Max wrote:

Another interesting tidbit from Strauss was this:

"The Ludwick-for-Westbrook move subtracted from the offense to address pitching. The club dropped from 0.5 games in first place to 5.0 games back after the fact."

It came in the middle of an answer that AP will probably like: "Lack of organizational depth. The only year in which the team reached the playoffs (2009), it was able to parlay prospects for DeRosa and Holliday. In 2007, 2008 and 2010, the club did not make significant in-season additions. The Ludwick-for-Westbrook move subtracted from the offense to address pitching. The club dropped from 0.5 games in first place to 5.0 games back after the fact. The bench has not been nearly as deep the last four years as it was in '04-'05 and, to a lesser degree, in '06."

The clubs reply to that would be that they would have finished even further out if the trade wasnt made.  I didnt agree with the trade at the time but now it is easy to see that it didnt make a difference.

APRTW wrote:

forsberg_us wrote:

Let me ask a different question. Steroids are rampant in professional wrestling. I would feel pretty comfortable saying those guys use for a long period of time and more regularly than baseball players. Do you know of a single wrestler who broke down physically?  Several have died as a result of steroid related violence, but I've never heard of any of them breaking down until much later in life.

Superstar Billy Graham is a name that comes to mind.

Big Boss Man and Eddie Guerrero are two that come to mind that had their hearts explode.  I know there have been others who comitted  suicide.  Some would blame that on the steroids as well.  However your point remains.  Wrestlers, football players and bodybuilders abuse the drugs much differently then baseball players and track stars.

Besides Billy Graham, the other name that came to mind was Chris Benoit, who you may recall murdered his family before killing himself.  I certainly don't hold Wikipedia as gospel, but in reading their story about the murder, it appears that could have been more concussion-related than steroid-related.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Benoit

But Benoit's another guy who obviously abused steroids over a lengthy period of time and was still functioning athletically at a very high level into his 40s.

Here's the bio on Billy Graham who continued wrestling until he was 45.  You can see all the health issues he's had since

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Graham_(wrestler)

When I was doing the search for Billy Graham, I found this link which is purportedly a letter from Graham to his fans dated about 2 months ago.  If this doesn't discourage steroid use, I don't know what would.  Really sad.

http://www.ifight365.com/2010/12/superstar-billy-graham-issues-statement-on-his-health/

Sterroids. Which is somehow all over the pujols board.

Sterroids aid the body in recovering from injury. They encourage healing. An athlete will basically rip his body up daily in a weightroom and then more on a field. This accelerated healing is beneficial. You can put more strength on quickly if the recovery time of the body is reduced.

There's about 10000 possibilities for what this means in the terms of a career. One thing is certain, you can only really gain from a constant use of Sterroids for a certain window, and once it's done the crash is monumental and quick (Kevin Brown). Not allowing the body proper recovery time will eventually lead to the bodies collapse. There's also a hypothesis that the body becomes reliant on the Sterroid due to repeated exposure and begins to slack off in it's own natural rebuilding effort because it's super healing.

Clemens return to pitching elite also involved his reinvention of his pitching approach. The high 90's velocity fell, and instead he put rotation on his pitches. Developed a split-finger fastball, and found that he didn't need to throw absolute heat to strike people out.

If someone starts their career juicing, you can probably expect their career to end in 15 years. 10 is more likely, because the body will crash from it, and the low will be worse then if you'd never touched them. If someone uses juice periodically to get through damage and injury, then you'll likely see a very strong career athlete extend a career to 20+ seasons where it might have normally ended at 15.

The other random aspect to this? People heal at different rates naturally.

McGwire was thumping home runs from his first season in MLB (49 homers his rookie year, at 220 lbs and 6'4). Juice didn't help him hit the ball. It helped him stay on the field so he could hit the ball. His ramped up numbers came because he was able to play in more games, and felt much better in those games. Even if you offer someone a placibo but tell them it's sterroids, a persons psych will take over as will their confidence, and they will be a more capable aggressive and successful player, then if they took nothing. The human body is a wonder sometimes.

Bonds is a fine example of a juicer who fits this bill. A clean, fresh Barry Bonds was a monster at the plate. Give him the ability to wear a car door on his outside right arm, and now he can crowd the plate and force everything in his wheelhouse. He walked to that plate knowing he was a MLB star on juice, and he was faster, stronger, and going to either get walked, or get something he could pull. As soon as he did, he'd kill it. Because there was simply no way he could fail.

So if you want a definitive answer on the affect of sterroids to a players career length, productivity, I will dissappoint you. There isn't one. The answer is variable depending on how the juice is used, and for what gains. Either in playing time, or numbers, juice helps athletes. Otherwise, they wouldn't take it. The length of the career however depends on how disciplined the juicing player is.

alz wrote:

Sterroids. Which is somehow all over the pujols board. . . .
So if you want a definitive answer on the affect of sterroids to a players career length, productivity, I will dissappoint you. There isn't one. The answer is variable depending on how the juice is used, and for what gains. Either in playing time, or numbers, juice helps athletes. Otherwise, they wouldn't take it. The length of the career however depends on how disciplined the juicing player is.

Rec.

Your knowledge of roids is, uh . . . disturbing.    (happy)

forsberg_us wrote:

It seems to confirm what Alz, said which is that there are a multitude of factors that determine how steroid use affects an individual, dosage and duration of use being among them.

But in fairness, none of it supports what I was arguing, which was that long term use might lead to the physical breakdown of joints and tendons that ends careers.  That might just be my own idiosyncratic lunacy: natural, holistic = good; synthetic, reductionist = bad.   (happy)

Last edited by Max (2/11/2011 12:54 pm)

Max wrote:

forsberg_us wrote:

It seems to confirm what Alz, said which is that there are a multitude of factors that determine how steroid use affects an individual, dosage and duration of use being among them.

But in fairness, none of it supports what I was arguing, which was that long term use might lead to the physical breakdown of joints and tendons that ends careers.  That might just be my own idiosyncratic lunacy: natural, holistic = good; synthetic, reductionist = bad.   (happy)

It can lead to a physical breakdown (Kevin Brown). You can also cause a physical breakdown by quitting roids cold turkey after long habitual use. That's probably one of the more dangerous problems with them. The body will eventually develop dependancies on the sterroids and rely on them to heal itself, and when that happens your time is seriously limited in professional athletics. Trying to quit after such a condition has set in results in exercise basically devastating the entire muscle system instead of strengthening it.

(I worked for 2 years next to an old-school powerlifter. He told me everything there was to know about roids from his perspective.)

Reshifting the focus:

I wonder how Uncle Bill feels about this:

"St. Louis Cardinals outfielder Matt Holliday, who signed the largest contract in club history last year, told an ESPN radio program this morning that he'd defer additional money from his salary if that's what it would take to sign Albert Pujols."

http://www.stltoday.com/sports/baseball/professional/article_37185f1e-35fd-11e0-9880-00127992bc8b.html

forsberg_us wrote:

Reshifting the focus:

I wonder how Uncle Bill feels about this:

"St. Louis Cardinals outfielder Matt Holliday, who signed the largest contract in club history last year, told an ESPN radio program this morning that he'd defer additional money from his salary if that's what it would take to sign Albert Pujols."

http://www.stltoday.com/sports/baseball/professional/article_37185f1e-35fd-11e0-9880-00127992bc8b.html

Holliday isnt the easy guy to get to know.  He doesnt talk to the media alot or show much emotion.  Alot of times that is taken to mean the guy doesnt care.  In Holliday's case that seems far from the truth.  First he takes Rasmus under his wing and now he is trying to do what he can to lock up Pujols as a teammate.  I believe for 17 million dollars the Cardinals bought more then just a baseball player.  This has to put pressure on DeWitt.

APRTW wrote:

forsberg_us wrote:

It seems to confirm what Alz, said which is that there are a multitude of factors that determine how steroid use affects an individual, dosage and duration of use being among them.

Yes but the users we all talk about, the Bond, Arod, Pudge, Sosa, Clemens ect....   all used it with some kind of care.  Some of the users even got run out of the league before they really needed to be gone.  Cansaco, Bonds, Palmiro and Sosa had doors shut in their face even though their number still said they deserved a look.  After reading Juiced I would conclude that Cansaco was one of baseballs largest user.  He has seen alot of health issues because of it.  Last time he was on TV he was talking about how his body can no longer produce testosterone and had caused him to have zero sex drive.  In game of shadows it descibes BALCO as a place that closely monitors its users.  They made steroid cycles to fit the person using them and the sport they used them for.  I think that goes to show the amount of knowledge that was gain inbetween Cansaco's time of usage and Bonds'.  In a post above I pasted info from wikipedia on PED in baseball.  It is a fact that there have been users thoughout the history of baseball.  I believe the difference is that now the users know how to use it.  Yet most want to punish todays player for know more then yesterdays players.  I guess it doesnt matter that you know what you are doing is wrong.  The wrongness is based off of how effective you are at it.

PED's, maybe; but anabolic steroids, no.  That history begins in 1954, according to this article.
http://www.anabolicsmall.com/roida3a.htm

Caffeine is a PED, and surely that was around in Abner Doubleday's time, but it is not nearly as effective as anabolic steroids and human growth hormone, I suspect.

Burwell gets a few good quotes out of Whitey:

http://www.stltoday.com/sports/columns/bryan-burwell/article_883a2a1e-29d7-50f5-a3ef-ff5cf687e49e.html

I think #10 is daydreaming if he thinks his team can just blow this off and let's play ball .

From Goold:

Was told tonight by NL exec that Lozano has told multiple teams #stlcards had "no chance to sign him" before free agency. #Albertageddon

Cards/Pujols agree to an extension!!!!

FINALLY!!!

.... They agreed to extend the deadline for them to reach an agreement for an extension (no I'm not making this shit up....) by 24 hours in order to not cloud Musial's Medal of Freedom with Pujols drama.

I would hope that means they think they can get this deal done, but it also reeks of "postponing the shitty news" by one day to keep it out of Stan's lap. =(