Comment of the Day: Suspecting Jeff Bagwell

This will all be determined by a highly rigorous scientific formula involving wit, clarity and whatever else we feel like at the moment.

As baseball's Hall of Fame voters got ready to make their picks on this year's class, our John Royal wondered about the seeming vendetta against Astro Jeff Bagwell. Royal argued that Bagwell was widely suspected of using steroids, but he never failed a test or was named in the Mitchell Report.

That didn't convince one reader.

Sancho wrote:

So, you don't think these facts are even remotely suspicious: *Ken Caminiti and Bagwell were friends and running buddies that simultaneously changed body-styles and gained mass amounts of weight, *Cammy was an admitted steroid user that claimed that 85% of ballplayers juiced *Cammy could have easily exonerated Bagwell at any time by simply stating that Bags was one of the few clean players *Bagwell gained large amounts of mass for a period, then lost that as his body broke down- both signed of steroid abuse.

I know these things are circumstantial, but they seem to indicate that Bags might have had some involvement with steroids. I don't think that should keep him out of the Hall, but I also don't think you can claim that Jeff is undoubtedly innocent either.

(Royal's response, btw):

The facts are he never failed a test. The facts are that of all of the players who have been linked to steroids, whether through failed drug tests, the Mitchell Report, Jose Canseco, government prosecutions, etc., not one of those players is named Jeff Bagwell.

And if Caminiti was correct, then it's probably safer to just vote no to any player who played from about 1987 through 2004. And that includes Derek Jeter and the sainted Craig Biggio. After all, Biggio and Caminiti were also good friends and running buddies long before Bagwell joined the Astros.