Understanding Melky Cabrera

I am sad

I like the game of baseball because you can make accurate judgments about a player based on their stats. It’s simple. For instance, someone from the 80’s might be waking up from a coma right now and might wonder “Was Barry Bonds good or bad, I can’t decide!” So you walk over and show him stats and numbers like the 765 career home runs, and the fella who was lost in his own thoughts for 20 some odd years would suddenly realize Barry Bonds was talented at playing baseball. And he would be right! Congratulations coma man, you have accurately judged a man’s baseball talents without actually meeting or seeing the guy! That was quick and easy!

That’s how you judge a baseball player. It's a simple process, without many loose ends. 

Then there’s judging a person. That's messy. Then there's judging a players talent level knowing that PEDs were involved. Even messier. Trying to do both at the same time? A vomit looking disaster waiting to happen. Thus we have opinions.

Over the past 2 days, opinions on Melky Cabrera character and stats have swirled around more than fruit in a blender. His reputation has been a train wreck that Denzel Washington is too scared to stop. Here are twitter opinions that seem reasonable:

LOL at Melky Cabrera. Obviously that fat idiot didn't get good overnight without cheating

yo, fuck melky cabrera. it's easy to hit 101 RBIs when you're stupid cheating assclown.

So I may have cherry picked a little bit. I don’t really know what an assclown is. Should his butt be a prominent attraction at children’s birthday parties? I have lots of question for whoever wrote that tweet.

But regardless, even though those are extreme cases, there are thousands more of these tweets, degrading Melky Cabrera’s character and baseball talent in every which way. The floodgates have been kicked open wider than right center field at AT&T Park. That’s what a failed drug test will do for you. All those opinions and stories written for Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire and Rafael Palmeiro have been recycled with the name Melky Cabrera. Some Giants fans have said they never want to see Melky Cabrera in a Giants uniform ever again. Some say the team should vacate all the wins Melky was a part of, leaving them with somewhere around 0 wins for the season. It would be a record! 

Anyways, there's a lot of anger going around. Melky Cabrera is being scrutinized down to his core. He was selfish, he's an idiot, he sucks, his records are tainted. And it's not just crazy random twitter dudes:

From Jon Heyman

Melky's statistics are bloated and counterfeit. He isn't the big-time star they'd have you to believe him to be.

Melky was like a bank robber who did everything right in his plan to steal millions – right up until moment his getaway car ran out of gas.
— Buster Olney (@Buster_ESPN) August 15, 2012

Yes, Melky suspension is tough on Giants. But as one player from another team said, they already benefited from his cheating.
— DKnobler (@DKnobler) August 15, 2012

This is all too much. 

He cheated. No one is going to dispute that. For goodness sake, Melky Cabrera hasn't disputed that. It was selfish of him to jeopardize his team's future and rip the hearts out of one of the most supportive fan bases in baseball. He knew what he was doing, had to have known every risk he was taking and did it anyways. It was a stupid decision and Melky deserves to be criticized for it.

But here are fans and reporters, who have plenty of credentials, making conclusions without any basis. Strong opinions that are being said like they're making a stone cold lock. Are we really going to erase everything he did this season, all the talent he displayed this year and lazily put it all to PEDs? There's evidence and then there's blanket statements with no facts to back it up. Do PEDs directly effect that performance of a baseball player. There's not a lot of evidence suggesting it does or does not. The simple answer is we just don't know. The fellas at Camden Depot explain it in detail, but the short story is, we don't know what the PEDs do. There's no question they affect a players body, but what does that do player performance? Here's a quote from the post about this specific situation:

However, a lot, if not almost all, of it is likely Melky.  His career walk rate, strikeout rate, stolen base rate, and home run rate are all in expected ranges.  The difference is that he BABIP is about 20% higher than his career level (and we should expect that to crash) and, with that increase in BABIP, he is showing an increase in secondary power. 

Hey look, stats! And that's just one example of how evidence supports a different claim most people want to make, and the popular narrative they want to follow.

This is all to say, the Melky Cabrera situation is not black and white. PEDs are not black and white. The pressures of a major league baseball player are more than I will ever understand. I don't know what Melky's situation is at home, and within his personal life. I barely know anything about Melky Cabrera. I'm willing to bet the reporters listed above know a little more, but not that much more. I'm not trying to be a moralist, or tell you what to think of Melky Cabrera. Although don't call him an assclown, that's weird. All I urge you to do is ask yourself if you know the whole story. He used PEDs, but what does that mean? Why did he take them and how much of it helped him? How much pressure was he under? What circumstances called for the drugs? Was this his decision to make?

Here's what it comes down to: I don't have any definitive answers to these questions. But I'm not going to pretend like I do. That's my opinion on Melky Cabrera.

Can we play baseball now?