Ken Rosenthal called the reversal of Ryan Braun’s performance-enhancing drug suspension on Thursday “a triumph of due process.” Jeff Passan called it a “blow to Selig’s testing program.” It could be both, but what happened on December 12 made those two interpretations mutually exclusive.
Whether Braun was exonerated only because of an error by the test collector, or his lawyers simply found the technicality an easier case to argue, is irrelevant. Whether Major League Baseball agrees or—as its response by executive vice president for labor relations Rob Manfred stated—“vehemently disagrees” with the arbitrator’s decision does not matter, either.
Braun, by the letter of the law, is innocent. And yet many fans, colleagues, executives, and media members doubtless went to bed Thursday night feeling otherwise. That is the dichotomy Rosenthal and Passan described, and it is one we all will need to live with.
We need to live with it because two sources anonymously and prematurely leaked word of Braun’s positive test to ESPN’s T.J. Quinn and Mark Fainaru-Wada. By doing so, the sources shocked the baseball world, cast doubt on Braun’s current and future legacy, and forced opinions to be rendered before all the facts were out. Quinn and Fainaru-Wada did nothing wrong—they were doing their jobs as investigative reporters, and doing them well. The sources were overzealous, and they likely underestimated the impact that releasing this confidential information could have.
Now that the dust has settled, it may be instructive to play a little game of devil’s advocate.
Suppose that Braun remains an elite player for many more years, and retires with sufficient credentials for a spot in the Hall of Fame. Suppose, also, that no further evidence of Braun using performance-enhancing drugs is released. Finally, suppose that “cleanliness” remains a prerequisite for induction into Cooperstown. Without qualifying or conditioning your answer in any way, would you vote to put Braun in the Hall of Fame?
If your answer is “no,” then as Passan suggested, all is effectively lost. If your answer is “yes,” then as Rosenthal suggested, baseball should be proud that due process was allowed to run its course. And if the sweeping nature of the question seems excessive, it is—because ESPN’s sources opened it to the court of public opinion before all of the evidence was presented.
This Week in Sabermetrics 101
The class took a break last night from its crash course in available statistics, and welcomed a special guest—Blue Jays professional scout Kimball Crossley—who spoke of the importance of finding a balance between what the numbers show and what your eyes see. Crossley described the unique path he took to his current job, starting as a baseball writer for an afternoon paper, and taking advantage of his daily contact with players, scouts, and coaches to learn what he needed to see to understand the game and identify the players who could cut it at the highest level.
The remaining 90 minutes of class were a question-and-answer session, during which Crossley fielded questions on topics such as Jose Bautista’s power surge, Brett Lawrie’s makeup, and Sergio Santos’ return to Toronto as a reliever.
Guest speakers who can see and explain the game from different perspectives have always been a hallmark of the class, and Crossley’s insights were extremely valuable. They may prove particularly useful next week, when students will be asked to defend their choices of the best defensive players in the league.
Thank you for reading
This is a free article. If you enjoyed it, consider subscribing to Baseball Prospectus. Subscriptions support ongoing public baseball research and analysis in an increasingly proprietary environment.
Subscribe now
One last question: Where does Ryan Braun go to get his reputation back?
They certainly owe Braun an apology. I'm not holding my breath that anyone in print media will share this view or take Quinn and Fainaru-Wada to task.
Should the scope of investigative reporting in sports be limited to what writers like Ken Rosenthal and Buster Olney do in breaking signings and trades? And if not, then where do we draw the line?
To me, the problem here is entirely with the breach of confidentiality itself, not the subsequent fallout from it. You could choose to view Quinn and Fainaru-Wada as enablers, but had they not run with the story, chances are it would have been leaked to someone else. If they do not report the story first, then from ESPN's perspective they are not doing their jobs as well as whoever does. So if you think there's something that has to be done about this beyond further ensuring that confidential information is not leaked, you'd have to (if you'll accept the analogy) hate the game of investigative reporting, not the players involved here.
I absolutely think the leakers need to be found and punished. The point I was trying to make is that the leakers are the cause of the mess that this became. I was not trying to exonerate them at all.
Blaming Quinn and Fainaru-Wada, though, is problematic. They were given (or found) a scoop that was corroborated by a second source. At the time, they had every reason to believe their story was accurate, and they also qualified it in the very first paragraph with, "Braun ... faces a 50-game suspension **if the initial finding is upheld**, two sources familiar with the case told "Outside the Lines." It's hard to expect two investigative reporters to sit on that kind of story, and that's why the onus is on the leakers to grasp the impact their information would have if it goes public. Quinn and Fainaru-Wada did their jobs; the leakers went completely against theirs.
As it stands, I believe Braun has to be considered clean, and that the leakers are exclusively at fault for the lingering doubts.
And I still have the question, where does Ryan Braun go to get his reputation back?
There is almost no disputing the fact that Braun had banned substances in his urine. That fact has never been cleared. How that urine sample was handled is the basis for his "exoneration". Now, if he wants to claim the stuff was there because he was using to treat shingles or something else, fine, I might even believe him. Of course that would make him as "guilty" as virtually every other player ever suspended for taking banned substances has said pretty much the same thing.
Since the sample was improperly handled, there is no way to say how any substance got into it.
The fault lies with ESPN, and any other entities that allow anonymous sources in situations where there's no compelling need to give anonymity in exchange for information that is of high value to the public.
Its one thing to have to rely on anonymous sources when you're talking with corporate whistle blowers exposing harmful practices, or matters of national security. The value of that information to the public is high enough that relying on anonymous sources is OK.
But the confidential results of a confidential MLB drug test? Are you kidding me? How does that possibly give anything of real value to the public? How does that rise to the level that would justify using an anonymous source?
Joe Sheehan had a great article that made this point far better than I can. Put the blame on ESPN, or their editors, not on the reporters.
Politicians leak stuff all the time, to take the temperature of the electorate. It wouldn't surprise me if MLB allowed a leak for their own purposes. Maybe they wanted to show that they could catch another big fish, that their system "worked", whatever.
If someone at my company knowingly leaks company information without authorization, they get fired. Period.
The news may have encouraged premature opinions, but it didn't force them. No one can force a person to have an opinion. I think we all would have been better off from the beginning if we had simply withheld conclusions until the facts were more settled. The option to say "I'm not sure quite yet" was always there, and still is.