Say It Ain't So, Roger!
I never thought much of George Mitchell when he was in the Senate, so maybe I was predisposed to view his report on the use of steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs in major league baseball with a jaundiced eye. Notwithstanding that disclaimer, the "Mitchell Report"--which so far I've read only in part--seems like a pretty tawdry product. It is largely a compendium of headlines and rumors with not much new information. The Mitchell Report's blockbuster revelation was its identification of Roger Clemens as a steroid user. Clemens and fellow Yankee Andy Pettitte have headlined pretty much all the news accounts of the report.
Curious to know what Mitchell's evidence against Clemens was, I reviewed the relevant portions of the report. All of the information about Clemens comes from interviews with Brian McNamee, a trainer who worked for the Toronto Blue Jays and the New York Yankees. McNamee was swept up in an earlier steroids investigation and, as I understand it--this is not clear from the report--he has been threatened with criminal prosecution, but not actually prosecuted. He is now cooperating with federal prosecutors by naming others who allegedly took performance-enhancing drugs.
That McNamee once trained Clemens is not in doubt. Until recently, however, McNamee denied that Clemens had anything to do with illegal drugs:
McNamee denied any knowledge of steroid usage on the part of Clemens and Pettitte. "As ballplayers they are different when it comes to their work ethic, how hard they train, how diligent they are," McNamee said.
Now, McNamee tells a different story. As related in the Mitchell Report, McNamee says that his association with Clemens began in 1998 when Clemens was pitching for the Blue Jays and McNamee was a strength and conditioning coach for the team:
On or about June 8-10, 1998, the Toronto Blue Jays played an away series with the Florida Marlins. McNamee attended a lunch party that Canseco hosted at his home in Miami. McNamee stated that, during this luncheon, he observed Clemens, Canseco, and another person he did not know meeting inside Canseco’s house, although McNamee did not personally attend that meeting.***Toward the end of the road trip which included the Marlins series, or shortly after the Blue Jays returned home to Toronto, Clemens approached McNamee and, for the first time, brought up the subject of using steroids. Clemens said that he was not able to inject himself, and he asked for McNamee’s help. Later that summer, Clemens asked McNamee to inject him with Winstrol, which Clemens supplied. McNamee knew the substance was Winstrol because the vials Clemens gave him were so labeled. McNamee injected Clemens approximately four times in the buttocks over a several-week period with needles that Clemens provided. Each incident took place in Clemens’s apartment at the SkyDome. McNamee never asked Clemens where he obtained the steroids.
***
According to McNamee, from the time that McNamee injected Clemens with Winstrol through the end of the 1998 season, Clemens’s performance showed remarkable improvement. During this period of improved performance, Clemens told McNamee that the steroids “had a pretty good effect” on him.
This account is vague but has a superficial plausibility, in that Clemens pitched better during the second half of the 1998 season than the first. To anyone familiar with how steroids work, however, McNamee's story is dubious. Steroids enable faster recovery from heavy workouts, and thereby can lead to increased muscle mass over time. But they are hardly a miracle drug. A pitcher cannot ingest steroids on Tuesday and throw a sharper curve on Friday. That steroid use could improve a pitcher's performance over a period of weeks seems incredible.
Moreover, the implicit point of the Clemens story is that steroids helped him to rejuvenate his career at a time when most pitchers are contemplating retirement--similar to the way in which Bobby Bonds and others suddenly experienced increases in power at an age when they should have been mature players.
But this narrative doesn't fit the facts. 1997, not 1998, was Clemens' big comeback year. After the 1996 season, the Red Sox decided that Clemens was in the "twilight of his career," in the words of a Bosox executive, and let him go. Clemens signed with the Blue Jays. The following season, 1997, he returned to peak form, going 21-7 with a 2.05 ERA and 292 strikeouts, and winning the AL Cy Young award. Mitchell offers no evidence that Clemens was using steroids in 1997. The following year, when McNamee claims that he injected Clemens with Winstrol, Clemens' performance was excellent--he again won the Cy Young--but less impressive, statistically.
Of course, I have no idea whether Roger Clemens has used steroids or not. But the evidence of Brian McNamee, who is trying to impress prosecutors with the names he can give them in order to stay out of jail, and who now contradicts what he has said repeatedly in the past, is not impressive, without more. Nor is there significant circumstantial evidence in the chronology of Clemens' performances to support McNamee's story. This therefore seems like a case where the presumption of innocence should apply--a presumption very different from the one that was at work in today's press accounts.
PAUL adds: The following comment is not intended to deprive Clemens of his presumption of innocence, nor does it necessarily rebut that presumption. But Clemens' career ERA is 3.12. During the years 2004-2006, when he was 41-43 years old, Clemens' ERA was 2.40 in more than 500 innings pitched. I'm confident that no pitcher in baseball history has a career trajectory that remotely resembles this. Even Nolan Ryan was only able to replicate, not improve upon, his career ERA at that age.
JOHN responds: Warren Spahn, lifetime ERA 3.09, ERA from 1961 through 1963, ages 40-42, 2.89. Not quite as dramatic, but close. Clemens' ERA was quite a bit higher both before and after the three year stretch from 2004 through 2006 (3.91 in 2003, 4.18 in 2007. One could theorize that he took steroids during that three-year period, but that isn't what the Mitchell report charges. They have him shooting up years earlier. I think that by 2004 the heat was on and, if I'm not mistaken, steroid use was generally considered to be down.
None of this proves that Clemens is innocent, of course, but I don't find the case as presented by Mitchell to be very persuasive.
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