Marte suspended 80 games for PEDs

[Dead Simmons]

It is just a lot more offensive when someone becomes a face of baseball Braun/A-Rod and helped get there by cheating. I don't think that same offense is taken when it is a lesser player. I mean sure A-Rod/Braun handling their situations quite horribly probably didn't help matters, but I bet both would still be hated/booed way more than other PED users regardless.

 

I agree with your superstar stance, but PED's are diminishing the product on a more insidious level: pitching. The number of 100MPH pitchers, the insane number of no-hitters and the lights-out closers these days are changing the game, and not for the better.

[jerichoholicninja]

It is just a lot more offensive when someone becomes a face of baseball Braun/A-Rod and helped get there by cheating. I don't think that same offense is taken when it is a lesser player. I mean sure A-Rod/Braun handling their situations quite horribly probably didn't help matters, but I bet both would still be hated/booed way more than other PED users regardless.

 

I agree with your superstar stance, but PED's are diminishing the product on a more insidious level: pitching. The number of 100MPH pitchers, the insane number of no-hitters and the lights-out closers these days are changing the game, and not for the better.

 

I'm not sure how you can blame PED's for the lack of offense in today's game when during the time where everyone was doing them offense was at it's height.

[newrivervalley]

One, MLB should assign a doctor to each team. Two, doctors should administer whatever, steroids, growth hormones etc., that is medically acceptable. Three, a few MLB doctors should monitor the team doctors for problems. Making players prolong injures is stupid.

[Dead Simmons]

It is just a lot more offensive when someone becomes a face of baseball Braun/A-Rod and helped get there by cheating. I don't think that same offense is taken when it is a lesser player. I mean sure A-Rod/Braun handling their situations quite horribly probably didn't help matters, but I bet both would still be hated/booed way more than other PED users regardless.

 

I agree with your superstar stance, but PED's are diminishing the product on a more insidious level: pitching. The number of 100MPH pitchers, the insane number of no-hitters and the lights-out closers these days are changing the game, and not for the better.

 

I'm not sure how you can blame PED's for the lack of offense in today's game when during the time where everyone was doing them offense was at it's height.

I think it took pitchers a couple of years to catch up with the hitters. Now they have, and the inherent advantage they have over batters is magnified.

[Patrick425]

No witch hunt.....the league and the players union agreed that they wanted to get drugs out of the game. Clean players didn't want to be forced to use steroids to compete with juicers.

 

Glad to see cheaters get punished.....hopefully,it leads to less cheating.

 

 

Agree completely!

 

I have to admit - I chuckled when I saw this comment agreeing with punishing steroid cheaters coming from a poster with a Bud Selig avatar. He's as culpable for the "steroid era" as anyone.

 

I chuckled as well when I saw your comment, since without Selig, your post, this thread, and this website would not exist.

[dlk9s]

What the what...I'm literally watching a commercial for HGH right now. It's called Sero Vital and they are pitching it to middle-aged women whose bodies' production of HGH have naturally plummeted with age.

 

Weird.

[MrTPlush]

One, MLB should assign a doctor to each team. Two, doctors should administer whatever, steroids, growth hormones etc., that is medically acceptable. Three, a few MLB doctors should monitor the team doctors for problems. Making players prolong injures is stupid.

 

So basically none because steroids aren't medically acceptable as a performance enhancing drug. It is flat out legal to use anabolic steroids in the U.S. let alone by MLB rules for performance. So step one would be making it illegal in the lawbook of the country. Then you would need to get that approved on the MLB level. Good luck with that.

 

You are never going to knowingly allow steroids in the game. Only way to have them in the game is to stop testing and put a blindfold on.

[sveumrules]

I believe the reason the PED advantage has shifted to pitchers currently as opposed to hitters as we saw with Bonds/Sosa/McGwire & the rest is because the type of PEDs being used has evolved.

 

At the outset these guys were using anabolic steroids designed to build muscle mass whereas with increased testing the shift has been towards HGH which is much harder to test for definitively & aids more in speeding up recovery time, much better suited for hard throwing relievers.

[Patrick425]

I really don't see any "shift" at all from batter to pitcher. I think stats are just more normalized now. 50 HRs should be the exception, not the norm. When George Foster hit 52 HRs in 1977, that was huge. Hank Aaron and Reggie Jackson never hit more than 47 HRs in a season. Willie Mays only hit more than 50 twice (51 and 52). For each of the last two seasons the top HR hitter hit 47 HRs. To me that's normal. Not 66, 70, 73.

 

I'm not saying that no one could ever legitimately hit 65-75 HRs, but when it happens several years in row from multiple players, something is wrong. Now, PEDs or not, whenever anyone like Thames comes out of nowhere and starts putting up big numbers or if anyone were to approach 60+ HRs there is always going to be raised eyebrows and suspicion. I know some people could care less about that, but the numbers of the game are one of the reasons I fell in love with it as a kid. Now the HR records are basically meaningless.

[MrTPlush]

I think the PED advantage for pitchers is actually just the hitters coming back down to earth after last decades extreme use of PEDs by hitters. While I am not doubting the more minor PEDs of today's game aren't more helpful for pitchers I am not sure there is a enough use to make such a notable difference statistically across the entire league.

[jerichoholicninja]

Pitching development has gotten a lot of better the last few decades. High schoolers are hitting 100 MPH now. And hitting approach has changed. So you have the combination of lots of flamethrowing pitchers and batters who don't care if they swing and miss. Of course there's plenty of power in the game but pitching is always going to win, that's just the nature of the game, meaning hits are down and k's are up. I'd say it's currently pretty balanced between pitching and hitting it just seems like pitching is dominating because of the rise of K's.