This post at Midwest Sports Fans is called a cheap shot by John Gonzalez at Philly.com. Midwest responded to someone in his fantasy league who thought Raul Ibanez was using performance enhancers. JRod responds with a pretty thorough look at the park factors influencing Ibanez, but in the end decides he can’t rule out PEDs.
Right. Ibanez’s season should be exactly what sets off alarm bells. That’s why there is testing. MLB should be doing multiple random test on Ibanez right now. I would love nothing better than to hear, “We’ve tested him six times and he’s been clean six times.”
How about that, MLB and MLBPA, transparency on the tests! It would be nice to go to MLB.com and see a list for every player of their test date and the results. Then we could simply say, look, he’s passed all the tests! We’d also know that MLB was on the ball when it came to cases like Ibanez.
re: Raul Ibanez
As a long time Phils fan and someone who’s watched more than half the games this year (they are, after all, the world champion phillies), I very much doubt that Raul Ibanez is taking any performance enhancers.
I think there are three basic arguments for that.
First, park effects are clearly the main issue here. Ibanez moved from an extreme pitchers park, Seattle, and from the American League, which is a curveball and junkball league, to the National League, which is a fastball league and has smaller and better homerun parks, primarily Philadelphias Citizens Bank Park, the new Washington DC park, Colorado’s Coors Field, the new Cincinnati Park and Arizona’s home field.
I had predicted in my blog that Ibanez, who hit about 25-30 homers a year in Seattle, could be expected to go up about 40% in production here in philly, which would be up to around 42-45 homers for the year. While he’s ahead of that pace right now, I still don’t think he’s going to hit sixty for the year. And he will probably revert to the mean of his batting average and OBP, and hit around .295 with an OBP of around .350, with a lot of doubles and triples.
Watching Ibanez, he has much more mobility than Burrell did and like all Latino ballplayers (Ibanez is Cuban I believe) he attacks the first pitch he can hit on each at bat, he doesn’t wait for walks.
Second argument, are other ballplayers in the Phils lineup also hitting like Ibanez? The answer is, of course they are. Utley has 12 homers, Howard has as many homers as Ibanez, and about as many RBIs, Werth has 8 homers, Victorino has several homers, and Ruiz and Feliz have hit some homers.
The entire Phils lineup has hit for power, and indeed, the entire team is hitting a lot of homers, which suggests park effects as well as a good hitting lineup which is helping Ibanez.
Third argument, Ibanez is usually hitting with men on base. Unlike Seattle, Philadelphia is a good On Base Percentage team. Teamwise, they are among the NL leaders in getting on base through walks and hits, and they usually have runners on for Ibanez when he is batting. Because Ibanez has been hitting with men on much more than usual this year, he has seen many more fastballs and balls in the zone; pitchers can’t pitch around him. Furthermore, many times, pitchers have just finished walking or pitching around Ryan Howard to get to Ibanez, which means Ibanez often bats with 1st and 2d or with the bases loaded, due to his spot in the lineup.
Consequently, I don’t think Ibanez is taking performance enhancers.
Besides which, Ibanez is well known as a weightlifter and a conditioning and diet person. He takes extra batting practice and is dedicated to his craft.
In his case, he’s just Latin American. He’s hitting well late into his career because he’s got a body and natural hitting ability like Julio Franco rather than because he’s using any aids.
Incidentally, Pat Burrell, who used to hit 30 homers a year & walk 100 times a year and score 100 runs a year in philly, has like 2 homers and is on the DL in Tampa Bay. It’s pretty obvious that without the close in left field wall of Citizens Bank Park, Pat the Bat is showing signs of age-related decline.
I think that further shows that Ibanez’ success is to some degree related to park effects and being in the phils’ lineup.
–art kyriazis, philly
home of the world champion phillies