Buster's List

Buster Olney’s blog is a joy every morning with a cup of coffee and a bacon egg and cheese sandwich. But this is the second time he has raised the taint of award winners in the last two months. In speaking of Bonds:

For the record, I will vote for him, and all of the best players from the Steroid Era. As I've written before, I don't see the logic in not voting for stars whose steroid use has been scrutinized while voting for other stars who I strongly believe took steroids but got a pass. I believe, but can't prove, that 75 to 80 percent of the major awards won since 1988 have been won with the help of performance-enhancing drugs.

The first time he mentioned it, I forgot to blog about it. The number 75% seems awfully high even accounting for Bonds' 7 MVPs. 75% means exactly 3 out of every 4 award winners are guilty of using PEDs. Think about that for a second. This time, armed with list of award winners in hand, I’m ready to figure out exactly who Buster THINKS is guilty of PEDs. The list I came up with? A little surprising, but not shocking, except for one big surprise.

I am proceeding under two conditions:

First, I’m assuming Buster is not referring only to MVPs; he would stated MVPs if he were. Instead, he uses “major awards.” Whether or not Buster means to include Cy Youngs or Cy Youngs and ROYs is uncertain, but it certainly includes the pitchers.

Second, having no firsthand information about any of these players, I am not ready to start saying any of them used steroids. On the other hand, I am totally ready to say with near certainty who didn’t use steroids. Basically, I’m eliminating 25% and allowing the other 75% to reveal themselves. Using this process of elimination, we arrive at a list of names.

In the 18 full seasons since 1988, there have been a total of 72 MVPs and Cy Youngs, 2 per league per year. 25% of them (18), according to Buster, have not used PEDs. In my opinion, these are the obvious ones:

Greg Maddux
Tom Glavine
Pedro Martinez
Randy Johnson

Okay, you say, that’s only four guys. True, I say. But these guys won every single NL Cy Young Award between 1991 to 2002, with the exception of 1996 when it was won by John Smoltz. Add the two AL Cy Youngs by Pedro and another by Unit, we’re already up to 14 total awards, leaving only 4 awards not tainted by PEDs, again, according to Buster. I’m ready to throw a few more names out there who I’m pretty sure have not used PEDs:

Dennis Eckersley
Ken Griffey Jr.
Ichiro
Johan Santana

Eckersley won both the AL MVP and Cy Young in 1992, the two hitters each won the AL MVP once, and Johan won the AL Cy Young in 2004. That takes care of 5 more awards, bringing our total number up to 19, more than 25% of the awards won since 1988.

The choice of these 8 players is entirely arbitrary by my own standards, based only on what I know of PEDs and the body types of the players. The one thing all these players have in common is that they’re generally on the lanky side. Admittedly, this is extremely biased. But using the list of award winners and Buster’s guideline of 75%, these are the players in which I would be most confident saying they had not used PEDs.

Everyone else? Guilty, according to Buster Olney. Here are the hitters, in order of number of awards won, with some in bold, for obvious reasons:

Barry Bonds – 7
Alex Rodriguez – 2
Juan Gonzalez – 2
Frank Thomas – 2
Albert Pujols
Jeff Kent
Chipper Jones
Sammy Sosa
Larry Walker
Ken Caminiti
Barry Larkin
Jeff Bagwell
Terry Pendleton
Kevin Mitchell
Kirk Gibson
Vladimir Guerrero
Miguel Tejada
Jason Giambi
Mo Vaughn
Cal Ripken
Rickey Henderson
Robin Young
Jose Canseco

And let's throw these guilty pitchers under the bus too:

Roger Clemens – 5 (since 1988; 7 total Cy Youngs, 1 MVP)
Chris Carpenter
Eric Gagne
John Smoltz
Doug Drabek
Mark Davis
Bartolo Colon
Roy Halladay
Barry Zito
Pat Hentgen
David Cone
Jack McDowell
Bob Welch
Bret Saberhagen
Frank Viola

Holy crap! You put all these guys together, you’d have quite an All-Decade team.

The surprise? Not A-Rod, Ripken, or Bagwell. Not Zito nor Halladay. Roger Clemens? Am I surprised that he might have done PEDs, or rather, that Buster thinks he might have done PEDs? Nope, not really. I don’t really care one way or another and it certainly doesn’t change my opinion of him. The surprise is this: Because Clemens, along with Randy Johnson, has won the most awards outside of Bonds since 1988 (6.9% to be exact), assuming the cast of innocents I proposed is accurate, the 75% figure Buster uses must necessarily include him. Either way, Clemens figures prominently in the discussion.

If you don’t believe me, here are your various options, among many, with regards to those who did or did not use PEDs:
a. Randy Johnson did, but Clemens did not;
b. Pedro AND Glavine did, but Clemens did not;
c. Pedro AND Eckersley did, but Clemens did not;
d. Maddux AND Johan did, but Clemens did not;
e. Eckersley, Junior, Ichiro and Johan ALL did, but Clemens did not; or,
f. Clemens did PEDs.

You tell me which is the most likely scenario.

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I was going to do a list for the ROYs as well, but have gotten too hungry to do so. If I have time, maybe I’ll get around to it at a later date.

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All in all, I think Buster’s reiteration of his belief that 75% of award winners since 1988 have been aided by PEDs borders on irresponsible journalism. He is inviting everyone of his readers to look up this list and figure out for ourselves who we THINK Buster THINKS might have done PEDs. This in and of itself is not such a terrible thing. I for one had a lot of fun wasting away my time this afternoon. Unfortunately for Buster, he has now inserted himself into the steroids discussion as a story and an active participant, rather than an unbiased observer. All he’s done turn up the speculation machine another dial.

Then again, Buster is paid by ESPN not just for reporting the news, but also for his opinions, and this is especially true for the purposes of a blog. And I suppose doing it his way is better than coming out with unsubstantiated statements with no evidence that I, Buster Olney, believe so and so did PEDs. I just wish he had given me more accurate parameters to work with!

A double-edged sword, I guess. On the one hand, he is telling us what he believes (good), and on the other hand, he is being so vague about it that he has basically implicated just about everyone (bad). There is one thing I am nearly certain of though, more so than Pedro not having used PEDs. And that’s Buster went over this list as carefully as I have and that 75% number he's come up with is no accident. And if he’s right, the whole steroids thing is sadder than I could have imagined.