That statement refers to a memo by Fay Vincent. It was not binding, because it was not approved through the collective bargaining process. The Commissioner did not, and still does not, have the power to unilaterally implement such a rule. It would be like claiming a bill that passed the Senate but not by the House or the President was a law.

First of all, sorry about my english. Im from Brazil. I usually read your blog. I like your points of view a lot, even when I dont agree with them. Talking about drugs who enhace the players perfomance, and their consequences, for example, use are preventing players to be elected to HOF (McGwire…), in “defense” of players you keep saying that taking that drugs wasnt illegal at the time.

I did read today at SI Site this statement:

“Though MLB’s drug policy has expressly prohibited the use of steroids without a valid prescription since 1991, there were no penalties for a positive test in 2003. ”

If this is true it was illegal to take that drugs. The unique thing is there wasnt consequences for doing something wrong, but the procedure was forbidden.

So, this would change the things a little bit, right?

I think this debate will be hot now with A-Rod news.

Thanks,

Rodrigo

PS: I bought your book last time I went to USA. I love it.

I find your argument compelling as far as it goes, especially in relation to those who argue that the statistical variability favors the prosecution.  I am particularly in agreement that an assessment based upon DIPS, and strike-outs in partcular, rather than WHIP (defense-correlated) and/or references to general health (which varies far beyond any useful analytical toll and is thus useless as evidence).  There is merit to the argument that a league-related adjustment either to the mean or comparison sample might be justified based on the talent faced but I doubt that would significantly alter the analysis.

It sems – and I’m new here just going through the whole thing for the first time – that most of the critics are either attempting to read more into the analysis than can be found (how can you say unequivocally that Clemens is innocent?!?!) or are going beyond the analysis to make subjective assessments of the credibilty of the parties involved.  I was particularly amused by those arguing that McNamee could not possibly risk jail to throw Clemens to the lions for his own benefit.  Such risk is obviously non-existent as he knew that he had injected other substances (B-12 is frequently self-administered, not just by doctors) and it is a practical impossibility to prove a negative.  Likewise, the refusal to take a (notoriously unreliable) lie detector test is evidence of absolutely nothing.

I commend the effort at the very least.  Having tried to explain the lagging nature of unemployment (or, worse yet, Fed policy) to people with only a popular unexamined understanding of the issues (who have largely made up ther minds already), I know what you face.

Personally, I agree with you that the statistics do not support an assertion that Clemens’ performance was in any measurable way affected, but that his subsequent actions/statements have, at least, been troubling.  Thus suspicion is, perhaps, warranted, nothing conclusive (or damning) has yet seen the light of day.

But I am confused about the answer to Dan (#4)’s argument that perhaps steroids prevented a decline.  The fitted value plots are visually interesting but they don’t shed any light on whether or not drugs prevented a decline relative to some benchmark.

Very, very crudely, it’s like you want a setup where you estimate a model [whatever statistic] as a function of age and see if a Clemens dummy is significant.

Specifically regarding the quote from JC’s original post:
“Other pitchers having late career success used, too”
- You haven’t shown us this late career success other than to name drop.  The names are persuasive, but not a very large N, and I’d imagine there are a lot more late-career flameouts than Nolan Ryans.
- My suggested “model” implicitly assumes that a large number, those making up the baseline, didn’t.  Something to keep in mind, an assumption which may or may not be true.
- Another shortcoming of my proposal is that it doesn’t provide any causality.  Specifically, it doesn’t rule out that Clemens may just be a total man-freak of a pitching machine, which is entirely possible.

If we don’t find support for the hypothesis that Clemens’ decline was slower than comparable pitchers, then JC’s argument is all the more persuasive.

If we do find support, then we’d have to think about this more.