Yanks To Stick Knife in Giambi's Back

From the NY Post, JASON'S LIKELY DONE AS YANKEE

A day after Giambi's grand jury testimony in the BALCO case, in which he admitted using steroids and human growth hormone, appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, the Yankees didn't come running to their troubled first baseman's defense.

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One option is trying to void Giambi's contract, which has four years and $84.5 million remaining.

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The [contract] reads, "The player agrees to keep himself in the best possible condition."

The Yankees could argue that Giambi's steroid use caused his left knee to fall apart in 2003 when he hit 41 homers but batted .250, and that the use led to the parasite and a benign tumor that limited him to playing 80 games this past season when he batted a career-low .208.

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If the Yankees decide not to void the deal, they could work out a settlement with Giambi and he could become a free agent. Never a fan favorite from the beginning because he replaced popular Tino Martinez, Giambi has lied about using steroids. Before long Yankees fans will pin the 3-0 flush job against the Red Sox on Giambi even though he wasn't on the ALCS roster.

Kinda awful to see the Yankees throwing Giambi under the bus so quickly. What happened to the organization that prompted this comment from (longtime cocaine addict) Daryl Strawberry?

"I remain committed to helping the Yankees in anyway I can whenever possible," Strawberry said. "I greatly appreciate the encouragement and support given to me and my family by Mr. Steinbrenner and the Yankees."

And the comment from the post I bolded above (in the original quote) is little more than a suggestion that the Yankee fans SHOULD blame Giambi. I can't think of anything more ridiculous than blaming him for the loss to the Sox.

It's Official

What Bonds told BALCO grand jury

Bonds said he had begun using the cream and the clear [steriods] at a time when he was aching with arthritis and was distraught over the terminal illness of his father, former Giants All-Star Bobby Bonds, who died Aug. 23, 2003.

"I have bad arthritis. I've played 18 years, bad knees, surgeries and so on," Bonds testified, adding that he wanted a product that would "take the arthritis pain away that I feel in the mornings when it's super cold ...

"I was battling with the problems with my father and the -- just the lack of sleep, lack of everything."

But Bonds said he got little help from Anderson's products.

"And I was like, to me, it didn't even work."

Smells like perjury to me.

Good News, Bad News

THE GOOD: There's now a semi-organized archive of Bill Simmons ESPN writings

THE BAD: Click on any link, say Top-10 Most Tortured City??? and you'll see a paragraph (if you're lucky) followed by an ad - "Want to read the whole article? Open your wallet, insert vacuum."

Probably a good way to increase near-term revenue for ESPN.com, but a bad sign for Bill Simmons (and me). It's only a matter of time before they move Bill's Boston Sports Guy entirely behind the "pay" wall, leaving him a much smaller audience (smaller at least by one - me). And really, he's the only reason I go to ESPN at all anymore.

Is moving all of their best content into their premium "Insider" package really the best long-term move? Do writers like Bill want a small, devoted "customer-base" OR do they want to be cultural institutions? In the long run, will ESPN be able to attract the best talent once they've managed to reduce their audience to the 5% of their current visitors that are willing to pay?

Is this all just a short-term cash-grab by Disney, parent of ESPN? Is there anything wrong with that?

And if you've got $40 to spend on a sports site, isn't Baseball Prospectus going to give you a better bang for your buck? (Even if they're currently overhauling their subscription process...)

Hallworthy?

A co-worker of mine did some work about HOF worthiness that's pretty interesting - I'll have to see if I can get his permission to post it here. The basic approach is to figure out what counting and rate stats the BWAA use (consciously or subconsciously) to determine whether a player belongs in the HOF.

Here's an interesting case:
G - 2,000
AB - 6,976
R - 1,455
H - 2,010
2B - 423
3B - 65
HR - 445
RBI - 1,299
SB - 460
CS - 132
BB - 1,430
SO - 1,112
BA - 0.288
OBP - 0.409
SLG - 0.559
Win Shares - 437

That's Barry Bonds' career through 1999 - a shoe-in Hall of Famer, right? So, when did Barry become a Hall of Famer? And when did he start taking steriods? My guess is that he was a Hall of Famer before he started taking the sauce. What do you think? Does it matter? Should it?

Academic Take on Moneyball

Hardball Times links to Sabernomics links to An Economic Evaluation of the Moneyball Hypothesis.

Our work is essentially an assessment of Lewis' [Moneyball] argument, and as such is merely an after-the-fact replication of work done by the innovators at the heart of his book. But we do find that they (and Lewis) were right, and further, that the process that they set in motion had in large part been completed by the time the book was published.

Essentially, the inefficiency in the market that allowed the A's to compete has been corrected, and the A's have had to move on to new (possibly smaller) inefficiencies, or so we A's fans can hope.

Yet More on the 2006 Baseball World Cup

I took a wild guess at the US roster for the proposed World Cup here. Craig Burley does the same with many more complete thoughts and logical reasoning.

You just have to skim past all that stuff about Diegomar Markwell (!?!?) and the rest of Team Netherlands.

Baseball's Bad Moon Rising

Giambi admitted taking steroids

The onetime Oakland A's first baseman and 2000 American League Most Valuable Player testified that in 2003, when he hit 41 home runs for the Yankees, he had used several different steroids obtained from Greg Anderson, weight trainer for San Francisco Giants star Barry Bonds.

Bad news for Jason Giambi, baseball and Barry Bonds. How bad? Time will tell. Here are the first rumblings:

"Jason Giambi's reported testimony that he used steroids might jeopardize his $120 million contract with the New York Yankees and allow baseball commissioner Bud Selig to discipline him."

-Giambi's steroids testimony may open him to discipline

The weird thing is that Grand Jury testimony is supposed to be secret, right? Isn't anyone upset that "secret", "sealed" testimony is now common knowledge? Well, here's something from that same article (the second one):

Meanwhile, U.S. Attorney Kevin Ryan said his office was concerned about the leaks to the Chronicle and asked the Justice Department to investigate. "Violations of grand jury secrecy rules will not be tolerated," [U.S. Attorney Kevin] Ryan said .

Little late there Kevin, don't you think? This cat's already out of the bag...