Quote:
Originally Posted by glchen
I personally think that the PED users and suspected PED users should be left out of the HOF during this Baseball Writers round, and have their fates left to the Veteran's Committee. If existing HOFer's think that these players deserve to be their peers, then so be it.
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The problem with this is it's all hearsay. If Derek Jeter(fox example) did something, which I'm sure he did considering how much stuff became illegal when the testing did, how would you know? The only person that can say he was clean was him and who is going to believe him when it comes down to what these other players have gone through.
So we will never know if Jeter or any other player from the era is clean. Basically, they should all be suspected PED users because no one can tell you they were clean.
You could use Jeter and say, wait he slugs .552 in 1999 and never breaks .481 after that. Just one random off the charts year on a team filled with steroid guys in the middle of the era? Or look at Barry Larkin and say where did that 33 home run season come from? He wasn't a home run hitter. Or look at John Smoltz, his numbers start going down in 1993 and 94, then he comes back from the strike and starts pitching like an ace again during the higher offense years? No one has ever mentioned them, but you can find a season or time that stands out. How would anyone know what they did those years to get better?
On the flip side, guys like Rondell White and Carlos Baerga came back from the off-season jacked and it hurt because they may have got too big and lost range of motion, so even then you can't just look for seasons that stand out.