A Steal

The Franchise signed a one year contract for $650,000.

Considering the Giants are paying Randy Johnson $8 million, and Zito (ahem) $18 million, Lincecum's a steal.


More broadly, it's a small demonstration of how much sense it makes to go with young players. It's rather doubtful that the Big Creaky Unit will give the Giants 15 times the value they get from Lincecum.

Steroids

Rob Neyer at ESPN pointed out this article in Sports Illustrated about the popularity of steroids. It includes the following quote:

Are anabolic steroids widely used by Olympic weight men? Let me put it this way. If they had come into the village the day before competition and said we have just found a new test that will catch anyone who has used steroids, you would have had an awful lot of people dropping out of events because of instant muscle pulls."


This article was published in 1969.

Yes. 1969.

Something to consider next time Bud Selig refuses to take any responsibility for steroids or (seemingly) anything else.

TARP

The benefits and the costs of the TARP is a very complicated topic, with all sorts of nuance.

However, the New York Times linked to presentation that seems to be as helpful as anything else in explaining what it's all about:

The TARP, in Pictures

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Humor Creative Writing tarp

(It's available here.)

Bonds

The judge just tossed a lot of the evidence against Bonds for being inadmissible hearsay. For prosecutors, the problem is that Greg Anderson still isn't talking. He's the guy who could tell the story, and he's not going to say anything. (Why? Beats me.)

Is that all bad? Perjury is bad, of course, but does Bonds really deserve to go to jail? I dunno. If he does, it won't be for long. As I've said before, don't lie to the Feds.


Quick Hearsay Review: Inadmissible hearsay is evidence that exists (in this case the test results) but can't be used in court. I still remember my Evidence professor saying that hearsay is 'an out of court statement offered to prove the truth of the matter asserted.' Here, all those test results are statements that were made outside the court, and the prosecutors are trying to use them as evidence. Hearsay actually has lots of exceptions, but apparently the judge didn't think that this evidence fell within any of them. The reason the rule exists is that we would prefer that evidence be offered by a live witness. In this case that witness would be Bonds (who can't be forced to say anything due to the Fifth Amendment) or Anderson (who won't testify).

USA-Mexico: 2-0

Note the red card on Rafael Marquez (at 5:10). Why does this look familiar? Oh yeah....



(at 2:15) Marquez may be a solid defender at Barcelona, but still. That's his second straight red card when he plays against us. It seems he may be kept out of Mexico's next two games. Good.

103 To Go

It's also worth noting that A-Rod was one of (supposedly) 104 positive tests. That's a lot of players--four complete teams worth. Who are the others? I figure the names will all come out sooner or later.

A-Rod

So A-Rod juiced too. Huh. I didn't expect that.

I don't think we can necessarily get inside his head to say why he did it, but we can wonder whether they helped him. I don't know. If you look at his career stats, it's murky. He averaged almost 42 homers from 1998-2000, then jumped to averaging 52 a year from 2001-2003. He played every game with the Rangers, so it's not surprising he would hit more homers, but then with an unquestioned workout routine, maybe the drugs helps his durability. His slugging percentage was marginally higher in 2001-2003 than it had been from 1998-2000, but not by much.

So I'm not sure anyone can say whether he improved. Of course, this all supposes he's telling the truth when he says that he only juiced from 2001-2003.

It will make for an interesting season this year in the Bronx....