Posted on behalf of Jim Rygelski, Bob Broeg SABR Chapter President

Several people have taken up the mantle of Bill Simmons’s "Reggie Cleveland All-Stars," but, before the new season is upon us, we wanted to offer our take on players from 2008 whose names and ethnicities don’t match, especially since new Cardinal shortstop Khalil Greene, a perennial RC All-Star, has arrived at camp. To qualify, a player had to appear in at least one major-league game in 2008 and have, in our opinion, the certainly subjective quality of an ethnically-ambiguous prenomen.

• Koyie Hill, C
• Howie Kendrick, 1B
• Danny Richar, 2B
• Khalil Greene, SS
• Ty Wigginton, 3B
• Clete Thomas, OF
• Reggie Willits, OF
• Trot Nixon, OF
• Bronson Arroyo, P
• Tom Gordon, P
• Glendon Rusch, P
• Levale Speigner, P
• Wesley Wright, P

Also receiving consideration: Brian Barton, Tanyon Sturtze, Corey Patterson, Terry Tiffee, Lou Marson and Colt Morton.

You know that baseball’s steroid problem has gotten bad when even Bud Selig is talking about asterisking the record books. With the "revelation" that baseball’s ubermensch Alex Rodriguez has cheated more than just his wife, the question of how to treat statistics — in particular, what hallowing remains of the game’s once-hallowed home-run records — has been asked anew. Memo to the baseball world: The era of Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire isn’t over yet.

The answer, of course, is fraught with problems. Does baseball simply put an asterisk next to each stat of every player who has played in the so-called steroids era? What about the "innocent" ones? And when does one begin that period? What about players who played part of their careers prior? How much of the records are legitimate? Some questions are easier to answer than others. And yet it’s fairly clear that the records of Bonds, McGwire and Rodriguez, et al, can’t be reasonably held in the same level of integrity as those of anyone who played without the aid of steroids. Oh, sure, people will make the moral equivalency argument, saying that players have been cheating since baseball began and that it’s impossible to draw a line between steroids and coffee. But cheating the integrity of the game has never been condoned (ask Pete Rose or the relatives of Shoeless Joe). And if you can’t distinguish between the benefits of coffee (not to mention legality) and steroids, perhaps this debate isn’t for you.

The central problem is comparing the current era to other eras in which conditions created a significantly different performance environment, such as the "dead-ball era" and pre-integration, because in those periods, conditions affected all players fairly equally. For instance, all players in the pre-1919 era played in the same capacious parks, tried to hit and field the same dirty (and occasionally lopsided) ball. And prior to integration, everyone in the major leagues suffered equally from the lack of having a bigger pool of talent to choose from.

But the PED era has not affected all players the same way. Presumably, at least a small contingent of players has never taken PEDs, and those who have have been aided in varying ways, whether to recover faster from injury, increase power or to simply gain more confidence. These effects are so difficult to measure that it’s probably pointless to try.

What then to do? It seems the reasonable options are thus:

1. Lump all players of all eras into the same record book. That is, statistics from the Federal League, Negro Leagues, Nippon League, Players League, etc., all go into the same pot of statistics. That would make Sadaharu Oh baseball’s career home run champion (with 868), until someone like Rodriguez breaks it.
2. Keep the statistics earned in the American Major Leagues (i.e., AL and NL) but treat the statistics from the steroid era with the same skepticism as those of the Federal League, Negro Leagues, Nippon League, etc. Barry Bond’s single-season home run record is only as valid as Oh’s career record.

The first option is fairly untenable and wrought with its own problems. Option two is easier and makes more sense. The reality is that baseball has inexorably harmed the reliability of its statistics. Whatever flaws baseball’s body of statistics had before, those from the current period are illegitimate. It’s preferable to consider the entire era one unto itself, in which player-to-player comparisons are even impossible. And yes, that includes those players who may not have done any PEDs at all but sat silent while their union obfuscated and stonewalled as long as it could, and has only allowed a sham practice of testing (replete with tipping). True, the secret voting and other thuglike practices of the union have made it hard for the truly innocent to make change, but we’re pretty sure Jackie Robinson endured tougher circumstances than being in Don Fehr’s doghouse. (It’s one reason why Jackie Robinson was a hero, whereas Rodriguez and Albert Pujols are merely great players.)

For our part, we have decided on a policy regarding how we refer to statistics this season in order to maintain our own integrity. This is not meant to be an effort to "put an asterisk" next to the records of current-day ballplayers but to merely create some guidelines by which we can and will discuss their achievements so as to maintain a sense of integrity and usefulness in the way we think about statistics. For example, it’s preposterous to treat Barry Bonds’s single-season and career home-run records as being of the same playing-field of fairness with regard to those records set in a time when PEDs were not commonplace. Given the lack of a convention or system that would allow us to normalize the difference between eras (such as how park adjustments do), we have come up with the following policy.

• We will not make any single-season comparisons from any of the years of current-day players to those prior to the 1992 season. Why set 1992 as the cutoff date? To be sure, any cutoff date is going to be arbitrary, but 1992 makes more sense than any because it was the first full season after which then-commissioner Fay Vincent set forth baseball’s drug policy in a memo, clearly forbidding the use of steroids. Presumably steroids were already being used — after all, most laws assume that an unwanted activity is already going on. Some have said that Vincent’s memo was non-binding to players, since it was done outside of a collective-bargaining agreement. But the players union has repeatedly shown itself as a staunch opponent of testing and can hardly be considered to have baseball’s best interests — in this case, establishing and protecting a culture of fair play and integrity. Besides, to say that the ban wasn’t legally binding is to miss the point. Presumably players aren’t opposed to steroids being banned but merely the means to determine whether they’ve been used. No one is (at least openly) making a case that steroids should be allowed.
• We will not make any career statistical comparisons of current-day players to players who finished playing by 1992.
• We will continue to compare players to players in the PED era, but even those we hold more loosely than we do for other eras of play.

As for baseball generally, our preference is to include all statistics produced during the era in the rest of the game’s historical record. However, since statistically speaking, the leagues have little in common with their earlier eras than name, the statistics should be viewed with the same importance as those of, say, the Federal League other bygone leagues. Practically speaking, records that have been broken since 1992 or will be broken until baseball fundamentally changes how it deals with this problem, should have little fanfare and certainly not be officially celebrated by MLB, lest it be seen as tacitly condoning the actions of its A-Rods and McGwires. Regrettably, the sad fact is that baseball’s records are not now nor will ever again be its hallowed treasure. Our policy at Fungoes will be to accept that reality and write about the sport accordingly.

The Bob Broeg SABR Chapter’s first roundtable meeting of 2009 will be next Monday, Feb. 16, at the usual spot: wonderful Crusoe’s Restaurant at Compton and Osceola in beautiful South St. Louis. Dinner is from 5:30 or so, with the meeting starting at 6:45pm.

See Chapter Meetings and Events for more info.

It happens every near-Spring: The Fungoes Defensive-Spectrum Beaters team. For those gentle readers new to the blog, the Defensive-Spectrum Beaters are "those players who defy Jamesian logic to successfully move rightward along the defensive spectrum."

Easiest < 1B-LF-RF-3B-CF-2B-SS-C > Hardest

Bill James’s defensive spectrum has been more interesting for Cardinal fans lately, given that outfielder Nick Stavinoha will try out as catcher in a few days and outfielder Skip Schumaker is attempting to move to second base this spring. Schumaker’s would-be feat was put in further relief with today’s news that Cardinal fans won’t have Adam Kennedy to kick around anymore. Yes, the stars are aligning for Schumaker to make like Howie Shanks — the only player in history to begin his career with as many games in the outfield as Schumaker and then play as many as 100 games at second. Still, if Shanks isn’t enough to convince you that the deck is stacked against Schu, our elite beaters team will further demonstrate.

To qualify for our award, players have to field equally as well or better than they did at a position that is rightward of the position they played in the preceding year (and at which they didn’t qualify the preceding year). Sounds easy enough, but in reality, it is indeed uncommon; last year, only six major leaguers turned the trick.

First, let’s gather a group of players who are merely eligible. As we began last year, we’ll use David Pinto’s Probabilistic Model of Range (PMR) data to make the first cut: Players who had at least 1000 balls-in-play at a position in 2008 rightward of their toughest position in 2007, regardless of how they fared:

So only 13 players even attempted a rightward move, and only a couple were pure, meaning that the player never (or almost never) played the position. For example, Inge began his career as a catcher, but hadn’t played there since 2004. Izturis played a handful of games at shortstop every year he’s been in the league (since 2004). Ditto Nick Punto. Outfielders Alex Rios, Matt Kemp, Shane Victorino, Joey Gathright (who actually played 130 games in CF in 2006), Reed Johnson, Geoff Jenkins and Ryan Ludwick had all previously seen time at the more difficult 2008 outfield position than they qualified for in 2007. Rich Aurilia, most will remember, played the majority of his 14-year career on the far right end of the spectrum as a shortstop before filling in at first base for the Giants. Akinori Iwamura and Scott Hairston are the lone exceptions, Iwamura having played second base only once previously in the majors (he played third base and outfield in Japan). Hairston played only four games in centerfield prior to 2008, though he did play 85 games at the more rightward second base back in 2004.

But they all technically qualify, so we’ll proceed to the final round of cuts. Now, using PMR, let’s see who actually held his own with equal or better fielding performance at the rightward position:

Alas, only two made it, Punto and Kemp. So congrats to them for doing the nearly impossible. Shanks would be proud.

One final consideration, especially relevant to Schumaker and Stavinoha as they approach 2009: The defensive spectrum has an offensive-production corellary. That is, the farther right you go, the worse your offense is, generally. Let’s see how the group from 2008 did in their splits batting while playing each position:

Kemp took an offensive hit, but Punto actually improved. To be sure, it’s a small sample, with plenty of noise. But last-year’s group didn’t witness any significant dropoff with the bat; indeed, they were slightly better on average. Again, it’s a small sample, but it illustrates that moving rightward doesn’t necessarily mean downward movement on offense. That’s good news for two outfielders trying to earn more playing time on a Cardinal team left-loaded on the spectrum.