Brian Giles Signs Minor-League Deal With Dodgers
How far the mighty have fallen. He'll compete with Jason Repko, Xavier Paul and our old friend Doug Mientkiewicz for a bench job after hitting .191 last season.
about 2 years ago
Charlie Wilmoth
69 comments
0 recs |
Email
PrintComments
I saw this piece too. It would have been great if GIles could have come back and hit a few walk off homers like the old days.
"Baseball is better than football. Think about it, eighty degrees, a cold beer and a short-sleeve shirt is better than 30 degrees, a hip flask and six layers of clothes under a lap blanket. Take your pick: suntan or frostbite. " - Thomas Boswell
What happened to Brian Giles
did he just get old or are there some injuries involved as well
Players who should be in the Hall of Fame: Pat TIllman, Dwight White, Donnie Shell, L.C. Greenwood, Ray Guy, Steve Tasker, Greg Llyod, Andy Russel, Cris Carter, Kevin Greene and Jerry Kramer
I want to have sex with this moment. And get this moment pregnant. VAsaintsfan after the 2009 NFC championship game
Canal Street Chronicles resident Steelers Fan
Which is irresponsible...
…in the absence of actual evidence. I wouldn’t accuse you of being a pedophile, even if you wore a trenchcoat and had really shifty eyes.
Just sayin’.
by Vlad on Feb 8, 2010 8:17 AM EST via mobile up reply actions
That’s a fundamental problem baseball fans have right now – who did it, who didn’t do it, and who cares? I personally care, because I believe that the numbers are important to the game and the steroids era has erased many of the long held records in baseball.
With Giles, we see a guy that from ‘99-’03 was a very productive player with OPS over 1000 3 times and the lowest being 941… Then he moved to SD with the spacious power alleys, he got older too. And at that same time, mandatory steroid testing began as a result of 5+% of players testing positive in 2003. His OPS for the next 5 years gets over 900 one time. HR totals plummet too. Yep, he got older and played half his games in Petco… Pictures of him show that he looks a bit slimmer, or less bulky now.
There’s no actual evidence at this time. But would I think there is ample circumstantial evidence to at least be suspicious. In terms of character, I think there are some questions there too. So I wouldn’t blame anyone for thinking he was one of the many MLB players that used performance enhancing drugs..
There's nothing wrong with caring.
Criticize known users all you want. But if you start naming names without having any actual evidence of use (like a photo, or a used syringe, or the testimony of another user/dealer), then you’re just a slimy little McCarthyite.
I love the flexibility of the signs used to remotely diagnose steroid use. If you have a fluky good year, it was steroids. If you have a late peak, it was steroids. If you have an early decline, it was because you went off steroids. If you lasted forever as a productive player, it’s because steroids enhanced your longevity, and if you had lots of injuries in your early 30s and were out of baseball a few years later, it’s because steroids destroyed your tendons. If you gained weight and thickened up between age 18 and age 35, it’s because you’ve been using steroids to add mass. If you were born with a freakishly-large head, like Kevin Mench, it’s because you’ve been using steroids since you were in high school. If you’re an Italian with greasy skin, like Mike Piazza, all your zits are from steroids. Etc.
Never mind that most of the people talking about all this circumstantial evidence know nothing about the history of PEDs in baseball and wouldn’t recognize an anabolic agent if one walked up and injected itself into their ass. Everybody knows it, so it must be true.
I’m not nearly a slimy McCarthyite, but ANY player in the “steroid era” is subject to skepticism. Noone has a photo, used syringe or testimony on Brady Anderson using steroids – but the fact that he hit 50 HRs in 1996 – his other career years for home runs were 24 and 21 raises some real suspicion. Is there any sort of precedent for that power spike? I’d hate to think I’d get a Joe McCarthy label for casting doubts at his biochemical makeup.
In 2001 Luis Gonzalez hit 57 home runs – he was 34. And in his 19 year career his other top HR years are 31 and 28… Isn’t that suspicious to you?
PEDs are a complex issue. If I was faced with the choice of extending my career an extra 5 years, or increasing my earning potential in a significant way, I can’t honestly say that I’d say no.
But that doesn’t make it right. You’d think that the clean players would have made a bigger deal about steroids. The users were effectively taking money out of their pockets (the clean players). They tolerated cheating, for whatever reason – I don’t know why – (they didn’t know about it?). And what role did the union have in not allowing steroid testing? And the end result is fans, myself included, are questioning the integrity of that era of baseball. Look at the Red Sox first WS team… Manny and Ortiz have been associated with steroids – does that taint their first WS title? What about the single season home run record? The top 6 seasons are by Bonds, McGwire and Sosa – all implicated in the scandal. What does that do to the Maris, Ruth, Foxx and Greenberg accomplishments?
Are you implying that fans cannot express skepticism over players on-field performance?
Your comment...
Your comment above “You’d think that the clean players would have made a bigger deal about steroids.” I have wondered about that also. In hind sight it certainly seems as if PED usage was well known, so why didn’t anyone say anything? Wouldn’t everyone from the part time utility players and up to the owners have known?
It makes me wonder if that the orders may have come from the top, i.e. Bud Selig. That said I will point out now, that there are many things that I do not like about Bud Selig; but I don’t want to stay up all night, so I will stick try to this issue.
After the owners put Faye Vincent on ice and hired one of their own, Selig, baseball IMHO got weird/bad. If I am recalling correctly, the owners accused of collusion by the union, were the ones pushing to get rid of Vincent; who may have agreed with the union, or at least may have thought the union had an argument on that issue. So Vincent gets KO’d. The owners put Selig in the role of commissioner. The union gets PO’d, and the strike happens.
Now here is were I think the PED era really formed into the ‘perfect storm’ that it seems like today.
After the 94-95 strike, baseball didn’t seem to draw as much. I guess actual attendance figures could prove me wrong, but at this point I am thinking that TV revenues; especially playoffs and the series were way down.
Baseball needed to embrace the McGwire/Sosa home run battle of ’98; because it was bringing the TV viewers, and probably attendance figures back to a high point.
So if in 1998 clean players knew what was happening, and if they were unhappy about it, why would they have not stepped up and talked about it? Maybe they were told (even coerced or threatened) to ignore it; if baseball keeps making money, they will it is the only way that they will keep making money.
I do realize, I have not presented evidence (one way or the other); but I have to ask, hasn’t anyone else ever thought about this in such a way?
Paul.
"I choose to gamble with my life
Twice the risk, four times the prize
Nothing knocks me over"
by lighthouse913 on Feb 9, 2010 12:42 AM EST up reply actions
“stick try to” should read “try to stick” oi, sorry…
"I choose to gamble with my life
Twice the risk, four times the prize
Nothing knocks me over"
by lighthouse913 on Feb 9, 2010 12:43 AM EST up reply actions
The "steroid era" is documented as going back to the 1880s.
In 1889, Hall of Famer (and longtime Pirate/Burgher) Pud Galvin made the news for using the “Brown-Séquard elixir”, a hormone cocktail (primarily testosterone) extracted from the gonads of dogs and guinea pigs. Link.
When you speak about “the steroid era”, you are talking about almost the entirety of professional baseball in America.
You need to understand this. Mickey Mantle got injections of “a home-brewed serum of thirty to fifty milligrams of amphetamine mixed with multivitamins, steroids, enzymes, and solubilized placenta, bone marrow, and animal organ cells”. Link. Willie Mays kept amphetamines in his locker, and Willie Stargell passed them out to teammates. Link. Tom House, who pitched in MLB in the ‘70s (and played with, among others, Hank Aaron, Orlando Cepeda, Phil Niekro, Dusty Baker, Carlton Fisk, Jim Rice, Cecil Cooper, and Carl Yastrzemski), said that he and his teammates routinely used steroids and HGH at that time, and that they were fairly typical within baseball for doing so, saying that they’d joke about getting “out-miligrammed” whenever they lost. Link.
Sure, Luis Gonzalez had a fluky HR season in 2001. Is it any flukier than Davey Johnson’s 1973, or Bert Campaneris’s 1970, or Willard Marshall’s 1947, or Joe Kuhel’s 1940, or Goose Goslin’s 1930? Guys have been having fluke seasons for as long as baseball has been played. Were they all on the juice? There’s just as much evidence that they were as there is that Gonzalez was.
you may be alone in referring to the steroid era as 1880 to present
There’s a significant difference between Pud Galvin drinking ground up testicles and the powerful synthetic substances available today. Amphetamines don’t have nearly the PED effects of steroids – it’s primary use is to increase awareness. I don’t think that comparison holds water when compared to the ability to increase strength and reduce recovery time between workouts.
“Former pitcher, Tom House, in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle admits to a failed experiment with steroids and claimed 6 or 7 pitchers on every staff were fiddling with steroids or hGH in the seventies. House attributed steroid use at that time to the general prevalance of the drug culture in the 1960s and 1970s.” Fiddling with steroids?
And there is NOT as much evidence that players in the past used and abused steroids. First, we have evidence of over 5% of MLB players that were tested in 2003 were positive for steroids. This is primary evidence and fact. Second we see secondary evidence in terms of significant jumps in home run production (Sosa, McGwire, Bonds) by suspected or known users. Taking those three players we can surmise that the drug use contributed to their inflated HR totals. Then we can look at the best home run seasons over the course of the history of MLB and we can see how HRs increase. Before 1993, the league hit 4000 home runs once – that was 1987. From 93-97 (omit 94 due to strike) the league hit over 5000 hr/season 9 out of 14 seasons. Think about this – The league broke 3000 HRs in 1962 – it wasn’t until 1987 that the league hit 4000 HRs – 25 years. Then it jumped to over 5000 in 1998 only 11 seasons. That is an accelerated progression.
As a fan, I’d argue it is my responsibility to call BS on the crazy numbers of the 1990s and the players that were using and/or giving their tacit approval of use by their refusal to cry foul. The stink of suspicion is on every player from that era, right or wrong, for better or for worse.
Why does everyone always use HR production as a proxy for steroid use?
From the records of positive tests up to this point, it seems like pitchers and scrubs and little fast guys were just as likely to take steroids as big hulking power hitters. For every Jack Cust in the Mitchell Report, there’s a Tim Laker or a Chad Allen or a Marvin Benard. Lenny Dykstra’s on the record as buying copious quantities of Deca-Durabolin, Dianabol, and synthetic testosterone, and he has three times as many seasons with 30+ SB (six) as with 10+ HR (two).
I mean, Christ, look at all the Olympic runners who have tested positive over the years. They weren’t taking drugs to get huge and hit home runs. They were taking them to improve their endurance, so they could train longer and run faster. And the steroids they took were very helpful in pursuit of that goal.
It’s certainly possible that amphetamine-spiked clubhouse coffee and archaic dog’s-ball tonics don’t provide as much of a boost as the best of modern pharmicology, but if it’s primarily a moral issue at heart, the magnitude of the effect doesn’t matter at all, compared to the act itself and the intent that motivated that act. It’s not like the users of the past were deliberately limiting the effectiveness of their drug-based enhancements out of some respect for the integrity of the record books. They were taking the best and most effectatious substances available to them at the time, and if you magically zapped yourself back to 1889 with a suitcase full of Winstrol, I doubt Pud Galvin would’ve turned up his nose at it.
But the bottom line is that we don’t really know exactly how much (and in what ways) these PEDs enhance baseball performance. And until we do, until it’s been studied and prodded and beaten half to death with double-blind clinical trials, we have no business making baseless, grandiose pronouncements about how drugs added X number of HR to Barry Bonds’s totals in 2004, or anything of that kind.
Wish I remembered where I saw it.
Maybe somebody here linked it?
Anyway, I recently read a very persuasive article, with charts and graphs and numbers, suggesting that steroids had little to do with the surge in offense around 1993-1994 and that instead something happened to the ball itself that juiced offenses. Anybody else see that? Doesn’t seem to have been at Hardball Times.
Anyway, Vlad’s comment made me think of that.
I don't want to encourage other people...
…to read something that I consider to be clever sophistry.
If they want to dig and find it themselves, so be it.
No
I mean, you think it’s unpersuasive because …
Oops.
Misunderstood you, sorry.
Methodologically, it’s suspect. He basically just rules out three or four different things and then says “it must be the ball – no other possibilities are left”. Which is a great approach if you’re Sherlock Holmes and have considered every other reasonable possibility. Unfortunately, that guy wasn’t Mr. Holmes, so he hasn’t.
I'll just have to disagree with you all here
Until someone can even come up with a hypothetical that would explain how a variety of factors could combine in strange ways to appear to be one single factor, I’m going to have to say the most likely scenario – by far – is that one single factor was responsible. And in baseball, there’s only one factor that it could be that makes any sense whatsoever.
by MarkInDallas on Feb 10, 2010 1:34 PM EST up reply actions
He struck me as being very bitter...
I read that article and a few others by him, and about him; he just now seems very bitter. In various places online he claims that he invented baseball analysis, that he made Billy Beane become as success, that Michael Lewis basically dissed him in Moneyball and that Bill James has ripped off his ideas by simply renaming them. The fact that he is only mentioned on three pages of Lewis’ book really seems to have put him into a blind rage.
"I choose to gamble with my life
Twice the risk, four times the prize
Nothing knocks me over"
by lighthouse913 on Feb 10, 2010 6:32 PM EST up reply actions
When he went off into how the game was cheapened by this
I just ignored that. I try to look at what actual arguments people have, and sometimes people who have correct arguments make what I feel are incorrect value judgments based on that.
For example, you might rightly say that Jewish people in Germany after WWI held a disproportionate amount of wealth to their population size. But it would be a wrong value judgment to say there was a Jewish conspiracy against Germany and the correct response should be to round them up and have them killed.
So, in this case, it seems the most logical explanation is that something did happen with the ball, but it would not be necessarily correct to say the owners or commissioner made a conscious choice to juice the ball.
by MarkInDallas on Feb 10, 2010 7:44 PM EST up reply actions
This is untrue
if it’s primarily a moral issue at heart, the magnitude of the effect doesn’t matter at all, compared to the act itself and the intent that motivated that act.
Enron is not the same as some kid stealing a candy bar.
There are already scientific studies that document performance enhancement from steroid use. Its dishonest to say that criticizing users is baseless, much less grandiose.
That's not a valid comparison.
You’re looking at it from the second perspective that he articulated – that of the record book, which is purely concerned with outcomes, rather than that of morals, which is concerned only with intent. The moral perspective is the one I was addressing in the remark in question, as I thought I made perfectly clear at the time.
From the moral perspective, there IS no distinction between a child stealing a candy bar and Jeff Skilling stealing millions of dollars. Theft is theft, and the only distinction between the two thieves is the opportunity afforded by their circumstances.
The distinction may be more clear if you look at two attempted murderers. One fires a gun and misses, while the other fires a gun and nails his victim right in the heart. From the basis of outcomes, they’re as different as can be – one has killed, and the other has not. From the basis of morals, however, both are equally culpable, in that both had the same motivation and took the same action in pursuit of the same goal. The unsuccessful murderer was prevented from murdering only by happenstance.
Moving on to your second point, while there are studies that have analyzed the impact of steroids on generalized athletic skills (strength, endurance) and physiological traits (weight gain, hormone levels), there haven’t been any studies within a specific baseball context. We know how much stronger and faster steroids can make a person, but not how much better they make him hit and field, and until we’ve looked at the latter any attempt to “adjust” a player’s numbers to counteract for steroid use will be nothing more than blind guesswork.
As for your third point, if you’ll re-read my posts, you’ll find that I’ve been very careful NOT to take a position on the proper amount of criticism for known users. I think that’s an individual determination best left each fan, to make on his or her own. What I have been condemning is the modern tendency to label players as possible/likely users without even the most basic of evidence, which is nothing more than witch-hunting.
we do know
That 3 men have broken a long held single season home run record. And all three have been implicated in the steroids scandal.
For whatever reason, the steroid issue seems to manifest itself in HRs. You’re previous point about pitching and basestealing is valid – why don’t we look at performance there? But the fact of the matter is that steroid use has had a profound impact on hitting HRs… and as we all know, chicks dig the long ball.
You want more evidence of historical PED use?
Babe Ruth is believed to have injected himself with an experimental extract from sheep’s testicles. I’m not kidding. This is true.
Similarly, during the last season of Pete Rose’s career, he was living with (and placing bets with) Paul Janszen, a gym rat who made the majority of his money as a steroid dealer. Link. It all came out during the presentation of the Dowd Report. Now, Pete has denied taking steroids, of course… but at this point, how much is his word worth, now that he’s admitted to lying about the whole “betting on baseball” thing? Would the guy who talked about walking through hell in a gasoline suit in order to play baseball have really balked at using a needle in an effort to stick around for one more year?
Is it possible that both guys are unfairly maligned, and as innocent as the driven snow? Sure. But there’s a hell of a lot more evidence about them using than there is about, say, Luis Gonzalez.
BS
You’re asking for the moon. According to your reasoning, everybody should just assume that McGuire didn’t use steroids – that is till he admitted to doing it “for his health” you know. Ditto Rodriguez. Hell, ditto Bonds. Do you buy the flaxseed oil argument? You don’t have pictures.
There's evidence for Rodriguez and Bonds:
News reports, published by reputable sources, of positive tests. For Rodriguez, there’s also a subsequent confession of use, which is about the best proof there is. For Bonds, there’s (leaked) grand jury testimony about use, which is pretty friggin’ solid, too. You’d have to be in denial at this point to say that neither one had used.
All that I am saying is that until evidince of that sort surfaces, it’s rude and irresponsible to blindly speculate about whether a person with whom you are wholly unfamiliar is a secret criminal. If someone on this forum wrote a FanPost voicing his evidence-less beliefs that Nutting Hostage was a rapist and WTM was selling nuclear secrets to Iran, he’d be rightly denounced as a trollish asshole. But it should be perfectly acceptable to do exactly the same thing about ballplayers? Huh?
let me modify your suggestion
If there was precedent for MLB owners selling secrets to Iran. And if, Nutting suddenly had additional resources for baseball operations and he made a $250M investment to get the Bucs over the hump. I think it would be appropriate to voice your suspicion about Nutting selling secrets to Iran.
You do bring up a key point though. You use the term “secret criminal” – which is important. Many argue that steroids were not specifically banned by MLB (true – testing didn’t begin until 2004). More importantly, anabolic steroids are a Schedule III controlled substance – possession without a prescription is a federal crime. And that, I believe, is why Vlad has been vociferous in his defense of players.
It might be appropriate to HAVE suspicions.
But that’s not the same thing as it being appropriate to voice them. Until you have solid proof, you don’t defame somebody like that. It’s just wrong.
If I May
All who have commented.
I started the whole juice thing and was immediately attacked by Vlad.
“I’d venture to Guess” is how I titled my comment, and certainly based on that precursor, I could be wrong. I have been wrong many, many times in my life.
Vlad, however, has yet to be wrong in his life, so he chooses to attack others and justify his point because his ego cannot allow him to be wrong.
I feel sorry for you, Vlad.
Pride goes before the fall.
I may be off base here...
This forum is for baseball talk and has the feel of a bar or clubhouse. The arguing back and forth is fun and harmless. I loved the old days with my gang of buddies when we’d play cards and hang out and we’d have these discussions about players, the dh rule, AL vs NL and the like. We argued for arguments sake, we laughed, yelled and made fools of ourselves, but at the end of the day, we were buddies and remained as such.
Here at Bucs Dugout, I’ve had my thoughts and opinions skewered by many of the regular posters, especially WTM, MarkinDallas and Vlad. Heck, I’ve known how the replies would be written as I was writing my position. It’s all in good fun, despite a boatload of snarkiness, and I enjoy the banter.
Some people do jump in with personal attacks, and for that they should be called to the carpet. In this case, I don’t think that Vlad was out of line and I hope, considering you’re handle, that you’d give grace to our fellow Bucs fans. We need it.
"Vlad, however, has yet to be wrong in his life ..."
" … and a haughty spirit before destruction."
—Proverbs 16:18
I'm wrong all the time.
Which is, when you come down to it, exactly why I’m so vehement on this issue. I don’t want to run the risk of wrongly accusing some poor bastard and dragging his name through the mud just because I had a bad hunch. The potential payoff is too low, and the potential cost is too high.
You might be right about me being too proud of my ability to argue. If so, I’m sure I’ll pay the proper price for that when the time comes.
Vlad, I feel sorry for you.
You’ll never become the editor of a major daily newspaper unless you give up your apprehension of publicly humiliating someone without facts to back up your opinions.
by MarkInDallas on Feb 10, 2010 1:50 PM EST up reply actions
Not long ago there weren't news articles
Their confessions came after they had no choice. Prior to that they denied it. At that point, according to your logic, we should have assumed that big head Bonds didn’t juice or Big Mac just worked out a lot. That’s what LaRussa kept saying.
And their confessions were pathetic.
Your analogy is weak.
Yes, exactly.
Until there was proper evidence that Bonds or McGwire had used, they should not have been condemned as users. First you provide the evidence, and then you demonstrate guilt, and then you administer punishment. Things are stacked in favor of the presumption of innocence. This is the entire basis of the American legal system (see Blackstone’s formulation).
I understand that it may be more viscerally satisfying to form lynch mobs and string up everybody who looks like he lifts weights, but sometimes you have to make sacrifices if you want to be a functional modern society instead of a third-world nation.
This is exactly how Lee Harvey Oswald was caught. And how Officer Tippet died.
by MarkInDallas on Feb 10, 2010 1:52 PM EST up reply actions
baseball is not subject to the rules of law
Fans aren’t obligated to build a legal case before they voice an opinion. And when the opinion is voiced, it doesn’t carry any weight – nobody is jailed or lynched because a poster on a sports forum believes Luis Gonzalez may have been a steroids user.
Sports fans enjoy voicing their opinions, and arguing, cheering and booing. And that’s why we’re a functional modern society – our opinions don’t cause baseball players to be killed or end up missing – that’s what happens in third world nations.
The only obligation...
…is the moral one: That serious charges merit a prior serious investigation on the part of the one making the charges. It’s plain and simple fairness, part of being a man instead of a child.
I don’t like to see potentially innocent people booed and heckled and ostracized for something they may not have done. I’m willing to forfeit the visceral enjoyment of booing and heckling and ostracizing before the facts are in, because my pleasure in that area is less valuable than their fundamental human right to not be falsely accused.
I also think that most random people on the internet are not well-equipped to make a serious determination on matters of this nature. Even if they’re serious people who treat of an accusation of that nature with the appropriate gravity, they won’t have access to the information necessary to make an informed decision. As such, justice generally shouldn’t be left in the hands of hobbyists.
serious charges....?
Fans opinions on the web come nowhere near serious charges. None of us has any real authority, legal or otherwise to do anything with our opinions. No banter about Luis Gonzalez is going to lead to anything other than more discussion here and at the water cooler.
The heckling and booing are part of the job for professional athletes. They do their job in public, are well rewarded for it, and they enjoy privileges that most of the fanbase does not. It’s certainly not the best part of their vocation, but it’s part of the deal.
“I also think that most random people on the internet are not well-equipped to make a serious determination on matters of this nature” – - wow.
“justice generally shouldn’t be left in the hands of hobbyists” – When did hobbyists ever penalize a baseball player?
We’re on opposite sides of the spectrum here but I appreciate your reasoning. The players have rights as well as responsibilities. I believe they did not meet their responsibilities to the fans by either doing PEDs or by giving their silent approval of their teammates doing PEDs. Only a few players have told their story and the fanbase has been forgiving of those people – I’m thinking of Giambi and Pettite. Who would have guessed that Caseco would end up with more credibility than McGwire?
We don’t know how many HRs were the result of PEDs, but the fact remains that the 3 players broke Maris’ single season record and all 3 are probably PED users. We have no means to attribute a number of HRs to PEDs – we can’t ever know. Which is a crying shame.
Maybe even more important is what happens in 20 years? Are we going to see MLB life expectancy on par with NFL players from the 70’s and professional wrestlers? I hope that’s not the case, but that’s how the chickens have come home to roost for them.
Alleging that someone has committed a crime...
…damages their reputation. As such, it is a serious charge. I don’t understand why this is even a point of debate. If your kids or your prospective employer googled your name and the very first link stated that you were suspected of using drugs, and you had not in fact done so, how would you like it? Speculation without evidence is just malicious gossip, and malicious gossip is always bad. That’s, like, pre-axiomatic.
I’m pretty surprised to hear you hold Andy Pettitte up as a standard for proper behavior. I think he’s one of the scummiest of the lot. A quick refresher of the timeline:
December 13, 2007: Mitchell Report released. It includes evidence that Pettitte purchased HGH from McNamee in 2002. Pettitte declined the commission’s request to speak on the record.
December 15, 2007: Pettitte issues a statement: ""In 2002 I was injured. I had heard that human growth hormone could promote faster healing for my elbow. I felt an obligation to get back to my team as soon as possible. For this reason, and only this reason, for two days I tried human growth hormone. Though it was not against baseball rules, I was not comfortable with what I was doing, so I stopped. This is it — two days out of my life; two days out of my entire career, when I was injured and on the disabled list. I wasn’t looking for an edge. I was looking to heal." Link.
Just two days, huh? That’s not so bad. Oh, wait…
February 4, 2008: In a deposition related to the Roger Clemens proceedings, Pettitte admits to taking HGH procured by his father on two occasions in 2004 as well. This directly contradicts his earlier “two days out of my career” statement from the prior year. Link.
February 14, 2008: The NY Daily News reveals that they had been investigating a story regarding Pettitte’s 2004 use for more than a month, and were ready to publish it at the time when he made his second admission. Link.
Pettitte got caught, admitted to only what the investigation could prove at the time, lied about never having used at any other time, got caught again, and decided to make a strategic disclosure of further usage in order to partially deflect the PR hit once his earlier lie was exposed.
I’m a lot more offended by the fact that he tried to treat me like a chump than I am about the fact that he used HGH in the first place. And now that he’s demonstrated that his earlier statement on the subject wasn’t made in good faith, he’s forfeited the benefit of the doubt as far as his more recent statements being the whole, unvarnished truth.
your example doesn't fit
There’s a huge difference between a prospective employer googling my name and a major league gm googling the name of Brian Giles or Luis Gonzalez. If a gm is surprised or has their opinion changed because of a fan blog, he ought to consider a different line of work. And just for the record, it turns out I share the name of a gay porn actor… for real.
You’re pendulum swings to the far end of the other side with Pettite, seems to be a bit uneven. But you’re feelings towards pettite parallel mine towards the whole lot of them. When no players complained about their teammates or adversaries taking steroids (raising the stakes in a high stakes game) they violated that same trust you mention with Pettite.
Luis Gonzalez is retired as a player.
If he’s looking for a job, it won’t be a GM doing the hiring, unless that GM needs a rookie ball hitting coach or a scout or something like that. More likely, though, he’ll be moving into the private sector…
I don’t see the Pettitte situation as even slightly analogous to baseball’s code of silence within the clubhouse.
I was wondering the same thing
Whether the fact he played, like, 67 games last year was due to injury or just his skills falling off a cliff. Cause that’s a pretty good age-37 season he put up in 2008, for a 37-year-old.
Couple different things:
Part of it is age, part of it is the knee problems he had last year, and part of it is SD’s park sapping his power numbers (he was never one to hit moon shots, even in his prime, and Petco’s power alleys don’t do him any favors). He may also have been distracted by media coverage of his domestic violence thing.
He looked pretty bad last year, but he’s only one year removed from putting up a 137 OPS+, so no harm in bringing him to camp to take a look.
by Vlad on Feb 8, 2010 8:15 AM EST via mobile up reply actions
I'd like to see him get to 2000 hits and 300 HRs.
He’s currently at 1897 hits and 287 HRs.
Brian Giles'
Bronzed body coming to a locker room near you. Get your razors ready he’ll want you to shave his back Dodgers. Oh, and clothing is also optional in Brian Giles’ world.
Common sense
HR/SLG/OPS/G with Pirates 99: 39/.614/1.032/141
00: 35/.594/1.026/156
01: 37/.590/.994/160
02: 38/.622/1.072/153
HR/SLG/OPS/G with SD 04: 23/.475/.849/159
05: 15/.483/..905/158
06: 14/.397/.771/158
07**: 13/.416/.777/120
The sheer drop off in power production cannot be explained away by the size of Petco park, park size does not cause a player’s HR production to drop by 50%. This is a textbook case of a player whose production was chemical based.
Evidence?
How do you know this isn’t just the result of aging? OR aging plus the Petco effect? I understand being skeptical of people like Lloyd is above but you state the number drop off means, definitively, that he used PED’s. I just gave you two other explanations. Which of us is correct?
Commoner sense:
Giles’s four big HR seasons with the Pirates came when he was 28, 29, 30, and 31. Which coincides pretty closely with the peak ages for an average player, i.e. ~27-30. His HR power had already begun to drop in his age-32 season, even prior to the trade – he hit only 16 HR in 481 AB before we flipped him to SD, and then 4 in 128 AB after. As such, he looks less like a player who spontaneously decided to get off the juice for no particular reason, and more like a player who went into a gradual age-related decline.
And despite your skepticism, the park didn’t help, either. From 2004-2008, he hit 27 HR at home… and 50 on the road. Some of that may have been luck or random variation, but it seems highly unlikely that all of it was.
no doubt
He hit for power when he was supposed to. I did note that he had an even hr split last season (12 home, 13 road??? off the top of my head).
I think you're thinking of someone else.
Giles only had 2 HR last year. You’re right about it being an even split, though: one home, one road.
Don’t care much about steroids one way or the other but, I despise Giles for other reasons. What an asshole.
I second that...
I think Brian Giles is a gigantic asshole all on his own. He doesn’t need PED accusations to prove it.
More than alleged.
They have police-recorded testimony from multiple eyewitnesses, plus a (somewhat incomplete, but still suggestive) video.
In the eyes of the law, yes.
But because we are not the law, we are free to interpret the evidence that has been presented, and make our own determinations.
Evidence has been presented that Giles beat his girlfriend. Evidence has not been presented that Giles used steroids, or any other PEDs. That’s the difference between the two situations. If there were video of him injecting something in his ass, and sworn testimony from people who watched him do it, then things would be different. But there isn’t, so they aren’t.
and if he's innocent?
and I can’t believe I’m defending Brian Giles… all of your comments are exactly what you are trying to prevent from “random people on the internet”.
The video is not conclusive and the testimony could be from knuckleheads with a grudge against Giles. Just sayin… Furthermore, this alleged criminal activity, carries higher social consequences than those of us casting a suspicious eye at his possible use of PEDs. You’re conclusions carry higher repurcussions, in both a legal and social sense.
And the evidence that has been presented will be weighed in a court of law and justice will be meted there. With your stance, I’m surprised that you’d jump to such conclusions.
"all of your comments are exactly what you are trying to prevent from 'random people on the internet'"
I said that it’s wrong to accuse players of committing crimes without having evidence, and that “he’s in good shape” and “his power decreased over time” don’t constitute evidence. Which they don’t.
Things that do, for most reasonable people, constitute evidence:
*Video of Giles performing the action in question. [Seriously, look at the link again, and watch the video. You can see him reach out and pull her hair and jerk her hair back, exactly as the witnesses stated. There’s no ambiguity about that part – it’s crystal-clear.] Link.
*Testimony by multiple disinterested bystanders to police, corroborated by their reactions, which were also captured on the video. It’d be one hell of a coincidence, for example, if that one guy on the tape happened to make a surprised and agitated face and perform the “smacking-a-woman” motion while talking with other bystanders immediately after Giles’s girlfriend is seen falling on the ground in the video. Not to mention the fact that even if the bystanders in question had been suborned in some fashion, they would’ve needed to successfully deceive the investigating officers, who solve crimes for a living. Or that the bystanders would’ve had no way of knowing whether the video would back up their version of events or not, since they didn’t get to see it before making their statements. Or that even one random person not involved in the plot wandering into the bar at the wrong time or standing in the wrong place would’ve been enough to sink the whole deal. (Same link as above.)
*Sworn testimony (under penalty of perjury) in legal proceedings by a totally different witness, about a separate occasion, in which Giles pulled the girlfriend out of a car by her hair. Link.
*Sworn testimony (under penalty of perjury) in legal proceedings by Giles’s ex-wife, a woman who would have no particular incentive to lie for the benefit of the lady who stole her husband (and incidentally also a casual second-hand acquaintence of mine, whom I would consider to be credible on the matter), that on another different occasion Giles shoved the girlfriend to the ground in front of her and her children. Link.
Under the circumstances, which is more likely? That Olvera decided to entrap Giles into some kind of bizarre extortion scheme, threw herself to the ground to simulate an attack in an uncontrolled public environment, persuaded a large group of random strangers to give false statements to police about what happened, and persuaded two other people (one of whom actively dislikes her) to perjure themselves about separate incidents of past abuse, suborning his own (potentially open-for-questioning) children into the lie in the process? Or that Giles abused Olvera?
you're sure that's brian giles in the video?
And if it is him, it sure appears like a symptom of ’roid rage to me…
check and mate.
The police have stated that it's Giles.
As reported in the first link. It’s not impossible that they’re wrong, but it’d certainly be quite a colossal fuckup if they were. And of course, for it to not be him in the video, all of the witnesses would still need to be lying about what they saw. And there would need to be another guy who looks like Giles and was wearing similar clothes in the bar at the same time, with a lady who looked like Giles’ girlfriend and was wearing clothes similar to hers. And Giles would need some significantly compelling reason (boredom? the world’s most elaborate and tasteless practical joke?) for not coming forward and saying that it wasn’t him in the year-and-a-half since the video was released.
Just to check: The ’roid rage thing is a joke, right? On the internet, one can never be too careful…
yes it was a joke - going full circle
And making sure that we aren’t taking ourselves too seriously.
Cool
I laughed, but I didn’t want to be too flip in my response, on the off chance you were being serious.
Apropos of nothing, Brian’s brother Marcus Giles was arrested for beating his wife last year. It’s been quite the year for that family.
Comments For This Post Are Closed
Secondary Sidebar
User Tools
FanPosts
Community blog posts and discussion.
Recommended FanPosts
Recent FanPosts
Baseball Nation Recent Stories
In Association With
Big League Stew - MLB - Yahoo! Sports
- Photo: Padres fan regrets letting mother capture moment with Trevor Hoffman
- Marlins agree to unretire No. 5 for Logan Morrison, who will honor his father’s favorite player
- Weatherman Derek Holland does Dallas TV
- Ask Alex: Will Julio Teheran or Matt Moore win rookie of the year?
- Ku Klux Klan, umpires and bowling: Why the minor leagues tossed out Jim Evans academy
Certain photos copyright © 2012 by Associated Press or Getty Images. Any commercial use or distribution without the express written consent of Associated Press and Getty Images is strictly prohibited.
