I suppose I should be angry, saddened, outraged, or some other emotion after hearing that Manny Ramirez has been suspended fifty games for violating the league’s substance abuse policy.

I just don’t care.

I’m not surprised in any way (other than the usual surprise I get when people are actually caught by the testing, since a $20 million salary should get you access to drugs that aren’t testable).  If I have any emotion at all, it’s anger towards all of the fans who are now expressing righteous indignation about Ramirez.

In an era where fans are disappointed when a player puts up a .299/.398/.529 statline, and where every player who needs a day off or has a lingering injury has his manhood and value to the team questioned by round-the-clock sports coverage, why is anyone surprised when a player does something to come back from injury quicker or boost that statline.  How can anyone feign anger?

It’s very rare that I have any sympathy for steroid users, but Jay Gibbons is the exception.  Gibbons was suspended for violating Major League Baseball’s drug policy, and was later named in the Mitchell Report as an HGH user.  The Orioles cut Gibbons before the start of the 2008 season and, presumably because of the furor over steroids in baseball, no one else offered him a contract.

A few months later, Gibbons took the step of sending a letter to all 30 clubs asking for another chance.  He admitted his mistake (though explained it was to help rehab from a wrist injury).  He was willing the play in the minor leagues and earn his way back to the majors.  He was willing to donate most of this salary to charity.  He just asked for “a second chance to play the game that I love.”

The Milwaukee Brewers took him up on his offer, signing him to a contract and sending him to their AA affiliate in Huntsville.  Gibbons played his way to AAA, but the Brewers were competing for a playoff spot and he never reached the big club.

He became a free agent at the end of the season, and was signed by the Florida Marlins, with an offer to compete for a job in spring training.  He was cut today after going 5-for-16 with a homer and seven RBIs in the spring, with the cited reason being that they had no room for him on the roster.  I think that’s a load of crap.

Gibbons is a corner outfielder/first baseman/DH type, sort of like Kevin Millar was when he could still roam the outfield.  Obviously the National League doesn’t use the DH, so that limits Gibbons to left field, right field and first base.  So one would imagine that the Marlins already have seasoned players at those positions, right?

The Marlins right fielder is Jeremy Hermida, who is decent enough that there were rumors last season that he’d be traded to a contender near the deadline.  It didn’t happen, and Hermida isn’t an All-Star by any stretch of the imagination, but no one could expect Gibbons to beat out Hermida for a job.

Gaby Sanchez, projected by ESPN to be the Marlins starting first baseman, has played a total of five games above the AA level.

Cameron Maybin, projected by ESPN to be the starting centerfielder, has 32 games and 81 at-bats worth of major league experience.

RotoWorld projects Scott Cousins to beat out Hermida for the right field job.  Cousins has never played a game in the major leagues.

Alfredo Amezega, one of the few Marlins with legitimate major league experience, has a bum knee and will be on the DL until May.

Michael Ryan, who like Gibbons was signed as a non-roster invitee to spring training, remains on the roster.  Ryan hasn’t played in the majors since 2005.

Are any of these guys instilling great confidence in you?

Here’s the quote from Marlins manager Fredi Gonzalez:

“You don’t want to keep a guy like that too long where he doesn’t get an opportunity to get a job someplace else. He’s got some years left. He showed the bat skill a little bit. He swung the bat well. I think if somebody gives him an opportunity in the right situation, he could help.”

I realize that Gonzalez is the Marlins manager and can’t really speak the truth on this one, but allow me to translate Marlinspeak into English:

“This guy is good enough to play at the major league level, but we’re a really cheap ballclub, and we don’t really care about winning, unless it’s a fluke occurrence like in 2003 when we had dirt-cheap young pitchers under our control.  We’d much rather let young players toil for a losing ballclub and then trade them to the Yankees or Red Sox for more young players than give a player with a proven track record a chance to play here.”

What’s even more puzzling is that Gibbons has already said he’d play in the minor leagues.  So… the Marlins don’t have any open roster spots at any level in their organization?  I mean, I’m sure Gibbons would rather play for another major league team than play in the Marlins minor league system, but that’s it?  There’s no room on the team?

Here’s hoping he gets a shot to play for a real team.

So… A-Rod is out six to nine weeks due to surgery to repair a torn labrum.  It’s a temporary surgery, a stop-gap measure to allow him to play this season, after which he’ll have surgery that will supposedly fix it for good.

Consider me skeptical.

Two names come to mind when I think about this situation: Curt Schilling and Ken Griffey Jr.  To be sure, being named in the same sentence as Schilling and Griffey is normally a compliment, but in this case, you don’t want to be named in that sentence.

Schilling had a serious shoulder injury that required surgery, but tried to rehab the shoulder without it (for reasons which won’t be discussed here) so that he could return later in the year.  The end result was that Schilling’s career was effectively ended, as rehab failed and he had to have surgery anyway.  He missed the entire 2008 season, and while he hasn’t decided whether or not to attempt a comeback, it’s unlikely he can pitch at the same level he did before the injury.  A-Rod is going down that same path.  While he’s elected to have surgery, it’s not the complete surgery required.  Should everything not go according to plan, he may eventually need the complete surgery before returning to the Yankees lineup, and his rehab will be longer than it would have been had he just gone out and had it fixed the right way.

I think about Ken Griffey for where he was in his career when it started going downhill.  Aside from an injury in 1995 that limited him to 72 games, Griffey was for the most part an everyday player, and there was nothing to suggest a slowdown in production.  At age 30 he had 438 home runs and was averaging nearly fifty a year over his previous five years.  Then the injuries started to mount, and while he still averaged about twenty-five round-trippers a season (a respectable figure), he became Above Average When Healthy Ken Griffey instead of Perennial All Star and Future Hall-Of-Famer Ken Griffey.  The man who was once a shoe-in to break Hank Aaron’s home run mark now has no shot of clearing 700.

Will it be that way with A-Rod?  I don’t know.  It would have been that way with Barry Bonds, had designer steroids not propped him up at the end of his career.  A steroid-free Bonds probably breaks down before reaching 600.  How will a steroid-free A-Rod fare?

So, A-Rod’s coming clean…. sort of.  He was outed, and so he admitted using steroids.  Commendable, I guess.  Sort of.  Maybe.  Here’s the part that screams I AM STILL LYING to me (from SI.com):

Rodriguez says a cousin, whom he would not identify, first introduced him to a substance he referred to as “Boli” that could be purchased in the Dominican Republic and brought to the United States.

“It was his understanding it would give me a dramatic energy boost and was otherwise harmless,” Rodriguez said in a prepared statement before the question and answer portion of his press conference. “My cousin and I, one more ignorant than the other, decided it was a good idea to start taking it. We consulted no one and it was pretty evident that we didn’t know what we were doing. We did everything we could to keep it between us. I stopped taking it in 2003 and haven’t taken it since.”

If you read into the comment, this is A-Rod using the Bonds Defense – I used steroids, but I didn’t knowingly use them.  If A-Rod’s guilty of anything, he contends, it’s being naive and ignorant.

Sorry.  Not buying it.

When Bonds used the “I didn’t know what it was” defense, everyone jumped on him, supposedly because finely-tuned, high-paid athletes know exactly what they’re putting into their bodies.  I tend to think exactly the opposite is true.  The average person doesn’t know half of the chemicals they ingest on a daily basis, and finely-tuned, high-paid athletes don’t either — because they pay someone else to know.  They have nutritionists and personal trainers who define their fitness regimen and their diet.  So to me, it wasn’t completely out of the realm of possibility (aside from all of the overwhelming supporting evidence) that Bonds could have been ignorant to what he was taking, because the stuff he was being given came from someone in a position of authority.

A-Rod’s source was his cousin.  Think about that.  If a personal trainer, not just a guy you hired at a gym, but a guy you know well enough that he’d do jail time for you, gives you a substance and tells you that it’s safe, legal, and effective, you’d accept that at face value and take the substance.  If your cousin gave you the same thing… don’t you think you’d do some research?  I mean, unless he’s a personal trainer and the kind of guy who would do jail time for you.  Maybe he is.  I don’t know A-Rod’s cousin.  But I doubt he’s an expert on fitness and nutrition, and this it invalidates the excuse of not knowing.