Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 22: Why BP Didn’t Break the Melky Cabrera Suspension

Episode Date: August 16, 2012

Ben and Sam discuss how they came to know that Melky Cabrera was about to be suspended for a positive PED test before the news broke, and how they decided what to do about it.

Hello, and welcome to Effectively Wild, Baseball Prospectus daily podcast for Thursday, August 16th. We have a great show for you today, perhaps the best show. A show so spectacular that you get your hopes way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way up. I'm joined as always by Ben Lindberg. Ben, what kind of tea are you drinking tonight? Green. Okay. Do you have a topic to talk about? I do. I'd like to talk about Milkyky Cabrera I also actually would like to talk about Melky Cabrera we should probably know Felix Hernandez

also threw a perfect game if you have anything that you want to say about that you might want to just get that out of the way quickly it was quite impressive I think that what is impressive is that I learned today that everybody likes Felix Hernandez. That's actually pretty rare. It seems to me that every player from the moment he

joins the league is on a gradual trajectory toward being disliked. And it's great to see that Felix Hernandez has been in the league for, I think, nine years now or so and is still beloved. So that's great. It did touch off another— Not nine years. Seven or eight years, whatever. It did touch off another round of should Felix be traded. I think mostly ironic, though. Maybe. Partly.

Melky Cabrera, do you want to talk about Melky Cabrera and your experience with Melky Cabrera? Yeah. Uh, so for the last week or so, I have been in the very unfamiliar position and I guess also placed you in the somewhat unfamiliar position of being kind of aware of some big baseball news before it broke. This rarely happens to me. I write about baseball for a living, but that doesn't necessarily mean that I know about anything that is about to happen before anyone else does. There have been times occasionally when I've had some sort of tip off just before the rest of the world found out but never any sort of days long lead time because you know there are people who write about baseball who are newsbreakers and neither of us is that and I never will be that. And these people who devote themselves to news breaking and have spent many years cultivating a network of contacts

are very well equipped for that and I am much less well equipped for that. It's not something I've ever tried to pursue, but even were I to pursue it I don't think I would necessarily be very well suited for it but 8 days ago so the Cabrera suspension news came out yesterday if you're listening to this now

the day it came out so the news came out Wednesday the Tuesday before that, as in eight days before that, I was told by a source whom I know pretty well and trust that Cabrera had tested positive for some sort of PED and was either appealing or going through some sort of review process that wasn't very clear. And that that's why the Giants had kind of abruptly broken off talks with him about an extension, I believe that day. So I believed the story because it seemed reasonable given the timing of the end of those talks and the fact that I trusted the

source and that my source's source, the source had heard about it, I guess, second or third hand, seemed like someone who would know. It was very believable. And so I was in the position of deciding what to do about that, if anything, which is not really something I've dealt with before. So I talked to you about it. And I talked to some other people at BP about it who are better connected than I am. And for the last week or so, I wouldn't say I've been agonizing over what to do about it or even thinking about it all that much. But it's been on my mind knowing that this news or believing that this news was about to break at any moment. second I heard about it, I won't say there wasn't some tiny part of me whose impulse was to just take to Twitter and tell the whole world. Because even though breaking news is not something I

aspire to do or likely will ever do with any regularity, when something that newsworthy falls into your lap, I think there's some temptation to try to capitalize on it, both for yourself and for whatever outlet you work for. There have been times when some big news has been broken by someone who doesn't traditionally do that. For instance, the Zach Greinke trade from the Royals to the Brewers was memorably, or at least to me, memorably broken by Jim Breen, who was just a Brewers blogger who really had no track record

of breaking any big news, but he did, and he called the package exactly. And after some initial skepticism, he was proven correct and was at least briefly internet famous for having done that. So, you know, there was some temptation for once in my life to send out a tweet that started with heard this and wasn't ironic. and wasn't ironic, you know, to say some sort of, you know, heard from a source or hearing that, the sort of tweet that I have never sent and probably never will. So why did you not? Well, to do that would probably be to break every rule of responsible journalism there is. You know, I mean, people tend not to report things or at least something of this nature unless they have a very, you know, they're very secure in their sourcing and have multiple

sources, preferably ones who have not gotten it second or third hand from someone else. And so even though I was very confident in it, the risk or the downside that the news would ultimately not be or would be proven incorrect was very very high both for me and for baseball prospectus since for me to say something like that would probably reflect in some way on the company so it was something that I talked about a bunch with you and and some other people and sort of made some efforts to try to confirm it with someone else, but not, you know, I didn't go all Woodward and Bernstein on it or anything,

just because I don't have all that many contexts all on. And because if I am going to be internet famous at any point, if I am going to be internet famous at any point, I would prefer that it not be for a steroid story just because, you know, I've never been very interested in the steroid angle and wasn't particularly eager to touch off another steroid storm. Can I interrupt? Yes, please. I mean, you had a rationale or you had a point of view about what I should do, and maybe you can talk about that.

Yeah, I mean, I wasn't super excited to see it published, even if you had confirmed it. And I know that you talked to other people who disagree with me, but from my perspective, I don't think that it's a great thing that these things leak in advance. And benefit to my employer aside, I would rather live, I think, in a world where they don't leak, where a player can appeal without having the public make up their mind about him first. And in particular, I think I feel this way because

it isn't as though this is going to be something that's going to be as though this is going to be something that's going to be kept secret forever if he is found guilty. This is not like the conspiracy about Michael Jordan going to play baseball because he'd been suspended by the NBA, which, I don't know, I don't follow basketball all that well. I assume that that's a crackpot theory, but imagine that's true. Well, that's a legitimate thing that has been kept secret for many years. Melke, though, if he had been tested, if he had tested positive and been found guilty and his appeal had failed, if he had appealed it and his appeal had failed, it would have been known. So really all we would have been doing is bringing the news out more quickly before he really has a fair chance to defend himself. scoops. But there's a real difference between having a scoop where you're the only person that

has the information, reports the information. Without you, the information would never have been reported and merely being first by five minutes or a month or whatever in an otherwise certain story that's going to get out anyway. So it didn't seem to me that there was any real benefit to anybody to the news being out. I'm glad that actually nobody did report it. I know that you've gotten the sense from, I hope I'm not giving anything away, but you've gotten the sense that there are other reporters around the country who had, um, roughly the same amount of information that you did. And, um, yet it managed to be broken by major league baseball at the time that, um, the system dictated it would be released.

And I'm kind of pleased about that. Yeah, I guess I'm pleased. I'm also surprised. I mean, when was the last time some really big news about baseball was actually broken by Major League Baseball? It seemed... Yeah, like I think the winner of Game 7 of the World Series. Yeah.

Pretty much broken by Major League Baseball. Yeah, I was told that other sources had the same story I did before me and were just sitting on it for whatever reason, I assume because they couldn't confirm it either. And I think somebody, I think Kevin might have actually tweeted this, or somebody did, that basically said that MLB, after the Braun stuff, tightened up the shop so much that very few people could have been responsible for the information. And so they really did seal up the leaks. And it seems to me that that's a good thing.

Yeah, I was talking to John Prado earlier, and he was telling me that Bud Selig was so angry about the Braun story leaking that they really tightened things up and made sure there were only so many people who could leak these things. And I guess, I mean, obviously someone leaked something if I knew about it. And if I knew about it, many other people knew about it. But I guess no one directly involved in the process would confirm it. Many other people knew about it. But I guess no one directly involved in the process would confirm it. And so there was no way to get the story any other way than secondhand or thirdhand. I mean, I'm all for leaks in general. I'm all for reporters doing their work and breaking

stories and getting to the bottom of things. It really is just a distinction between a story that would otherwise go unreported and merely getting 10 minutes ahead of everybody else so that you pick up a few Twitter followers that I find kind of dangerous. So do you mind if I steer the Melky question to one more quick angle before we sign off? Okay. Melky Cabrera, because of the timing of this, will be ineligible for the first five games of the postseason. He will be eligible for the sixth game of the postseason, which I think highlights an issue I have with this. To me, it seems like an unfair system that it is merely the fluke of timing that dictates

whether the postseason is covered by the suspension. And I really think that if the purpose is to keep the player from playing in the postseason, then it should be automatic. Any steroid or PED suspension would it, then there should be no postseason suspensions, and Melky Cabrera's suspension should end at the end of the regular season and start for the first five games of the next season. It seems to me totally unfair that some teams would lose their players for the postseason while others would not, merely because of the date of the test. And if Melky Cabrera, for instance, had...

It's unclear exactly how much he protested this, but based on what you know and based on what has been reported, it does seem like he fought it for at least a week. If he had not, then he could be eligible for the postseason, which is a weird, weird thing to me, and I just don't like the inconsistency. Well, I guess, yeah, I see your point. I guess effectively, though, because of the time he's coming back, there's no way he'll be able to rehab or get into any game action before the playoffs, right?

So he would just have to kind of come back completely cold, right? I think he will. I mean, I suspect that if the Giants are still in the postseason, my guess, I mean, I know that people have fretted about this, and I don't know if there's a precedent for it, so maybe I'm totally wrong, but I think that there are probably ways that Milky Cabrera could get himself in good enough shape to be better than Gregor Blanco in October. leagues are played in, um, around that time. So it be that, that teams have instructional league action in their, um, uh, in their Arizona complexes. And I mean, I just, I imagine that if

the giants really want Melky Cabrera to get used to game pitching, they could probably find a live arm who would pitch to him. Yeah, I just wanted to mention, you mentioned how long these rumors seem to be around. Before I got wind of it at all, Andrew Baggerly, who is a Giants reporter, a beat reporter for Comcast Sportsnet, he heard the same rumors. I don't know what his sources were, but he asked Melky about it, and Melky denied anything. I'd have to look at exactly the language he used. I'm guessing he said it in a way that maybe left him some sort of out.

maybe left him some sort of out. Uh, yeah, but I, I, I, there might've been an out, but it was very specific and it was actually fairly, um, I mean, he told a story. It was pretty clear that he dissembled. Yeah. Yeah, he did. And which is fine. I mean, I don't, I don't, I wouldn't have expected him to say yes. I mean, he's got a right to an appeal. He shouldn't, uh, I don't, I don't particularly think that he should have to answer that question, but there's really no way to avoid answering it without lying. So I suppose I'm with him on that. Yeah. I contacted Andrew when I found out about this to see if he could tell me anything about it. And he didn't really know any more than he had written. And I mean, your point, I thought at the time was interesting that BP is not really known for newsbreaking. And so even if this had turned

out to be true, it wouldn't really make a lasting impact on us, maybe, unless we were seeking to to build BP into a news breaking site which is not something that we're really doing and that um you know otherwise so that that the payoff wasn't that high for us compared to some other outlet uh like you know like Andrews, which would get a bigger benefit from breaking this sort of news. And that for us, if anything, the risk of it not coming true or either coming true but turning out to be a successful appeal would have led to some backlash that would have hurt us. So that was something else we were thinking about. And I mean, I don't know if you have any sort of emotional

reaction to hearing that a player has taken steroids or any sort of PED. To me, it really doesn't change my mood in any way. I guess whether I've already been so disillusioned or I mean, I don't remember ever being particularly disillusioned. I just sort of accept these things as human nature. But to me, the worst part of this is that now it's going to be much harder the next time a player has what seems to be a breakout or a career year like Cabrera was having. And for all we know,

he really was having it. We have no idea whether what he was taking had any effect on his performance. But the next time this happens and someone is having a Cabrera-like season and certain people say, you know, certain people level the steroid accusation just based on the fact that a player is doing something differently. I think it will be harder to convince people that they shouldn't draw that conclusion now, even though that's not necessarily warranted. I think that cat has long been out of the bag or whatever metaphor is out of whatever metaphorical container. So my suspicion is that this will not change many people's suspicions. It seemed to me that we were reaching a point where people were starting to become confident in the testing program.

And I guess this positive result doesn't change that. Maybe. I mean, Ryan Braun. Yeah. Kind of a big deal. It mean, Ryan Braun. Yeah. Kind of a big deal. All right. Let's wrap it up because, goodness gracious,

we've given the people way too much. We'll be back tomorrow for our final show of the week, and we hope that you're back as well.