Wherefore Art Thou, Alex?

What to make of Alex Rodriguez's 600th home run? Is he ARod, the greatest shortstop of all time? (Actually, the second greatest. It's freaky how much Honus Wagner towered over his peers.) Is he A-Fraud, the steroid user? Is he the rookie who hit .358 and the shortstop who hit 40+ homers six straight years? Or is he the choker who always seems to come up short when it counts? Is he coasting into the Hall of Fame or will he be shunned as a cheater?

And what about swinging into the already-tainted 600 Society? 

By ARod's own admission, he took steroids during his three seasons in Texas, during which time he smacked 144 home runs. I don't want to be Pollyanna about this: he was cheating, putting other players at a competitive disadvantage. He also seemed to benefit from this: his best three-year homer output besides that was 137 from 2005 to 2007 with the Yankees. I think we can acknowledge that steroids helped hitters -- or at least some hitters -- hit for more power. 

But let's be even-handed in our honesty. By any Baseball Writer's admission, ARod didn't spring full grown from Zeus's syringe in 2001; he was already the best shortstop in the game and had already blasted 40+ home runs in each of the three previous seasons. More than 100 other players also tested positive in 2003, so even if that's the full extent of steroid use, which few people believe is true, 13% of players were using. (In fact, Jose Canseco said 75% of players were enhanced, and just because he's crazy doesn't mean he's wrong. He was right about everything else on this matter.) It's hard to fault a guy for feeling the pressure to join the herd, especially if he believes that lesser talents are wresting best-player laurels from him artificially.

Alex Rodriguez increased his longball productivity by 15% during his admitted steroid years, so even if we don't factor in his chronological maturity -- younger players tend to steal more bases but hit for less power -- that's only 19 chemically-enhanced dingers in his career. Let's dock him those 19 when we compare him to the six other greats in the Six Bills Yard Club.

Now, you can certainly argue that ARod might have been juicing in Seattle, but if he was, there's little evidence of it on the stat sheet. Let's compare the three seasons prior to his bulked period, the years on the juice and the three years after testing went into effect.

Years      OPS      HR       

98-00      .903     125

01-03      1.010    144

05-07      1.004    137

There may be some evidence here of a bump from steroids during the years he admits, but I'm not seeing any other, are you? If he was purchasing anabolics in the first part of his career, he deserves a refund.

I don't believe that Rodriguez is in the same category as Sammy Sosa, Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Manny Ramirez or Rafael Palmeiro. The last two failed drug tests after steroids were banned. Sosa and McGwire seemed to be using at least by 1998; Sosa may have whacked 350-400 of his 609 while on the stuff. Bonds is a certified Hall of Famer, but his admitted creaming and clearing produced seasons the likes of which we had never seen before -- particularly from a baseball geezer -- and all the attendant reverie that now seems unfairly gained. 

I've left out Roger Clemens (and Andy Pettitte and others) because the combination of pitchers and steroids confound us so thoroughly that denial is the only rational approach. To compound the headache, the majority of players suspended for steroid use since 2005 have been pitchers. Stick that in your ditty bag.

If I seem of two minds about steroid use, it's because I am, and I would argue it's the only reasonable response for a host of reasons I've elucidated numerous times in previous posts. Ultimately, it's easy to see that ARod is one of the 25 or so greatest baseball players of all time. When we stack up his accomplishments against others', we can season to taste with respect to steroids -- I'll subtract 19 home runs -- but to dismiss either his entire body of work or his law-breaking altogether strikes me as the kind of simplistic nonsense that is more at home in the political arena these days.

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