(I’m back from Phoenix!)
The moral panic over steroids has tended to cloud the underlying economic reality. There are a couple of points in a baseball player’s career where the financial rewards for improved performance are highly non-linear. One of these is when the player is on the cusp of establishing himself in the major leagues, and the other is when he’s due to hit the free agent market.
This is an outstanding point. I’ve talked here (and in the book) about how steroid use makes more sense on the margins, but it’s also true that contract years provide a massive incentive to go on them that year. Whether that means you go with an older drug or seek out something supposedly undetectable, the gains are potentially amazing.
Nate mentions reducing this incentive through better evaluations: teams should look at a player’s career and not weight the last year so heavily, and I certainly agree with that — but anyone who’s followed baseball knows that teams, as a group, don’t do a particularly good job valuing players rationally when it’s time to hand out checks.
But what Nate doesn’t mention is the other end: baseball’s massive incentive to cheat for players on the cusp of major leaguedom. There’s a solution to that, too, which is to make the minor leagues pay more. Right now, the difference is so huge that it makes a lot of sense to try and use steroids if that seems like the only way to make it to the next level.
The problem here is the players, as a group, have no incentive to do this. The MLBPA historically hasn’t represented minor league players who aren’t on a major league roster. A better evaluation of contracts for free agents potentially helps even the FA dollars out and, assuming that players do use those drugs during contract years, better distribute them to clean players. A significant increase in minor league pay will likely be opposed both by teams, who don’t have a collective bargaining unit beating them up over it, and by players, who see it as a cost that would lower the amount of money teams would have available to spend on payroll.
I’m interested to see if this issue’s addressed. If both sides were well and truly serious about reducing steroid use in the sport, removing incentives would make a huge difference, and this is a place where they’re directly weighing that greater good against the potential direct costs. I’d bet the direct costs win out, and we don’t see any significant action to improve the lot of marginal players.
Josh | 07-Mar-07 at 4:34 am | Permalink
The latest names to come out certainly show that players on the margins are definitely a group where steroids or HGH come into play.
Rocker trying to get back on a team, and David Bell hanging onto what was left of his career.
I’m interested Derek, why do think MLB gets beat up over this more so than the NFL? It seems pretty clear to me that the NFL is just as dirty or more so than MLB at this point. Shawne Merriman failed a steroid test, finished second in the voting for NFL defensive player of the year and made the pro bowl…
Is it simply due to the fact that the NFL had a drug policy first, even if it seems like it was an easy to get around one?
Also, with all the HGH mess going around, do you see the MLBPA agreeing to blood tests for HGH any time soon?
DMZ | 07-Mar-07 at 11:30 am | Permalink
I see two big reasons: one is that baseball, even though it’s fallen from being the only popular team sport (with boxing and horse racing the other sports of note in the country) it’s still held to a much higher standard of conduct as representing the country. The amount of teeth-gnashing that goes on over the ratings of the World Series, for instance, as evidence that the game’s dying each year.
The other is that the NFL gets a pass for trying so long. They’ve got almost two decade son baseball in trying to implement drug policies, which meant that the press had an easy target to attack from the late 80s until only a few years ago. Now the NFL’s regarded as having a long history of being more active and working harder to keep up. Even if they have a problem, I see the general sports press as seeing baseball still recovering from a huge, sports-wide steroid problem (which is also largely a perception they created and fueled) and needing to play catch-up.
The best example I have is BALCO. BALCO athletes using soon-to-be-banned steroids weren’t all baseball players. They came from all sports. NFL players were caught which at least indicates there’s a portion of the NFL player base that wants to use performance enhancing drugs if they think they won’t be caught.
I thought there was a chance the MLBPA might agree to blood tests for HGH for this season - maybe one, say, randomly administered. It looks like we’re not going to see that this season at least.
If any other sport signs on, though, the pressure’s going to be enormous. I’d predict we’re 66% likely to see some kind of HGH testing next year, even if it’s only one/year.