The things that matter in terms of winning a batting title are signing contracts and Hall of Fame credentials. Melky hurt himself in that, rather than getting a multi-year deal this winter, he’ll probably only get a one-year deal. And he’s very likely not a Hall of Famer.

I’m not a fan of revising history for the sake of making it sound better. History is a record of positives and negatives. If Melky wins the batting title this season, that’s history and we all have to live with it.

Regardless, here’s hoping McCutchen goes on a tear and renders this all moot.

Bud Selig and the MLBPA have created this culture by protecting EVERYONE involved. They continue to allow a testing program to exist that doesn’t really challenge anyone except idiots like Melky that can’t seem to find ways to skate around it. The rest of the 1199 players on the 40 man rosters around the league come September 1 aren’t as dumb as Melky. Put your money on it: a great deal of them are using – pitchers and hitters.

Nothing good is going to come of this program until we get blood testing. Stop protecting everyone Bud and Weiner.

As for Melky, it’s time to move on. The only mulligan he gets from me is that, when he had no way out, he actually confessed. Now, what we should be concentrating on, besides, of course, the rest of the season, is how we can somehow get closer to the truth. It seems to me that lies somewhere in the middle between what Victor Conte has stated, and the “this proves testing works” soundbites.

And, maybe, just maybe we need to look at what we put into our own bodies, before we go on the moral crusade. It’d be pretty amusing to see what many of us tested for. No, on second thought, it’d be sad and pathetic.

Hindsight is such a beautiful thing….

By accident I listened to a June 6 podcast that I had on my iPod… at around that time the Nats were 2 games behind Atlanta and the analysts were predicting that ALL the NL East teams (with the possible exception of the Mets) would be fighting it out in September. Anyone who predicted in February that the Nats would grab permanent hold of first place and have a 99% chance to make the playoffs on August 19 needs to get to the racetrack right now!

First, deciding that the highest batting average = “bast hitter” (i.e. batting TITLE).

Second, that BA relies on subjective evaluations by scorers to differentiate hits from errors.

Third, that many non-hits aren’t even counted in calculating batting average. Acting like fly-outs and bunts didn’t happen because of something their team mate did on the same play (advance a base) is an irrelevant distinction that was created based on subjective judgments.

BUT that doesn’t mean I don’t think it’s an easy fix on things like this. For the sake of awards if you serve so much as one day on a suspension for use of PEDs you are DQ’d. It’s fair & it’s really easy to do.

If someone with a vote ignores the rules and puts a guy on his ballot (if it happens to be an award that gets voted on) toss the vote out. If it’s a statistical award (HR leader, batting title etc..) then just discount their numbers.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with doing it if they showed themselves to be a cheat.