The strong implication in all of the stories about the Jose Guillen HGH investigation is that the Giants kept Guillen off the postseason roster because of the investigation. A source with knowledge of the investigation, however, tells me that this isn’t the case. The decision to keep Guillen off the roster was a baseball decision, borne of his lingering neck injuries and, quite frankly, his ineffectiveness down the stretch. No one at Major League Baseball, my source tells me, “directed the Giants” to keep Guillen off, to use the term from the New York Times story that broke the news. Baseball, the Giants and Bochy all declined comment on this question in the story.
Maybe to some folks this doesn’t matter — Jose is in trouble either way, and I have no basis for questioning the allegations mentioned in the NYT story — but I think it’s an important distinction. Why? because a lot of people have been saying that the HGH thing may have saved Bruce Bochy from himself, and that he would have played Guillen over Ross in the playoffs had it not come down. This isn’t fair to Bochy. He made the right baseball call here, just as he’s made the right calls in just about everything he’s done since the playoffs began. Let’s give the dude some credit for it, no?
