Starling Marte and Enhanced Performance
Is a faster intentional walk really the MLB’s answer to making baseball fun again?
Major League Baseball has stooped to cutting mere seconds from their beloved game, why are they still attempting to ineffectively squash the enhanced performance that would actually deliver a more entertaining product?
Starling Marte was an emotional wreck on Saturday. The Pirates outfielder cried while informing his team that he had taken performance enhancing drugs.
What was worse? He was caught.
Was Marte crying because he regretted his career high .311/.362/.456 slash line? Was he in anguish over his 47 stolen bases? Or perhaps it was his first career All-Star appearance that had the 26-year-old so emotional?
No. Marte, like dozens of other Major League athletes in past decades, was apologetic not that he had taken PEDs — but rather that he was caught.
Marte sang the same old tune of past offenders, blaming “lack of awareness” for his “mistake.” Yet, he declined to appeal or explain to Major League Baseball the nature of his alleged error.
Marte, like Dee Gordon and Chris Collabello prior, is participating in a league-wide rendition of The Boy Who Cried Wolf, where everyone claims to have unknowingly cheated, reciting carbon copy apologies before serving their time and returning to the field.
The suggestion that the select players caught using PEDs were unknowingly ingesting these substances is laughable. In an era where the diet of professional athletes is calculated and administered down to the calorie, I find it hard to believe illegal substances just happen to be finding their way into numerous player’s bloodstreams. And if the dozens of players who are outed as cheaters were alone then the MLB wouldn’t have a problem on their hands. But there are likely countless offenders who manage to sneak by the testing systems currently in place.
The ‘steroid issue’ in Major League Baseball has gotten to the point where it is reasonable to pose the question: Is the MLB’s stance of policing PED use still realistic?
Nelson Cruz, Ryan Braun, Dee Gordon, Melky Cabrera, and Johnny Peralta. Just a handful of star players who were caught using a band substance, served a lengthy suspension, and returned to the field to continue their lucrative and successful Major League careers. It is realistic to presume Starling Marte will be just another name to add to that list.
The Journal of Physiology has conducted research that even the short time PED users can have lasting positive impacts for nearly a decade after. So even after Marte returns from his 80-game suspension he will still be the .300 hitting, base stealing, centerfield roaming, elite athlete he was due, in part, to his drug-assisted enhanced performance. Even in time lost, steroids offer the allure of enhanced performance with a fraction of the effects of long-term injury that numerous athletes combat. Time lost is time off, not time in uncertain rehab.
Finally comes the crux of the PED argument, the ethics of allowing such seemingly reprehensible cheating. The MLB’s hard-nosed approach to combating steroid use may be deterring a large portion of the leagues population from using these banned substances, but it has also deprived the league and it’s fans of a thing they hold so dear: the home run. If Major League Baseball is truly so invested in making the game of baseball more marketable and exciting, there is a simple solution to the commissioners conundrum. What could be more exciting than the crack of the bat followed by hundreds of craning necks watching a small white spec fly hundreds of feet into the horizon? While baseball purists are adamantly anti-PED, Manfred and company continue to look for more excitement in their game. A 500-foot home run can supply that. Good pitching may beat good hitting. But enhanced hitting wins — every time.
But steroids are no longer just muscle building enhancers to hit massive bombs (Starling Marte certainly wasn’t juicing to hit the nine home runs he did last year), they help in injury prevention and rehabilitation. If baseball truly wants a more marketable game, then keeping it’s star players on the field should top their priority list. Allowing PEDs would be as much about added pop as it would keeping stars on the field. As much as us lifelong baseball fans obsess over a well-placed Marco Estrada change up, Major League Baseball’s expanded target audience pays to see Josh Donaldson hit a monster bomb. So why not help him?
It is time for Major League Baseball to take a long look at their priorities and where policing performance enhancing drugs should lie on that list.
