do this, or at least implied that this was going to happen. I guess the subsequent details that came out on Wednesday was that nothing has really been decided yet, that they are interviewing players, that they're probably going to be interviewing players throughout this

month, and then maybe we'll decide on what the next step is in July. And if they do decide to suspend players in July, then of course there's going to be an appeals process and all hell is going to break loose basically, because this would be unprecedented. None of these players would have failed the test for these suspensions. They would be suspended based on the testimony of Bosch, who of course seems like a very unreliable character, unreliable witness. So there's that, and then there's also the suggestion that MLB is going to seek 100-game suspensions, at least for some of these players, A-Rod and Braun and I don't know who else, because they would have lied about the usage.

So they would be suspending them once for the involvement, which did not involve a failed test, and then suspending them again for the lying, all based on testimony from a pretty unreliable character. So, yeah. That's good. That's good. That'll do. So let's just go over some of the questions that you and I are maybe capable of answering because they involve emotion and opinion rather than some sort of inside access that, so far as I can tell, not many people seem to have at this point.

So one of the pieces of conventional wisdom I think that has – in my circle is that MLB is being rotten. They've used pretty disgusting means to investigate these players, to compel this testimony, to go after Braun in particular. So it's sort of – if MLB was the government, it would be like the sort of big brother kind interest in enforcing their rules and that their rules are something that their customers want and that the players want and the owners want and that are generally held to be good rules, which is that you shouldn't use these illegal performance-enhancing drugs that have been agreed upon, why are we upset with these sort of tactics? Is there a reason to be upset with these tactics? Or is it, I mean, it seems like you could pretty easily argue that it's really in their best interests to use whatever they can so long as it's legal and effective. Yeah, I can see that perspective. I think, I mean, I guess it's the tactics that are somewhat shady or seen as shady and that they have this joint drug agreement.

It's collectively bargained. They are trying to say that their testing program is great and that they've really made strides there, and yet they are going after players who have not failed a test, and they're kind of letting, I guess, the dealer, in a way, off the hook in order to go after his clients who happen to be baseball players. I mean, the dealer's none of their business. Right.

Yeah, and of course he could still be prosecuted for something. He apparently has tried to ask that they kind of put in a word for him or something with the federal government, but MLB cannot control what the federal government does. So I guess that's the perspective. And it seems like, I mean, there have to be certain people out there who probably cheered this news and celebrated this news, I would think. cheered this news and celebrated this news, I would think. I mean, you and I have kind of talked about our position on PDs and I guess how we aren't all that interested in the moral condemnation and maybe we aren't quite as convinced of the effects as some people might be. And so I guess the people that we tend to talk to and the blogs we tend to read, the reaction has been pretty universally negative, I guess.

I haven't seen a whole lot of people congratulating baseball who kind of have a reflexive aversion to any sort of cheating, any sort of PED use, and hate to see these really, really rich players getting away with things potentially, and kind of cheer the news that they will be held accountable for that or or that they're not going to get away with it and if that is a significant portion of the baseball fan population then it maybe makes sense for baseball to placate those people or yeah yeah yeah i i literally don't remember what my position is on that like i don't have any idea what i've said on this show before, and so I'm a bit worried that I'm going to contradict myself. But yeah, I mean I basically – so far, I guess where I would be is that I don't really have any issue with MLB getting really, really in the mud on this stuff. I mean this is stuff that takes place in muddy places and,

um, you know, they're not the government, they are employers. They, you know, they are the bosses of these players. And, um, uh, you know, I mean, this, they, they have, they have an interest or, or at least they think they have an interest, uh, in, you know, as cliched as it sounds, in protecting the integrity of the product on the field. And this is not something that they're dictating from the top down. I mean, the players constantly say they want it to be a clean game. The union has agreed to these drug tests. They say they want it to be a clean game.

You hear former players, and former players don't have nearly the stake in the game that regular players do, but former players want to execute these guys. And so it seems to me that the tactics MLB would have to use to make me clutch pearls would be pretty grotesque. It doesn't particularly bother me. Now, I think that it goes back to, I mean, you can dispute the underlying rules

and whether everybody has agreed to a fair system and a good system. I generally think that they mostly have. And I think it goes to the question that we've talked about once before of whose game is it? Who owns the game? Is it the fans because we spend the money or is the owners because they literally own the infrastructure? Or is it the players because they're the only ones who actually produce anything of value in this situation? And I tend to I also don't remember what I said when we talked about that, but I tend to think it's the players, the players game. And they don't seem to I mean, it seems to me that the players are generally on board with drug testing. And so they hire an authority that is in charge of overseeing that.

And you don't once you hire a judge, you're to some degree you lose control of enforcement. judge, to some degree, you lose control of enforcement. You can't both be the person who's being investigated and then also tell the investigator how to do his job. You give up a lot of that freedom. And so, yeah, I mean, I agree. It is sort of, it is ugly. It's exposed a little bit of ugliness, but I'm not sure it's bad ugliness. I guess the thing that most baffles me about baseball's actions here, and again, we don't really know exactly how far they're planning to go. The reports have varied, but A, I don't quite know why they're so interested in punishing Ryan Braun. Clearly, I mean, I don't think it's much in dispute that he probably

is cheated. And if he cheats again, then you have no choice but to punish him. But it seems to me that the debacle that happened with him in a lot of ways was almost the best case scenario for MLB. They got to show that their drug testing caught a cheater, that even Ryan Braun, the best player in baseball, could be caught cheating with their excellent, awesome doping tests. And yet they didn't actually have to lose any of Ryan Braun on the playing field. Through this loophole, he got to keep selling tickets. And that seems to be a pretty good thing. It both pushes their message and protects their product in a lot of ways.

It both pushes their message and protects their product in a lot of ways. And so it feels weird that they would be so interested in ruining that kind of grand outcome. And then meanwhile, I mean, suspending 20 players, even if only a dozen or so are major leaguers, even if only like six or seven are names, seems like a weird way to water down your product in a very visible way. And I'm not sure why they're so eager to do it. I mean, I know why if they feel like they're forced into it, I know why they would. But, I mean, it just feels weird. Yeah, there is definitely kind of a negative PR aspect to it, where if they do decide to push this forward, if they do try to suspend people in July, I mean, you have to imagine that the appeals process will take months, I would think.

I mean, I don't know that it'll take nearly as long as the government cases against Bonds and Clemens did, but I would think that I would guess that no one is going to be suspended this season. I mean, I don't know. I'm just guessing, but I would think it'll drag on for quite a while because there's really no, or not a lot of precedent for this sort of thing. I guess there was a Jordan Schaefer HGH thing that happened a few years ago that was sort of similar. But as long as the appeals process goes on, people are going to be talking about baseball and PEDs. And we will have to hear about new reports and new details every day. And these headlines will be alongside the headlines about the game on the field, which is something that baseball should be selling as the primary appeal of the sport. something that baseball should be selling as the primary appeal of the sport. So there is a sense in which, I mean, you'd kind of like it to just go away, especially since, I mean, a few of these players have already been suspended.

They have tested positive and the process has run its course and they've served their suspensions. And I guess we don't know whether their involvement with Biogenesis, if they had any, was what produced that failed test. Maybe it was completely separate, but they've already been caught. They've already been punished. I don't, so yeah, it seems like, I guess the only thing is if it's kind of like a broken windows policy sort of thing where they don't want some people to have been connected to it and then get away with it because they think it'll encourage another player to go to some shady clinic that springs up somewhere and try something else in the future and that if they manage to slap 100 game suspensions on these people, it will be a disincentive. It'll discourage future players from doing it. I mean, from everything you hear, it certainly seems like this is never going to go away completely, that the cutting edge drugs are kind of always one step ahead of the cutting edge drug tests, and that if you are rich enough and smart enough and know the right people, you can,

you can find something that you can get away with taking at least for a little while, or, or at least that there will always be people willing to take that risk. So it seems kind of impossible to eradicate it completely. And if you, if you have basically the best testing program that you can have, and you have all the state of the art stuff and, uh, you're, you seem to be

doing everything you can in that area. I feel like most people would, would be satisfied with that. So maybe, yeah. So, so I kind of had the sense that maybe it doesn't make sense to go way above and beyond the testing program that's in place to ferret out all of these people who may have potentially done something. Yeah, I wonder whether when we talk about MLB hurting the product on the field or maybe protecting the product on the field, and we're talking about the game itself, the action itself, the players and the quality of players and the fact that they have the best players in the world. I wonder if we're actually, if we see their product differently than they do. I wonder if they don't see their product as players in games, but rather as baseball's place as some sort of moral enforcer in the country, some sort of public trust, and that therefore the most important thing is to appear to be extremely clean,

extremely moral. And I don't know if that's what they think. I think if it is what they think, it's wrong. I don't know if that's what they think. I think if it is what they think, it's wrong. My guess is that if you poll baseball fans and you get away from our Twitter feeds, your feed and mine, that you would get like 90% approval of extremely strict steroids testing that you would get. You probably would have more than 50% approval for suspending all these 20 tomorrow without an appeal.

But I don't know that such a public opinion poll would tell you how people are likely to spend their money. And I'm not sure how much of a wallet affecting thing this is. um of a wallet affecting uh thing this is i mean it's clear that baseball fans i think it's it's clear i might say something wrong but it seems like baseball fans quit going to games because of the strike and they'll quit going to games to some degree if the economy is lousy there's a there's a certain level of fan that will quit going to games the economy is lousy and i think that's basically it i mean otherwise i don't think there's anything that can keep the sport from growing. And I don't think that steroids is probably nearly as big of

a business liability as Major League Baseball maybe seems to think it is. But yeah, my guess is that they just think that their integrity is their primary asset and that whatever you have to do to demonstrate to everybody that you're going to enforce this rule that they're in favor of and that you're going to enforce it as strictly as possible, that that's what they're going to do. And there is that other angle, which some people have brought up, that we've been enjoying a really peaceful period of cooperation between owners and players and that doing anything to jeopardize that is a mistake. is a mistake, that if there is any higher percentage of a chance that the next renewal of the CBA will not go as smoothly as the last one did because this is going to build up some sort of animosity

and that there's any elevated risk of a strike or a stoppage that would cause far greater harm than letting these 20 players get off without a suspension, that that automatically just makes this not even worth the cost of trying it. Yeah, so this dovetails into a question that I had for you, and maybe we're getting close to wrapping it up, so maybe we shouldn't go into too many open-ended questions now. But do you have any kind of pet theory for why baseball has behaved so proactively in this case? Any sort of secret conspiracy theory? I mean, there's the ceiling angle, I guess, which has been raised. And I have no special insight into that. But the idea that

he is getting to the end of his tenure, probably, although it's kind of hard to ever say that about him, and that he doesn't want to be remembered as the commissioner who let this stuff happen on his watch, and that he was the guy who didn't put stricter testing methods in place and that that is why he's been much more proactive about it lately and has put the testing program in place and that he is just really trying to eradicate it completely so that that can be part of his legacy. I mean, I don't know. I guess that's the best theory I have.

It sort of makes sense. When you start getting up there in age and you're getting to the end of your time doing something, you start thinking about how you're going to be remembered. And I mean, I think there are lots of good things to remember him for, certainly. But some people will probably use that as a strike against him. probably use that as a strike against him. So maybe he wants people to say, well, in his later years, he was as tough as anyone on this. My crazy conspiracy theory is that in fact, that by continuing to put pressure on the players' union to protect their guys, even though the players' union is officially in favor of strong steroids testing,

or I guess at least they're in favor of a clean sport, at least they're in favor of a clean sport, that you may put pressure or that you may be in... You may be, I don't know, putting the union in a position where they're asking you to give up things or that they're having to go against what they want to do. Essentially, that you're creating a leverage situation down the line where maybe the union is now having to negotiate for privacy issues that maybe they wouldn't have to negotiate for if baseball weren't engaged in such privacy invading ways, if that makes sense. Did I state that? Yeah, I know what you mean. And I guess you're kind of putting the union of having to be in the position of defending PEU PD users or probable PD users.

And that maybe that would sort of sway public opinion towards, towards the league and towards ownership. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. You're putting, you're basically forcing the union to, to defend the guys that they don't want to be defending that you're,

you're putting them in their worst position. Um, and in a way you're putting them in their worst position. And in a way, you're putting the league and the owners in a way that probably polls as their best position, even if you wouldn't know it from our Twitter feeds. The other extremely, extremely, extremely far-fetched possibility is that when we think about Major League Baseball's audience, that when we think about Major League Baseball's audience, we think about the fans. But in fact, it could be that their primary audience is the Senate that continues to grant them an antitrust exemption. And it's conceivable that the conversations that they have with senators, that there's this sort of constant murmuring threat to this exemption

if they don't do big public things to show how clean they are. I think that's probably unlikely. But if I were writing a Washington thriller, that would be my far-fetched explanation for it. I'm not writing a Washington thriller. Okay. Just so you know and so yeah

I guess that's it have we taken care of this? have we solved it? we have not solved it but I think we've said all that we have to say I still continue to think that the solution which I haven't thought out all the way but I still continue to think the solution is to let the union govern itself

that there should be prohibition against steroids in baseball, but it should be completely tested by and penalties should be completely administered by. And even the rules, I guess, could be written by them, perhaps with some input by Major League Baseball and assorted other interests should all be handled by the unions. Yeah, I've heard that theory from you. From me and really probably lots of other smart people, right? Everywhere you go smart people are probably saying this, right? Yeah. All right, we'll be back tomorrow with the last show of the week and hopefully

some more interesting and lighthearted news.