With respect, Geoff, it’s not a blind process.  Morris wasn’t tossing David Eckstein or Joe Mauer out there to chum the waters and stir up trouble and…I can’t think of any more metaphors to mix…because he thought it would be fun.  He looked at Ibanez’s performance, which is an outlier in the rest of his (very good) career, and tried to figure out why he was suddenly performing so well, especially at Ibanez’s age.  He discusses ballpark, quality of competition, and sample size.  And he discusses an elephant in the room when we talk about 35+ year-old sluggers who suddenly discover a new level of ability.

Certainly, Morris’s headline did not reflect the tone of the rest of his article, and we can certainly fault him for that.  But the rest of the piece seemed, to me, to be thoughtful and careful regarding Ibanez’s performance, the lack of any kind of PED evidence, Ibanez’s repeated denials, etc.  So, Geoff, title excepted, is it fair for Morris to talk about Ibanez’s performance in the context of the steroid era and the possibility that he may have used?  From your comments above, it sounds like you’re ok with Morris and others raising this possibility, which seems to be in stark contrast from your blog post a few days back, when you wrote “It took some guts to wade into this topic.  But when you go all-in, you’ve got to go all in. He didn’t do that. When you write about topics like killers, or Hell’s Angels, or major leaguers and steroids, you can’t pussy foot around. You’ve got to go at it hard, directly, with no b.s. and be able to defend yourself afterwards. This blogger couldn’t because he went in only halfway. He tried to raise the “steroids issue’’ then claimed he really wasn’t pointing a finger at Ibanez.” 

Thoughts?

Geoff,

Major respect for jumping into a conversation like this, but seriously. The headline? “The Curious Case of Raul Ibanez: Steroid Speculation Perhaps Unfair, but Great Start in 2009 Raising Eyebrows.” If your position is that it’s objectionable to have a player’s name and “steroid” in the same headline, that’s just untenable. And it would be hard to write a more innocuous headline that *does* feature those two things. It adds nothing to what already exists—a 37 year old off to an uncharacteristically good start is going to garner some steroid speculation in the modern fan’s mind.

What Morris did, though I find it annoying and borderline unreadable, is absolutely indistinguishable from the entirely-circumstantial-evidence-based speculation the MSM has spent years engaging in w/r/t Sosa, McGwire, and countless others (and how about non-sports writing: how many times do you suppose somebody goes missing and you can find the name of their loved one or relative and “murder” in the headline?). The differences I can see are (1) it’s a blogger, (2) some reporter brought it to the player’s attention for his own inscrutable ends, and (3) it’s Geoff’s buddy Raul.

And there’s just no getting around the fact that the big warning post about libel law is, intentionally or otherwise, inexcusably misleading.

Probably don’t need the lecture on circumstantial evidence, thanks.

He’s 37. He has a 163 OPS+ against a career high of 125 and pre-‘09 career average of 113. He’s hitting 51 HR/650 PA against a pre-‘08 career average of 22 and career high of 31. You can argue that it’s distinguishable by degree or amount (though a lot of what you mention about McGwire came up long after the speculation started, at least McGwire had established a reasonably similar level of performance earlier in his career, and the list re. Sosa is a lot shorter), but to say “there was NO valid circumstantial evidence at all” is positively ridiculous.

If a B student suddenly is the one kid who gets 100% on the hardest test of the year, is it libelous for the teacher to suggest (without by any means deciding) that he MIGHT have had some help?

I can’t believe I’m defending this. I have no interest in steroid speculation, and I hated Morris’ article. But he was absolutely within his rights to publish it.

If you don’t need the lecture, then please stop using “circumstantial evidence” as a synonym for “weak evidence” or “invalid evidence.”

Who said Morris didn’t have a “right” to publish his crappy article? Not me. He has a right to publish whatever irresponsible, hurtful, dishonest drivel he wants short of libel, which this wasn’t. Just because he has a right to do it doesn’t make it right to do it. (I’ll spare you the lecture on that.)

Yes, a B student who suddenly aces a test should have the benefit of the doubt if there is nothing more than the unusual performance, and unusually good performance is not circumstantial evidence of wrong-doing absent more, such as previous evidence of character deficiency. If a teacher suggested in his blog that my son was cheating (while “defending” him by suggesting all the other ways he might have excelled), based only on one test, I’d have his head.

You act as if speculation is its own justification. It isn’t. Speculation about McGwire and drugs based only on his performance was unfair. The fact that it turned out to be right is irrelevant. I always had a gut feeling that John Edwards was a lying, phony sleazebag based on little but instinct and the fact that he was a trial lawyer and cared way too much about his hair. It would have been irresponsible for me to write an article saying, “there have been whispers that John Edwards can’t be trusted and is probably the kind of guy who would cheat on his dying wife, but here are some reasons why that might not be true.” As it happens, I was right. It doesn’t change the fact that the article
would have been unfair before I had more legitimate evidence.

And when the MSM is that unfair, it is wrong, unprofessional, and it should be called on it. Just like Morris. That’s all.

“Ichiro Suzuki is 35 and having his best season since 2004. He had his worst season last year. Going to mention “steroid whispers” in a headline and story about him?”

Don’t tempt me, Geoff . . .it’s a slow news day . . .

JW: They are virtually the same, and you shouldn’t have been shouted down. I’d argue that lying about one’s age (fraud) is not as serious as PED use, but that’s a close call. Sammons’ article was unfair and irresponsible too.

“And when the MSM is that unfair, it is wrong, unprofessional, and it should be called on it. Just like Morris. That’s all.”

Agreed.  Which makes Baker’s response, “Jerod Morris is not Rick Reilly,” ridiculous.

The original up-in-arms problem that MSM had with Morris is that they treated him as a wannabe journalist, and that he failed to uphold their standards.  But, that was not the standard that Morris was trying to uphold.  Rather, he was writing to his own standards.  And, as far as I can tell, his standards are being sincere, inquisitive, and resourceful.

***

Geoff’s position on Morris seems to have evolved (which is good) to the point that the issue is that Morris introduced “steroids” into an otherwise decent article.  That by doing so, he forces readers to infer more than Morris meant. I think we can all get behind that.

If this is the true problem with the Morris article (that he went all Bill O’Reilly on us by calling out “Pinhead” because it’s an attention grabber), then in no way is there a controversy here.  The worst you can call Morris is showing bad taste, and having an unclear thesis.  MSM should focus on O’Reilly, Hannity, Rush and the rest of the gasbags.  Those guys make MSM look bad.

So, the Morris article, that he went O’Reilly on us, is what made Ken Rosenthal be on the air for 9 minutes, shaking his head, and spouting ridiculous things like “Do you want this stuff being written about you?” ? (I find it hard to believe that any reporter would say this.)  I have no doubt that Ken Rosenthal did not even read Morris’ blog entry. 

And MSM’s initial reaction was to an event where a blogger exercised his rights to speak out, as he would with his friends or in a bar, without crossing the libel line (which Morris did not approach). MSM, instead of reporting the news, made the news, by asking Ibanez about something that he did not read but asked him to react to a one-line summary by the guy asking the question.  And the rest of MSM reported on the initial MSM report.

I fully support what Morris did and how he did it.  And Baker’s absolutely pithy response article (of Ichiro/chemistry… Craig did you link to it?) is the perfect rebuttal to Morris, about how you can basically ask a question about anything, and find some reasonable cause if you look hard enough.  That Baker response shows that Morris was sloppy in saying “steroids”.

Being sloppy is not a reason to turn his niche blog into something widespread.  However, I am sure Morris appreciates the publicity.

***

My blog had its own thread on the matter:
http://www.insidethebook.com/ee/index.php/site/comments/jerod_morris/

Morris’ headline makes a lot more sense when you take it in the context of how he explained the genesis of his article.  A friend in a fantasy league was jealous that Morris had Ibanez on his team and Ibanez was having a huge season, so his friend claimed that Ibanez’ performance was the result of PEDs.  Morris set out to write an article disproving the “Suspicion of Steroids”, and took into account a few simple statistical measures which he assumed would put the issue to rest.  Of course, what he found was that this quick study didn’t do much to explain Raul’s outstanding season, and therefore he had to consider that there were other possible reasons for the increase in performance, including, yes, steroids.

Now, given that this is why he wrote the article, and what he was trying to address, it makes perfect sense for his headline to be what it is.  If Morris is guilty of something, it’s not considering the way the headline would be interpreted by anyone not privy to his fantasy league discussions, which, it turns out, is pretty much everyone in the entire world. 

I didn’t get the impression that the headline was designed to raise controversy or point the finger at a guy or grab attention, but rather that it just made sense given the reason for the article and the way it was written.