Players busted for PEDs don’t show any notable uptick in performance

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A week after ESPN’s Buster Olney decided that Melky Cabrera’s excellent-so-far 2014 season justifies people assuming he’s back on PEDs, ESPN’s Dan Szymborski dives into the numbers and shows that such a decision is not based on any evidence at all:

Despite the rhetoric surrounding PEDs, players caught for steroid/testosterone use do not show a pattern of overperforming their projections in the years leading up to the drug suspension or a pattern of underperforming their projections in the years after a drug suspension.

All of this is based on Szymborski’s ZiPS projection system, which shows that Cabrera is doing about what you’d expect him to do this year. And that, as a group, guys busted for PEDs don’t really deviate too much from their expected performance one way or another before, during or after they are caught for PEDs.

Obviously there are a lot of caveats in play here. Small sample sizes, imperfect data about when guys start and stop taking PEDs and, of course, the flaws any projection system, even one as generally reliable as ZiPS, brings to the table.

But if you’re making a case for something — and Olney and others who are questioning the legitimacy of Melky’s performance this season are clearly making a case for something — it’s incumbent upon you to present some evidence. Szymborski’s analysis doesn’t necessarily prove anything about the efficacy or lack thereof of PEDs. But it has far more evidence on its side than anything people are hurling at Cabrera lately.

Dodgers place pitcher Noah Syndergaard on injured list with no timetable for return

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Katie Stratman/USA TODAY Sports
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CINCINNATI — The Los Angeles Dodgers placed pitcher Noah Syndergaard on the 15-day injured list Thursday with a blister on the index finger of his right throwing hand.

Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said the timetable for Syndergaard’s return is unknown despite the 15-day designation.

“The physical, the mental, the emotional part, as he’s talked about, has taken a toll on him,” Roberts said. “So, the ability to get him away from this. He left today to go back to Los Angeles to kind of get back to normalcy.”

Syndergaard allowed six runs and seven hits in three innings against the Cincinnati Reds on Tuesday night, raising his ERA to 7.16.

Syndergaard (1-4) has surrendered at least five runs in three straight starts.

Syndergaard has been trying to return to the player he was before Tommy John surgery sidelined him for the better part of the 2020 and 2021 seasons.

Roberts said Syndergaard will need at least “a few weeks” to both heal and get away from baseball and “reset.”

“I think searching and not being comfortable with where he was at in the moment is certainly evident in performance,” Roberts said. “So hopefully this time away will provide more clarity on who he is right now as a pitcher.

“Trying to perform when you’re searching at this level is extremely difficult. I applaud him from not running from it, but it’s still very difficult. Hopefully it can be a tale of two stories, two halves when he does come back.”