What happened to Buster Posey? He looked fine in the playoffs to me.

Obviously he's juicing.

Only if steroids make you look like a high schooler.

#50 - Seconded.

Stripping the Michigan Wolverines of their Final Four appearance or taking away Lance Armstongs Tour De France wins a dozen years later is just nonsense. Everyone who watched knows what happened. Hollow gestures can't change memories.

Look at the way sports (not counting peds) handled cheating. In baseball, you get caught throwing a spit ball, you are ejected from the game. They do not go back and retroactively award a hit to everyone you faced that game. If you get caught with an illegal bat, you are out.

In the NFL they have different degrees of cheating, (and other sports) and have defined rules (called penalties) that is not practical in a baseball sense, but again, the penalties at most invalidate the play that the penalty occurred during, they don't retroactively go 5 plays back and start redoing everything or even summarily judging a different result on a play two plays prior.

Nobody is asking for the Giants to invalidate their '54 world series or the Patriots their Super Bowl victories, just because we have retroactively found out that they cheated (true they were probably minor cheats, but still, cheating is cheating) The hysteria over PED's is one of the sillier prolonged hysterias of all time, it's verging on the Red scare level of absurdity.

It used to be said "it's not cheating, if you don't get caught" and many people took pride in saying that. But for some reason ped's are a different story, I'm fine with people saying it's a worse type of cheating if they want, but ultimately, it's JUST CHEATING. (assuming you don't get into pedantics about the fact that it wasn't against the rules most of the time etc.) React to it, just as you have done to other forms of cheating in your life, assign a penalty and move on.

And as others have alluded to, this example doesn't work unless we have good reason to believe the Giants DID know Melky was juicing.

Even if the team did know, all they can do is phone up the league office and strongly suggest that they test Cabrera, then sit back and wait while the confidential process completes itself. The Union would never stand for a team benching or releasing a guy because they think he's juicing without a positive test. The agreement doesn't even allow a team to do anything that could be perceived as additional punishment to players who have tested positive (which is one of the reasons why Mota was allowed back, even thought the Giants arguably would have been justified in releasing him based on performance).

It used to be said "it's not cheating, if you don't get caught" and many people took pride in saying that. But for some reason ped's are a different story, I'm fine with people saying it's a worse type of cheating if they want, but ultimately, it's JUST CHEATING. (assuming you don't get into pedantics about the fact that it wasn't against the rules most of the time etc.) React to it, just as you have done to other forms of cheating in your life, assign a penalty and move on.

While I don't understand the sentiment of things being OK if you don't get caught, the rest is spot on. I do consider steroids to be cheating, but there's a method of testing, there's a penalty, it's done. I have no problem if you want to talk about changing the penalties for future violations, or change the testing, or whatever, but I hate retro-active stuff.

It used to be said "it's not cheating, if you don't get caught" and many people took pride in saying that. But for some reason ped's are a different story, I'm fine with people saying it's a worse type of cheating if they want, but ultimately, it's JUST CHEATING. (assuming you don't get into pedantics about the fact that it wasn't against the rules most of the time etc.) React to it, just as you have done to other forms of cheating in your life, assign a penalty and move on.

Is armed robbery worse or better than picking a pocket? How one goes about breaking the rules can be a big deal, an even bigger one than the crime itself, if it's trivial enough offense. I don't want to get into another prolonged discussion about the danger of PEDs, because the evidence is slight and both camps intractable, but the idea that one means of cheating can be significantly worse than others is hardly novel.

Is armed robbery worse or better than picking a pocket? How one goes about breaking the rules can be a big deal, an even bigger one than the crime itself, if it's trivial enough offense. I don't want to get into another prolonged discussion about the danger of PEDs, because the evidence is slight and both camps intractable, but the idea that one means of cheating can be significantly worse than others is hardly novel.

But we have a fairly well defined system of punishments, You commit a crime, you are penalized by either being fined or put in jail. The more severe the crime, the longer/higher the punishment. The anti-ped fanatics, would prefer to create a new system of punishment, such as executing your child, since you wouldn't have met your wife if you didn't have the extra funds from the armed robbery. They want to create a whole new level of punishment instead of extending the system we have.

You get caught doctoring a baseball, at the very most you get is a 10 day suspension, after appeal, 7 day....with PED usage you get 5 times that penalty. No matter how you look at it, that is a significant penalty, so the game clearly considers it to be a higher level of cheating, but the sport has in place an appropriate penalty, on par with how they handle other forms of cheating, but with a significantly harsher penalty. Sounds fair(if you believe it's a worse form of cheating) the zealots on the other hand want significantly more penalties completely out of bounds with rationality.

Say it t'aint so, Melky!

#hadtobedone

i'm so tired of religious fanatics, PED fanatics, weather fanatics, political fanatics

now anti-DH fanatics, we're the only sane ones around here

i'm so tired of religious fanatics, PED fanatics, weather fanatics, political fanatics

...like Chris Truby and Albert Belle.

The Union would never stand for a team benching or releasing a guy because they think he's juicing without a positive test

Exactly. What are teams supposed to do, bench every journeyman who hits a few home runs in a week? "Quiroga is batting .400, Skip, why is he sitting?" "Well clearly that's a bit suspicious, and we have to make sure we're winning fairly, so I'm playing my crappy unPEDed shortstop instead" …

Just give the Tigers the World series trophy and we'll call it square, OK?

The writer is an idiot. When Melky was suspended, LA and the Giants were tied. At the end of that day, LA led by one game. Within a week, the pulled off their blockbuster trade while the Giants had lost one of the better hitters. If LA deserved to win the pennant, they should have outplayed the Giants to the end of the season, particularly after picking up A-Gon and Beckett.

At suspension, Giants and LA were 64-53. Giants after Melky was suspended: 30-15. LA after Melky was suspended: 22-23. LA after they picked up A-Gon and Beckett in huge deal: 18-18.

How did Melky do that? Melky did not enable that to happen, unless one is saying is that by his absence he made that happen. And that's a good month and just over a half of games played, that is a significant amount of time, plus they picked up a great player in A-Gon and a good one in Beckett, he did great for them, similar to his 2011 performance.

If the Giants were leading by a lot when Melky was suspended, then coasted in, yet, I would concede that Melky helped the team win the division. But they were tied and the Giants outplayed them to the end, even with the Melky handicap, even with the LA pickup. I recall someone complaining that they picked up Pence, but Sabean had been trying to get him since 2011 plus Hunter was acquired a few weeks before Melky was suspended. And again, in any case, LA picked up A-Gon and Beckett. And if you take the final records, and subtract off the difference between what Melky provided and what Blanco would have provided as the starting LF, the Giants would have still won by a large margin.

I understand wanting to punish the teams. If you want to take away the Giants 2012 championship just for Melky, then the Giants should have gotten the 1989 World Series because the A's were helped by McGwire and Canseco's steroiding up. And from what I understand from Ball Four, the Yankees were doing up a whole cocktail of drugs all through the 60's and 70's, maybe all of their championships back then should be given to the other team too. And who knows about the 50's? Speed was the drug of choice during WW II, I'm sure the teams of the 50's Yankees were probably hopped up on them at some point.

But retroactive rulings never work, they are forced and tries to change history. Just think of the whole Pluto is not a planet debacle. For better or worse, they are what they are, the A's won 1989, the Giants won 2012, but we can remember that the A's got a lot of help via illegal drugs but the Giants despite losing Melky, won the division. If anyone is really worked up about this, they should be advocating change to the rules so that a better result happens in the future.

But how do teams know that a player is doing it? Just because a team suspects does not mean that it gives them the right to invade a player's privacy to see if they are right or wrong. And the MLB Players Association would have a class action lawsuit up faster than you can say "foul ball!"

And that's really the rub there. It is the Players Association that has been the bigger obstacle than the owners. They should really care about the product that is being put out there on the field, yet they continually give players lenient punishments (look at how many times they appeal legit suspensions and win; look at how many times a suspended player can come back and embarrass the Players Assocation - see Steve Howe). They have no shame about it and just look for the god-almighty dollar as the cure for all ails.

But retroactive rulings never work, they are forced and tries to change history. Just think of the whole Pluto is not a planet debacle. For better or worse, they are what they are...

the problem with this argument is that if you went back to the 19th cent. you would find our ancestors believed in dozens of planets as scientists started to name all those asteriods planets. So indeed, scientists went back retroactively and "changed history" as it were and in fact it's probably better that they did rather than leave it as what it is or what it was...

One could probably make the same pt. with e.g. Ty Cobb's hit record or whatever it was that was recounted after they found someone had miscounted a few. The argument then, I think from the Commissioner, was that these records should be sacred regardless of whether they were correctly counted or not. That's insane...

I agree with you overall but you can run aground when you start using analogies that stretch a point.

Yes, in retrospect, I probably shouldn't have brought up Pluto. Thanks for your reply and comment.

The 1937 Salisbury Indians were a famous example of forfeiting games. Briefly, they had one too many players with experience at a higher level. However, he only signed a contract and never played at that higher level. The League President had the Indians forfeit all 21 games they had won at that point so they went from being 21-5 to 0-26. They went on to go 59-11 for an official record of 59-37, 80-16 without the forfeits and winning the league.

And as others have alluded to, this example doesn't work unless we have good reason to believe the Giants DID know Melky was juicing.

IANAL, but last I checked, you don't keep stolen goods you purchased even if you didn't know that they were stolen. Whether you acted knowingly or not determines whether you committed a crime, or not, but you don't get to keep the stuff if you didn't. That the Giants didn't know would just mean they didn't face additional penalties - if we're taking pure ethics here, those wins were stolen, whether they knew Melky was using not.

Of course, I don't agree with this, because I consider it a matter of the rules, not a question of ethics. But if one's going to praise the ethical pureness of the Giants, you can't simply wash away the fact that they did benefit from Melky's services and did not take any steps whatsoever to return that benefit.

IANAL, but last I checked, you don't keep stolen goods you purchased even if you didn't know that they were stolen. Whether you acted knowingly or not determines whether you committed a crime, or not, but you don't get to keep the stuff if you didn't.

The problem with that analogy is that you are assuming that the stolen goods weren't converted into something else. They didn't go out and steal wins, they had one small fraction of one player go out and steal something that helps them create wins. If someone goes out and steals money, which they then used to buy food and his family eats the food, would you suggest they stomach pump the family, then take the food out and return it to the vendor to get the money back to return the actual stolen goods? Or would you recommended a justified expense after the fact, say an excessive fine and maybe imprisonment?

They didn't go out and steal wins, they had one small fraction of one player go out and steal something that helps them create wins.

It's not hard to estimate wins from what players do. And Melky certainly was worth at least 1 win, which would be 1 more than the team tried to return.

They won't pump the food out of their stomachs, but they certainly can sue for the money. There's no magic money laundering ability that you get with stolen goods. You can't say "oops, I turned that $2,000 into a vacation, which I already took. Good luck trying to take back my trip to Orlando!"

Again, I'm not saying that this is the proper course at all. But if someone's going to drag ethics into the mix rather than simply what the rules say, you can't ignore that the Giants did, in fact, benefit from Melky's services.

I am not at all neutral on the issue of PEDs, but I find this to be nothing short of absurd. AT no point during the playoffs did I say to myself, 'Boy, I hope the Giants don't win because they cheated to get here!'

Ugh.

Again, I'm not saying that this is the proper course at all. But if someone's going to drag ethics into the mix rather than simply what the rules say, you can't ignore that the Giants did, in fact, benefit from Melky's services.

Giving wins back is idiotic, plain and simple. As far as anyone knows, the Giants organization did nothing wrong, so there's nothing they need to atone for.

It's not hard to estimate wins from what players do. And Melky certainly was worth at least 1 win, which would be 1 more than the team tried to return

One practical problem is that it approaches certainty that other teams got a win or two from uncaught PEDed players. I don't know if that makes it more or less grievous in ethical terms to let the Giants "keep" their 1 win. As suggested frequently upthread, they then lost some other amount of value when Melky was caught. It stinks to be caught when others aren't, but that's the course of justice in a fallen world. (When some are caught receiving stolen goods, other fences, even deliberate ones, skate away free.) Anyway, one could argue (and some here have) that the Giants were punished, and maybe even punished more than other teams equally "guilty."

IANAL, but last I checked, you don't keep stolen goods you purchased even if you didn't know that they were stolen. Whether you acted knowingly or not determines whether you committed a crime, or not, but you don't get to keep the stuff if you didn't.

No, but you get to keep any value that you got out of the item. If I own a automotive repair shop and unknowingly purchase a stolen welder, then I have to return when the police come by, but I don't have to go back to my customers, return their money, and take a cutting torch to the welds I made with the stolen tool.