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Why isn't Damien Cox getting the Jerod Morris treatment for his Jose Bautista comments?

Aug 24, 2010, 5:02 PM EDT

27 Comments

Last year a blogger named Jerod Morris made headlines for writing an article suggesting that Raul Ibanez’s career-best production at age 37 “raised questions” about whether he was using steroids.
Not only did Ibanez respond very angrily and publicly to the article, ESPN had Morris as a guest on Outside the Lines, where he was confronted by Ken Rosenthal of FOXSports.com and John Gonzalez of the Philadelphia Inquirer. And his comments became fodder for columnists, radio hosts, and talking heads around the country.
I’m not here to argue about whether or not Morris deserved that treatment, but rather to ask why Damien Cox of the Toronto Star hasn’t been similarly ripped to shreds for his column yesterday suggesting that Jose Bautista’s out of nowhere, 40-homer (and counting) breakout season means “you’ve got to at least ask the question” of whether he’s using steroids.
I’d encourage everyone to read Morris’ article from last year and Cox’s article from yesterday, and then judge for themselves just how similar they are. I tend to think they’re pretty damn close, which is why it seems so strange to me that Cox isn’t receiving anywhere close to the same treatment that Morris did.
Is it because mainstream media members aren’t nearly as eager to pick on one of their own? Is it because Morris was mostly just a way for people to launch a larger-scale attack on bloggers and blogging as a whole? Is it because the Phillies and Philadelphia simply get more coverage in the baseball world than the Blue Jays and Toronto? Or is there something else at play?

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  1. The Common Man - Aug 24, 2010 at 5:12 PM

    Well, everyone knows that bloggers are less trustworthy than MSM writers, don’t they?

  2. nps6724 - Aug 24, 2010 at 5:13 PM

    Probably because Bautista plays for a 4th-place Toronto and Ibanez plays for what was a 1st-place Philly.

  3. Ari Collins - Aug 24, 2010 at 5:21 PM

    I think it was the blogger thing last year. “How irresponsible to write an article with such suppositions! See? This is why we need gatekeepers.”

  4. YANKEES1996 - Aug 24, 2010 at 5:26 PM

    He hasn’t appeared on “Outside the Lines” yet.

  5. David - Aug 24, 2010 at 5:29 PM

    steroidssteroidssteroidssteroidssteroidssteroidssteroidssteroidssteroidssteroidssteroidssteroidssteroidssteroidssteroidssteroidssteroidssteroidssteroidssteroidsvsteroidssteroids
    There is the quota for the day. Now can we not discuss it again?

  6. scatterbrian - Aug 24, 2010 at 5:32 PM

    I’d say that’s part of it. Another would be that Ibanez at least helped draw attention to the story with his defensiveness. It’s hard to ignore when a professional athlete says “I’ll come after people who defame or slander me.” To my knowledge, Bautista hasn’t said anything about this accusation.

  7. Giraffe Monsoon - Aug 24, 2010 at 5:53 PM

    Face it, this is the final result of all the past players use of steroids. There will always be the question when a player out of nowhere begins hitting a lot of homers.
    That’s why the players association should ave made an effort in the first place to weed out steroids before it got too widespread. Their lack of doing so has created this problem that will never go away. Jose Bautista and Raul Ibanez, you have nobody to blame but the past players who used. They caused this problem, not the people questioning whether you are using.
    Live with it. It will be a fact forevermore.

  8. Utley's hair - Aug 24, 2010 at 6:06 PM

    Or they can blame the, you know, people who make the unfounded accusations in the first place.

  9. beezo - Aug 24, 2010 at 6:41 PM

    I think you nailed it. Nobody even read this Morris guy’s post until Ibanez lashed out to the press. Bautista hasn’t said anything to the media, so nobody is making a big deal about it.

  10. Proudly Canadian - Aug 24, 2010 at 6:56 PM

    BORING!

  11. Proudly Canadian - Aug 24, 2010 at 7:03 PM

    For the record. Cox is a hockey reporter not a baseball reporter. He has a very high opinion of himself; however, he knows virtually nothing about baseball.

  12. Resolute - Aug 24, 2010 at 7:22 PM

    A lot of reasons. The aforementioned MSM vs. blogger angle and the coverage of the two teams are both valid.
    Ultimately, I think it is because Cox is one of the least respected columnists in Canada. He’s widely viewed as a clown who’s opinion is pretty much worthless. I would also note that the Toronto Star has a history of taking a hatchet to the Jays – Several columnists, including Cox, if I recall correctly, wrote an amazingly pathetic series of articles about nine or ten years ago under the banner “The White Jays” accusing the team of being racist over a lack of diversity in the locker room. The irony of that hatchet job was that the Star itself was even more racist based on their own criteria.

  13. A Tribe Called Questec - Aug 24, 2010 at 7:55 PM

    There’s a stat that measures HR per flyball. The MLB average is about 10-12% of flyballs go for home runs. Some hitters have proven to be a bit higher. Others a bit lower. But it’s generally a sign of flukiness because players usually stick near their career average, with fluctuation of course.
    Bautista’s career HR/FB rate is 12.9%. In his first 4 full seasons, his HR/FB rate has been 11.6, 7.9, 13.8 & 12.3. This season it’s been an enormously fluky 21.3%! But it’s an indication that when his HR/FB ratio regresses back to the mean that his numbers will come back down to earth. He simply won’t be able to keep up the pace of hitting a HR once EVERY FIVE FLYBALLS!!! That won’t continue.
    Now, guys like Adam Dunn & Carlos Pena might be able to maintain averages around & above 20%. Not even David Ortiz, Miguel Cabrera & Albert Pujols have a career average as high as 20%. And those guys certainly show a trend to do so year after year. Bautista is not the case.

  14. gbbrady10 - Aug 24, 2010 at 9:36 PM

    damien cox is a hockey writer by trade and an ever increasingly insignificant one at that. his comments are simply to try and get his name back in the news as the NHL season approaches. the jays are leading the league in homeruns by a large margin for a reason, their coaching staff has a long history of producing great hitting teams and the jays are going up to the plate and swinging out of their socks. they are nearly the worst team in baseball in terms of average but are going to end up with 7+ players with 20+ HRs. but specifically in terms of bautista this is his first real shot at not only playing everyday but being one of the leaders of the team: long-term jays both in terms of how long they’ve been here and how long they will be (wells, lind, hill), simply have not stepped up this year, so bautista has. his power surge is not a sudden development, he hit 12 last sept. and has carried the confidence into this season knowing that a couple of bad games in a row will not result in him losing his spot in the lineup. all his homeruns are to left field, he has lightning quick hands, plate discipline and adjustments made by gaston and murphy. scrub pitchers suddenly become all-stars when they get teamed up with duncan in st. louis and hitters hit bombs when they get to T.O. He is simply locked in right now and cox was just trying to capitalize on the recent cloud of suspicion hanging over baseball to rebound his career but the public are fed up and numb to the steroid issue and don’t care anymore. congrats on your all around excellent play bautista, your cannon arm in right field, your intensity and attitude during the game and of course your sweet power swing, i have no doubt all those things continue throughout the remainder of the year and the upcoming seasons.

  15. Mark - Aug 25, 2010 at 12:21 AM

    Actually that’s not true. On this very blog they quoted Bautista saying he didn’t use PED.

  16. Mark - Aug 25, 2010 at 12:23 AM

    This was my first thought when I read the Cox article too. Rosenthal and the rest of the media who called out Morris should be attacking Cox for suggesting it without any hard proof.

  17. Dwight Evans Mustache - Aug 25, 2010 at 4:34 AM

    It would be pretty ballsy for Bautista to use PEDs in this day and age, knowing that an offensive outburst like this is bound to raise questions. He should voluntarily test himself just to prove to everyone he’s not using.

  18. Kevin S. - Aug 25, 2010 at 8:03 AM

    Actually, players do often see power spikes similar to Bautista’s. They usually happen a couple years sooner, but it’s not unheard of at all for it to happen in a player’s age-29 season. Furthermore, looking at the career rates of those other sluggers (as opposed to their peaks) factors in years not relevant to the comparison. I don’t know if Bautista is juicing or not, but a spike in HR/FB could be caused by any number of things, and isn’t really that unheard of.

  19. Jonny5 - Aug 25, 2010 at 8:10 AM

    No he shouldn’t. He should tell this guy off and anyone who agrees with him. If he were to do that it may set a precedence where bloggers,reporters, and such would ask why everyone they try to implicate with PED use isn’t testing themselves. “he must be guilty if he isn’t willing to prove himself otherwise.”

  20. John_Michael - Aug 25, 2010 at 8:13 AM

    If Cox isn’t slightly respected as a journalist, much the same way MSM views most bloggers, then there’s even less of an excuse not to chastise him for his article.

  21. TheBuzzOnNY.com - Aug 25, 2010 at 9:35 AM

    I’d raise some questions as well. Bautista is having a “Brady Anderson” type season. If he comes back in 2011 and has a 35 home run season, then so be it. But if he comes back and hits 15 then let the suspicions fly.

  22. Kung - Aug 25, 2010 at 9:58 AM

    TheBuzz, you’re an idiot. Brady Anderson was a full-time player for 4 seasons prior to his one-season breakout. Bautista has NEVER been a full-time player. Furthermore, as people have pointed out MANY times, baseball is littered with one-season breakouts – the most famous of which is Roger Maris’s 61 HRs. He never hit close to that again. Because of the chance nature of baseball, these outlier seasons are a lot more common than you think.
    Stop repeating tired, specious arguments.

  23. BC - Aug 25, 2010 at 10:38 AM

    You DO have to ask the question. Perfectly valid question.

  24. Ari Collins - Aug 25, 2010 at 10:41 AM

    What’s more, if he hits 35 homers next year, people won’t say, “Well, he wasn’t on the juice, then.” They’ll say, “So he’s still on the juice.”

  25. Resolute - Aug 25, 2010 at 3:35 PM

    You are correct at that – and if you check out his meltdown on Twitter yesterday, the fans certainly let him know about it.
    Alas, the MSM will not police its own.

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