What I take from this is that Eddie Matthews is awesome. Even though he is a filthy stinking steroid cheat.

What I take from this is that Eddie Matthews is awesome. Even though he is a filthy stinking steroid cheat.

How can we look at Willie McCovey or Mickey Mantle's stats without questioning how they were achieved again?

There go Dave Kingman's HOF chances.

I'm hoping you submitted this rebuttal to their letters/comments section.
You might as well disembowel him publicly.

What I take from this is that Eddie Matthews is awesome.
I remember marvelling at his 1958 card -- through 6 seasons / age 25 he had 222 HRs. I remember trying to figure out how to project his and everyone's career totals. After a couple of years of perusing baseball cards, I settled on 3 times career totals at age 27 and 2 times at age 30. By extrapolating out to age 27 (74 more HRs from his average to date), I had Matthews finishing with 888 HRs. He must have dropped off the juice somewhere along the line.

stuff like this is what I was asking for on the call for help thread. It doesn't have to be a full article, but original content, in response to some balderdash msm claim.

If Sports Illustrated wants to remain relevant, they need more Posnanskis and less Sabinos.

A Szymborski would help a lot too.

original content, in response to some balderdash msm claim.

Well often such things are done in the context of a comment in response to said article.

A Szymborski would help a lot too.

Unspellable last names are the new market inefficiency.

Good piece. I love pieces like this.

Unspellable last names are the new market inefficiency.

So 10 million to Jeff Samardzija was the right move!

Thanks for this, Dan.

Good compilation, Dan, and it's speaks well of your approach that you began with a question, not an answer.

My favorite example of "taint" is Babe Ruth, who only wound up with a .342 lifetime BA in spite of having only 1664 hits at the time of # 400.

More Posnanskis and FEWER Sabinos (Sabinos are countable).

Babe Ruth wound up with ONLY a .342 lifetime BA. . . (He didn't ONLY wind up; he wound up, he threw, he switched positions, etc., etc.)

David, I can understand taking on the role of the grammar police for the article itself, but I don't think comments should be fair game!

I think his second part was meant to be a joke, though I'm not sure.

Anyway, SI is junk.

Well now, wait a minute. I'm not defending the guy's point, how he went about it, or the validity of the measurement, but I'm not really seeing the great evisceration here. Let's take a look from the bottom up:

Steroid era, accused
Archetypal big slugger (not SE)
Ditto
Schmidt (not SE)
Steroid era, not really accused, but would have been Killebrew 40 years ago
McCovey (not SE)

and then

SE, admitted user
SE, accused, suspected, however you want to phrase it (and however unfair it may be)
Ruth
SE
Mantle
Reggie
SE, "admitted"
SE, Bonds
Mathews
SE
SE, accused
SE, busted
SE, admitted
Mantle

I don't see how this is disproving the guy's point.

What the hell happened there?

SE, admitted user
SE, accused, suspected, however you want to phrase it (and however unfair it may be)
Ruth
SE
Mathews
SE
SE, accused
SE, busted
SE, admitted
Mantle
Jackson
SE, "admitted"
SE, Bonds

Just to note, what I'm saying is that after you get past the top 6 which has three of the all-time archetypes for the category, of the next 13 names, *9* are from a 10-12 year span. On the surface, I don't see this as disproving the notion that this particular stat shows steroid usage.