Your SF Giants, the weirdest first place time in the league. Really are not great at anything except collecting W's. Losing Belt is going to hurt, he won't be back until July and hand injuries fuck your swing for longer than that.
The Brewers should come drifting back to Earth, but they have loads of talent that is actually paying off in the short term. I don't see them collapsing. Gomez is a legit MVP candidate early on. Really interested to see what the Real Ryan Braun can do over the rest of the long haul. I'm seeing a .285 guy with 27-30 HR power.
Why would his numbers go down at all? He'll be away on IR more, most likely, but that should be it. People just don't know the first thing about steroids...too hard to tell what's in store for the team, if the pitching holds up it'll be playoffs at least, but any injuries/slumps for any of the top few hitters and the offense just stalls.
If Braun is on IR more frequently, then his counting stats go down, yes? Plus the manager starts protecting the contract and giving him more off days. If PEDs don't improve your numbers then why would anyone consider doing them in the first place? What would be the point?
My opinion is that in baseball in 2014, PEDs enable you to stay on the field and feel good. It's a fact that a star-level player, once they figure out how to hit MLB-level pitching, pretty much can duplicate that success through prime years 22-32 as long as they keep up with the video. They know how to do it. It's injuries that keep them from repeating their numbers year in year out, and not broken arms, but muscle pulls, and fatigue, and strains, wearing them down over 162 games plus playoffs. When guys first starting using steroids wholesale in the 90s, it built raw muscle mass, made them stronger, made them look like "condoms full of walnuts", enabled middle infielders to hit 400-ft. opposite field homers, which you flat out
do not see anymore. it also injured a good number of them because the extra muscle damaged connective tissues, their knees, their elbows.
It's more subtle now. Speed guys use the stuff to repair damage, look at Everth Cabrera. Barry Bonds in his mid-late 30s turned into Babe Ruth II because he got to go back in time and use his 15+ years of game knowledge in a refurbished body. He stopped running to avoid leg injuries and turned himself into the most lethal softball hitter in history. Vet hitters used to sigh that when they were at their peak in game brain, knowing what pitch was coming before it was even thrown, they were 36-38 and their knees were going so they couldn't turn into the pitch, or their shoulder was falling off and killing their bat speed, etc. Moises Alou is a great example, look at his last couple of seasons. Absolutely lethal right-handed power with next to no strikeouts, but could not stay off the DL.
Braun currently hitting .327 with 9 HR, and 4SB. Let's check back in late July, see what another 45 games of grind do to him. It would be actually be hilarious if he keeps hitting .300 with power year after year. Maybe that would convince people that, post raw-steroids, PED benefits are slim to none, and that the testing regimes are making the sports docs push what amount to placebos.
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