2013 MLB Hall of Fame Screechfest

Piazza's name came up with PEDs, including in Jeff Pearlman's Clemens bio. Supposedly he has told many writers off the record that he used PEDs.

 

If that's the case then I stand corrected. Haven't seen any of those reports.

 

Supposedly a guy made an off-the-record statement which was then bandied about in violation of journalistic ethics by baseball writers? Good enough for me! To hell with him!!
If I had a writer who violated a source's confidentiality like that, they're fired immediately.

 

"He's a guy who did it, and everybody knows it," says Reggie Jefferson, the longtime major league first baseman. "It's amazing how all these names, like Roger Clemens, are brought up, yet Mike Piazza goes untouched."

"There was nothing more obvious than Mike on steroids," says another major league veteran who played against Piazza for years. "Everyone talked about it, everyone knew it. Guys on my team, guys on the Mets. A lot of us came up playing against Mike, so we knew what he looked like back in the day. Frankly, he sucked on the field. Just sucked. After his body changed, he was entirely different. 'Power from nowhere,' we called it."

When asked, on a scale of 1 to 10, to grade the odds that Piazza had used performance enhancers, the player doesn't pause.

"A 12," he says. "Maybe a 13."

 

OPS+

Jeter 117, Larkin 116, Alomar 116, Yount 115, Ichiro 113 ... and so on.

OPS+ is not the best gauge for judging non-power hitters who played in a power era, especially those whose provided value through baserunning and defense at difficult positions. Biggio didn't get in because he played for the Astros and therefore did not generate the big-name HOF reaction that many of these clown voters require to put someone in on the first ballot. Don't try to make a statistical argument for his exclusion. There is none.

 

Oh, well I'm convinced. "Everyone knows it," after all.

 

There absolutely is a statistical argument for his exclusion.

Why do you get to just write off his lack of power, like it doesn't matter? It does matter. It means he was less productive offensively than guys who did have power.

 

Assign it whatever weight you think it deserves. Maybe very little.

Songbird said that Piazza's name has never been connected with PEDs.

It has.

 

Right. I knew it had been. But connected is a pretty open-ended word, isn't it?

 

Yes.

Most of us would say that Ken Griffey, Jr. hasn't been "connected" with PEDs. But I think in Jose Canseco's blockbuster sequel, he writes that Griffey at least considered them at one time.

On left-to-right continuum, beginning with David Eckstein and ending with Manny Ramirez, I'd say that Piazza falls somewhere to the left of Ramirez, but well to the right of Eckstein and, to name the most tenuously connected player, Griffey.

 

That's funny, your use of Eckstein. I mean, all things being equal, no one in his or her right mind would think Scrappy McScrapperson was a juicer.

But as someone on this thread said: If Neifi Fucking Perez was juicing, no one is above suspicion.

 

Right, but I was using Eckstein as Player Zero, basically, i.e. the guy who we would be 99.9999 percent sure was not.