It's only cheating if you get caught, right?

So was Bronson Arroyo cheating or not? Let’s look at the quotes and facts and you can draw your own conclusion.

St. Louis manager Tony La Russa and pitching coach Dave Duncan believe Arroyo used pine star to “sticky-up” baseballs that were slick Wednesday, Sept. 30, devoid of the Delaware mud that is normally rubbed on them before games. La Russa and Duncan both said the stain on the bill of Arroyo's cap was pine tar that helped him grip balls.

A pissed off Reds manager Dusty Baker remarked, “Where I come from, man, you call somebody a cheater and you better know what you’re talking about. That’s like calling somebody a liar, a snitch, a cheat or a thief. Those are strong words when you call somebody a cheater and I’m the man in charge over here.”

St. Louis pitcher John Smoltz said the balls were too slick and La Russa said the balls did not have the mud on them.

Clubhouse attendant Mike Dillon, who rubs mud on the balls, “I had nothing to do with those balls (Wednesday) and I’m the one who rubbed them up, but I had nothing to do with them. I don’t know what happened after they were over there but you look at them (Thursday) and they’ll be the same.”

When La Russa showed Dillon two balls he saved from Wednesday he said, “Do they look rubbed up to you?” Dillon said, “No. I rubbed up the balls but they weren’t like that. That’s all I’m going to say. I’m telling you I don’t cheat. I don’t lie. I had nothing to do with it. Somehow the mud got off them.”

La Russa said, “I knew they were up to shenanigans. I appreciate you saying that.”

Of Arroyo, La Russa added, “The guy’s got pine tar all over his hat and our guy (Smoltz) is out there naked. We’ve got about six of those balls around here. That was pretty lousy. (Arroyo) found a little edge. You can’t let the starting pitcher influence how the balls are prepared for the game.”

Arroyo responded, “I pitch on the road, too, and I can’t tell you how many times I was unhappy with the way the balls are rubbed up. Every time I pitch in Milwaukee I can’t stand the way the balls are rubbed up. They can run out any kind of balls they want and I won’t walk five guys (as Smoltz did).”

Baker said he didn’t hear any complaints about Arroyo rubbing pine tar on the balls until a writer told him Thursday morning.

"If anybody should know, it would be Duncan," Baker said. "I remember they had Julian Tavarez over there. They threw his hat out, remember that? His hat was all messed up. It's not like it's something new."

That was 2004 and Tavarez was suspended eight days for using pine tar (later reduced to four days). “And remember that left-handed relief pitcher they had?” Baker said. That would be Steve Kline, who wore the same hat all season and by season’s end it was no longer red but brownish black — the color of pine tar.

“That is all just stupid,” said Baker. “Nothing went on. News to me. I don’t believe in cheating.”

Arroyo (15-13) finished with 12 consecutive starts in which he went at least seven innings while allowing no more than three earned runs. According to the Elias Sports Bureau, he is the first Reds pitcher since at least 1900 to put together such a streak and only the fourth overall in the last 20 years, joining Greg Maddux (12 straight for the Cubs in 1992), Randy Johnson (14 for Arizona in 1999) and Curt Schilling (12 for Arizona in 2002). - Hmmmmmm. – Gregory Shapiro

Greg is an orthopedic surgeon that has a number of professional athletes including MLB players as patients. He’s an avid MLB fan and rotisserie player with some unique insight into the world of professional athletes.

----------

Have a Fantasy Football or Rotisserie baseball question? Want to know who to pick up, who to activate and who the hot prospects are? Ask Dr. Roto. Let Dr. Roto guide your team to a league championship.

Please Everyone, Stop Using Catcher ERA

The Nichols Law of catcher defense states the inverse relationship that exists between offensive abilities and perceived defensive performance. Take Paul Bako. More than 2,300 plate appearances with an OPS in the .620s. He is not, nor has he ever, been a good offensive player. Bako's longevity reigns from, uh, well...Greg Maddux. After Eddie Perez, Maddux's personal catcher, went down in 2000, the Braves acquired Bako from Florida. Maddux absolutely loved Bako, probably because Bako was the bottom in the relationship and easily manipulated to calling whatever it is Maddux wanted to throw.

So after a season and a half as Maddux's personal caddy, Milwaukee scooped Bako up and gave him nearly 260 plate appearances. The Brewers saw their pitching staff benefit greatly from Bako's game calling and presence. They improved their FIP from 4.9 to 4.86. Woo. If every 10 runs is worth 4.5 million, and Bako was worth 0.04 runs per nine, well, you get the point. Bako wasn't very valuable, but teams kept giving him shots.

Fans seem to fall in with reserve catchers. I don't know why. I suspect it has to do with the mystique of being a defensive stalwart, one immeasurable by metrics known to man. Perhaps having to sit in the bullpen and warm pitchers up is something worthwhile. These guys are usually horrible hitters, the worst bats on the team that actually get paid to hit. Why? Because if they hit well, they would be playing.

So, you have a player on each team who has writers, fans, and television folk talking up his game calling abilities and whatnot because saying that his entire value comes from squatting for four hours a week isn't something you take pride in. Eventually it melts in. People start looking for things that feed this confirmation bias of Johnny McBackstop being a human computer. It becomes mainstay knowledge, and now every team in the league needs one of these veteran catchers, good at absolutely nothing outside of history lessons.

People have tried measuring the defensive contributions of catchers and it usually goes nowhere. The most common being Catcher's ERA. Perhaps even more flawed than pitcher ERA. Consider all of the variables thrown in:

1. Ballpark

2. Pitcher

3. Defense

You get the point, but let's take it a step further. Jason Varitek is the role model for catcher's defense. Creating a list of compliments and flattering comparisons for Varitek's apparent savvy would take a while. Michael Barrett has almost never been praised for his defensive ability. He's been known to get into fights with his pitchers, so un-Varitek-like, he's never lead his team to the title, and he's not wired like a computer.

Using both of their top 10 catching time seasons, we get these CERA:

The averages over these 10 seasons are pretty minimal in difference, same with career averages. This is ignoring that Barrett played on worst teams and that Varitek caught in Fenway, and so on. These results would make Tim McCarver go into convulsions. There's not a member of the BBWAA who would accept the idea that Michael Barrett and Jason Varitek handle pitchers on a similar level. That's good, because sometimes it takes an extreme case to get a point across.

Don't use Catcher's ERA. It's useless. We know this from studies in the past, not just from anecdotal comparisons.

The above post was submitted by reader R.J. Anderson, Not Sure Where, Didn't Say