Mitchell Report on Roger Clemens:

 

As everyone with even the remotest level of sentience is aware, baseball's Mitchell Report was released Thursday.

The report (or "The Mitch"), all 400-odd pages of it, was greeted with a predictable level of saturation coverage and hand-wringing. In the sports world, it's the news of the day, and it's going to remain that for some time to come. That means you, the sports fan, should familiarize yourself with "The Mitch" as much as possible.

Timelines

Almost every name you'll find in the Mitchell Report has attached to it sketchy or indefinite timelines. Presumably, investigators simply weren't able to establish when most of these players took what and for how long. However, there are a couple of exceptions. To wit, Roger Clemens and Jason Giambi have fairly clear timelines that emerge in terms of when and what they were (allegedly!) using.

With that in mind, let's take a look at these timelines and match them up with the relevant statistics. This, of course, is an effort to see whether their use of performance-enhancing drugs may have made a difference between the white lines. Um, perhaps that's a bad choice of words — may have made a difference on the field of play. Let's check it out ...

Roger Clemens

What the report says: The Mitch absolutely brings the dirt on Clemens — more than eight full pages worth. Based on the testimony of Brian McNamee, Clemens' trainer for several years, the report alleges that Clemens began using injectable steroids during the 1997 season, when he was in Toronto. He continued using through the 1998 season. However, prior to the 1999 campaign, he was traded to the Yankees. McNamee, meanwhile, remained in the employ of the Blue Jays, and there's no evidence that Clemens continued using in McNamee's absence.

In 2000, things changed. The Yankees, at Clemens' urging, hired McNamee, and he once again began advising Clemens. Midway through the 2000 season, Clemens began using steroids anew, and he also added HGH to his cocktail. He stopped his regimen in late 2000, but began it once again in August of 2001, this time without taking HGH (according to The Mitch, Clemens didn't like receiving injections in his navel). McNamee says he has no knowledge of whether Clemens used performance-enhancing drugs after 2001. At this point, it's worth noting that Clemens has already and vociferously denied all charges.

The timeline: Anyhow, here's what we have ... Clemens was allegedly on steroids in 1997 and 1998, off them for 1999, on them for the second half of 2000, off them for first half of 2001, on them for the second half of 2001, and finally, off them from that point forward. Whew.

So here are Clemens numbers during the "on" periods and during the adjacent "off" periods:

Let's be charitable and not call this "damning," but it does strongly suggest a pattern. With the exception of 2001, Clemens was notably better during his on periods than he was in his corresponding off periods. It's impossible to know whether Clemens' use of PEDs was the reason for these trends — after all, correlation does not imply causation — but said trends are curious, to say the least.

Here, then, is the more difficult question: how do you sanction Barry Bonds without punishing another presumed first-ballot Hall of Famer, Roger Clemens?

Much of the information in this report comes from Kirk Radomski. Before telling all to Mitchell, Radomski rolled over for the feds. That led prosecutors to one Brian McNamee, a former New York City cop, who was employed as a strength and conditioning coach by both the Blue Jays and the Yankees. McNamee says he injected Clemens — whose dedicated workout regimens were the subject of endless praise — on numerous occasions with both Winstrol and human growth hormone. In doing so, he tampered not just with Clemens' physique, but with baseball history.

Roger Clemens — who refused to address the allegations with Mitchell's investigators — trails only Nolan Ryan in career strikeouts. He's eighth in all-time victories, and first among active players with 354. He's won a record seven Cy Young Awards.

If the report is correct, Clemens began cheating in 1998, a couple of years before Bonds. And if nothing else, Bonds employed a better class of gofer. At least Greg Anderson, unlike McNamee, stood up and went to jail instead of ratting out his employer.