Stu's Views

Will be taking some time off for the holidays. Next post after the New Year.

The big non-steroid related news in baseball so far this offseason is Pedro Martinez signing with the Mets. This puts me in a quandary. With the hiring of Willie Randolph (one of my all time favorite players) as Met manager, I was actually hoping the Mets might do well this season. Now that they have Pedro, I might have to go back to rooting against them.

As far as the impact on the actual teams, lets start with the Mets. This was a mistake they had to make. The likelihood that Pedro will be worth the $14 million they will be paying him in 2008 is very small. His career is on the downside and comparable pitchers have not aged well. However, right now he is still one of the 10 best starters in baseball. The Mets need credibility with their fans and with other free agents. Pedro gives them this credibility. Given his competitive nature, it would not surprise me to see him contend for the NL Cy Young this year.

As for the Red Sox, they made the rational choice in not giving Pedro four guaranteed years. Having won the World Series (man it still hurts to type that sentence) they have enough capital with their fans to make rational choices. It does leave them with a hole. They have signed David Wells to replace Derek Lowe and Edgar Renteria to fill their hole at shortstop and it is widely presumed they will re-sign Jason Varitek. If they get Tim Hudson or Randy Johnson to replace Pedro they will be a better team next year than they were this year. If they sign Matt Clement they will be almost as good. If they get any pitcher inferior to Clement, there will be a dropoff for the Bosox in 2005.

What of the Yankees? The only thing that would have depressed me more than Pedro re-signing with the Sox was if he had signed with the Yanks. That said, I am not thrilled with the Yankee moves to date. They've added youth to their starting rotation with Carl Pavano and Jaret Wright but it is unclear with both pitchers whether their 2004 was an indication of genuine improvement or a fluke in a mediocre career. The big question is will the Yankees sign Carlos Beltran. If they do (or if they get Johnson or Hudson for Vazquez), the team will be better in 2005 regardless of the status of Giambi. If they don't, they will still be a 95-100 win team but they will be one with significant holes.

Much of the blogosphere has already commented on Peter Beinart's article (registration required) in the New Republic. Beinart argues that much like Democrats after World War II took a hard line on communism and excoriated those within their party who did not, Democrats today must expunge the Michael Moore/MoveOn left in order to gain credibility with the public.

Beinart has been subject to many criticisms, the most coherent of which in my mind have been voiced by Josh Marshall and Mark Schmitt. Both Schmitt and Marshall note that the metaphor is extremely strained. Terrorism does not pose the threat that communism did and whereas the far left in 1946 was sympathetic to communist goals, the far left today is not sympathetic to terrorist goals. Denouncing the far left today is therefore a very different proposition than doing so in 1946.

As with most debates however, Beinart does have some very good points (some of which Schmitt and Marshall acknowledge). He is right that Democrats must take the role that terrorism had the past election much more seriously than "moral values." All reasoned accounts appear to indicate that it made a much bigger difference in the voters minds. The Democrats having focused on domestic policies for a generation have not been able to speak about foreign policy coherently.

I think Kerry's ideas in this area were strong. He correctly noted that the chief fear from terrorism is the possibility of terrorists getting a nuclear weapon. Hence our policies need to be focused on containing the spread of nuclear weapons. Unfortunately his actual policies got drowned by the successful attempt to portray him as a flip-flopper on these issues. This frightened voters. Beinart correctly also notes that Kerry's stupid vote on the $87 billion (done to win anti-war support from Dean) helped Bush immensely in this regard.

Where Beinart goes astray is his advocacy of the need to condemn those who opposed war. While the war in Afghanistan was probably necessary in the wake 9-11, the war in Iraq was and continues to be a huge costly mistake. Those who correctly opposed it should not be chastised for doing so. The best position on terrorism to me is still that of outgoing Senator Bob Graham (as also noted by the Bull Moose) who opposed the war on Iraq precisely because it hurt us in the War on Terror.

The next Democratic candidate for President may indeed need to have a "Sister Souljah" moment (a cynical but brilliant move by candidate Clinton in 1992). Indeed, Schmitt underestimates the importance of such symbolism. However such a moment should not come at the expense of those who were right about the most important issue in the past four years.

When Tommy Thompson resigned last week as Secretary of Health and Human Services, he got a lot of attention for saying that he didn't understand why terrorists did not attack our food supply. Much less attention was given this week when the Food and Drug Administration issued a huge rule required by the Bioterrorism Act of 2002 designed to protect the food supply by requiring most firms along the food chain to keep records about where they got their food and what they did with it.

A reasonable person might ask what does keeping records have to do with preventing attacks on our food supply? That reasonable person would have asked a reasonable question. The short answer is that it is hoped that if an attack is detected (by several people getting sick or dying) that the damage could be limited by the government quickly examining the food chain and quarantining material.

So this regulation would not prevent an attack. It might, if terrorists decided that attacking the food supply was as good an idea as Tommy Thompson thinks (something I am very skeptical about) and if everything worked as intended (we realized an attack was happening early in the process, records were complete, and the government responded effectively), cut down on the scope of the attack. Does it seem like this is worthwhile for a rule that will cost $1.4 billion, by FDA's estimate? Not to me. That's right, $1.4 billion. Food prices will go up, food workers will get laid off, and food companies will lose money.

The history of this requirement is interesting. Food safety advocates have long wanted a comprehensive recordkeeping requirement for those along the food chain so that food poisoning incidents could be contained. But they could never convince government to impose more than a billion dollars in costs for this cause. So when the Bioterrorism bill was passed in the wake of the 2001 anthrax attacks, they saw an opportunity (a "policy window" for my students). All of a sudden they started talking about the vulnerability of the food supply to attack, and lo and behold the requirement they wanted for years was in the bioterrorism bill.

I've always bemoaned the lack of coverage for regulatory issues but the quiet for the FDA rule this week surprised me. My guess is that food safety advocates do not want to give the Bush Administration praise so they have ignored it. Meanwhile, the Bush Administration is not about to hype a rule that will have such high costs on business, even with the terrorism angle. So while real food safety problems like listeria and the use of antibiotics in animals, and real security concerns like those voiced by troops in Kuwait this week and port security get ignored, a government requirement like slips into law.

The best synopsis of recent history in the steroids scandal is in Peter Gammons column. As Gammons notes, there is no shortage of blame to go around. Indeed in the recent flood of prosletyzing about the issue, reporters have blamed the selfish players, the shortsighted players union, the greedy owners, and the home run happy fans.

For me this is a classic multiperson prisonner's dilemma which requires outside intervention to solve. The players are better off if no one takes steroids but each player individually is better off if he takes steroids and no one else does (assuming he values compensation for on-field performance more than health). Similarly, the owners are all better off with no risk of a steroid induced scandal and no steroid usage but each owner would be foolish to report or cast suspicion on his own steroid using players.

While we may wish that owners or players would behave better, it is unrealistic to expect them to with incentives lined up in this way. With this situation, it was incumbent upon Bud Selig and Donald Fehr to step up to the plate and coerce their sides into an agreement for strict drug testing. To his credit, Selig (and this is hard for me to say given that I think he has been a very bad commissioner) stepped up trying to get drug testing in the 2002 collective bargaining agreement. To his discredit, Fehr (and this is hard for me to say because the players union has made very few mistakes in its 35 years) did not and insisted that the provisions be watered down.

But things seem to be changing. Recent news reports indicate that the players union is prepared to endorse a muct stricter steroid testing program. If this is the outcome of the scandal then baseball will be the better for it. With a quick agreement there may be a few bumps in the road but my guess is that the steroid scandal will be more evocative of the cocaine scandals of the early 1980s (although as I noted Monday, the Bonds issue may remind people of Pete Rose) than the Black Sox scandal. Without an agreement, this could drag on and on and the costs to the sport could be enormous.

The steroid scandal that burst on to the front pages last week and threatens to remain there sporadically for the next year is widely being described as the biggest to hit baseball since the Black Sox. I'm not sure if that is true but it is a big deal for the sport which has only recently recovered from the 1994 strike.

There are numerous levels on which careful thought about this issue is necessary. What caused this to happen (or as the media will portray it, who can we blame)? What can and should baseball do to prevent it from occuring in the future? Finally how does Major League Baseball (and the Yankees and the Giants) handle the cases that have come to light through the supposedly confidential grand jury testimony of Barry Bonds and Jason Giambi?

I'll talk about the last question today and look at the other ones in the next day or two. MLB is in a bind. The only information they have about whether Bonds and Giambi took the steroids is their testimony which they can't use because of its confidentiality. Bonds didn't even confess to knowingly using the drugs (and no one believes him but what everyone believes can't be used as the basis for punishment). So for the moment, baseball can't and shouldn't do anything about either player.

However if there is a BALCO trial in the spring, it is possible that Giambi and Bonds may have to testify under oath. If they repeat their grand jury testimony then baseball has a basis to punish at least Giambi. If other witnesses swear that Bonds knew what he was doing during the course of the trial then he too will become subject to sanction. Of course, baseball can only sanction players for breaking particular rules. THG (a designer steroid that is one of the ones both players admitted taking) for example was not illegal in baseball until 2003 so punishment is not possible there. Suffice to say, if baseball is lucky enough to have good evidence that either player broke particular rules (and again such evidence is more likely to be available for Giambi) then it should come down hard with long suspensions.

The players themselves have choices to make now although they are in very different situations. Giambi, having confessed to knowingly taking steroids, is getting villified in the New York tabloids. However this also puts him one step closer to redemption than Bonds. If I were advising him, I would tell him to not to wait for the trial. He should have a tearful press conference, talk about the ravages of the drugs on his body, take a year off (with a small buyout from the Yankees, if the union allows it) and then make a comeback in a small market in 2006. The Yankees and their fans would love this outcome as well since it frees them from a horrible contract. Giambi could become a hero as Americans love stories of redemption.

Bonds on the other hand is about to pass Babe Ruth and then Hank Aaron on the home run charts (read Rob Neyer (subscription required) for reasons his records should not get an asterisk). He is 39 years old and cannot afford a year off. Besides no one would believe a tearful apology from one of the most arrogant players in team sports. Nope, Bonds has put himself in a box with his denials. He has to ride the scandal out and hope that no one has hard evidence that he knowingly did anything illegal. If someone does, then baseball's soon to be home run king may join it's hit king on the list of players permanently banned from the sport.

I went to a talk this week by a former colleague, Adam Finkel, now on the faculty at Princeton and the Rutgers Public Health School. His talk was focused mainly on risk assessment but I thought one of his central points had broader implications through public policy. He was arguing that the Administration uses averages in risk assessments to obscure a great deal of more important information.

For example (his example) let's suppose you know that it takes an average of an hour to get to the airport. You don't leave an hour before the plane leaves even though on average that would get you to the airport on time. That's because it is much worse to be 10 minutes late for a plane than 10 minutes early. Your objective is not to have a 50% chance of catching the plane, it is to minimize the chance you miss the plane (without wasting too much time by leaving six hours early).

Believe it or not, this is precisely the problem with many Bush Administration reform proposals. Take Social Security privatization. It is fairly well documented that average returns would go up from the 2% we currently receive to some substantially higher number. The problem is that the variation in returns would change from zero currently (since all funds are invested in low risk securities by the government) to something significant.

Lets say that the average return goes up to 4% doubling the current average. Unfortunately that means that while some people will get an 8% return, others will get a 0% return and earn nothing, or worse negative returns and lose some of their social security. Just like we care more about getting the airport early than late, we care more about not having people with nothing when they retire than having some people who have more (and if we don't we should because even those of us who make 8% will end up paying to support those who lost everything).

Similarly many of Bush's tax cut proposals are sold exactly the same way. There is a great deal of emphasis on the average tax cut, or how the average family fared under a particular tax cut. This obscures the fact a small number of individuals have received large tax cuts while many individuals have received (or will receive under some of the proposals the administration is said to be contemplating) little or nothing.

All of this is similar to Adam's point about protecting the average person from environmental risks. This still leaves half the people exposed to greater than average risks. Of course the Bush Administration has the right to make decisions like this. After all, on average he's won the popular vote in the last two elections.