After reading this article on ESPN.com, my feelings towards the Mitchell report have gotten worse, if that’s at all possible. I’ll excerpt some quotes of note:

From a coach (all of the sources here are unnamed, for obvious reasons):

“They wanted us to speculate. And I wouldn’t do that. They wanted me to say who I thought was using steroids. And when I said, ‘I don’t know,’ they would say, ‘Well, you work most closely with these guys. You work on their bodies every day. You weren’t the least bit suspicious when you saw their bodies change?’

“This was the kind of stuff I was most afraid of, because they didn’t ask me about specific people with specific information that they had. They asked me to guess. I said my guess was no guess at all, because what would happen to me if I said a guy was using steroids who wasn’t? What if I guessed wrong? Then my name is out there, I get fired, and I’m easily replaceable.”

Why are they asking people to guess?

“They didn’t ask us those things because they didn’t have the level of sophistication about what we do,” said a National League strength coach. “They didn’t know the right questions to ask. At no point in my interview did anyone say to me, ‘What can we recommend to make sure this never happens again?'”

Uh, wasn’t the whole point of the investigation to figure out how to never let this happen again? Oh, my mistake. I forgot that it was a witch hunt to bring out the biggest names in baseball.

“I didn’t go in there with a lawyer because I didn’t have anything to hide,” the manager said. “They asked me if I’d ever seen anyone do steroids. I said no. They asked me how I thought the players’ bodies got so big, and I said the players were in the weight room day and night, so it made sense to me. Then he said to me, ‘Well, don’t you know that steroids combined with weightlifting can make you even bigger?’ He said it to me like I was dumb, so I said, ‘No, I didn’t know that.'”

Wow. I didn’t know that! Pass the bull testosterone, yo!

Oh, and don’t forget Mr. Mitchell’s status on the board of directors of the Red Sox. The following is an excerpt from an e-mail sent by John Clarke, a spokesman for DLA Piper, the law firm conducting the investigation.

“Senator Mitchell and the Red Sox have agreed that he would not provide advice to the Red Sox owners until this investigation is completed and he would not receive any compensation from the team. That is the current situation,” Clarke wrote in a Nov. 30 e-mail to ESPN.com. “It is the expectation of the Senator and the Red Sox that he will resume his previous role after the completion of the investigation.”

Oh, then never mind! It’s all cool. He didn’t advise or take money while the investigation was ongoing. That he did those things before the investigation, and plans to continue doing so after the investigation, means nothing, right?

At least one GM is speaking out against this:

“They expected everyone to believe what they say, but they didn’t do anything real to change anybody’s mind. It was just his word,” one general manager said of Mitchell and his investigators. “They think everybody is stupid. They really do.”

So instead of figuring out how to stop this, they’re trying to levy blame on anyone they can. Thanks, Mitchell and Company. I’ll rest easier knowing that you compiled a list of names that people guessed at.

Honestly, I think this report is going to do a lot more to hurt baseball than to help it.

On a related note, I betcha a fiver that A-Rod’s name is somewhere in the Mitchell report. And I betcha that there’s a token Red Sox reference, but nothing of substance. (And I’m not saying A-Rod because he’s a Yankee, but rather because he’s a big name, and including him would seem to fit Mitchell’s M.O.)

It turns out that 11 current free agents will be named PED users when the Mitchell Report goes public in a few weeks. While that’s bad news for the players, it’s good news for RAB readers. Here’s the rules: try and guess the players who will be named, and whoever gets the most correct wins. Simple enough.

The prize? Well, I’m not sure yet, but we’ll dig something cool up. As a default for now, I’ll write a Prospect Profile for any minor leaguer (Yankee farmhand or not) the winner chooses. I’ll keep you updated on the good prize in the coming days. If there’s a tie…eh, we’ll figure it out.

Remember, Jose Guillen’s already been named, so the list is down to ten. You can find a full list of free agents here. Leave your guesses in the comments, mine are after below (RAB staff, as well as family and friends of RAB staff are ineligilbe to win; only your first entry will be considered)

Barry Bonds, Milton Bradley, Luis Gonzalez, Shawn Green, Jorge Julio, Ryan Klesko, Paul LoDuca, Eric Milton, Steve Trachsel and Jeff Weaver

The Mitchell Investigation is going to release names in its report. While I’m just as curious as everyone to see who was juicing and who wasn’t, I’m thinking that this is going to get ugly. Like Sarah Jessica Parker ugly.

Big Papi strikes again!!!…

Man, when this steroid news comes, it comes in waves. I woke up this morning to hear that Rick Ankiel was connected to HGH. The news saddened me, as it did much of the baseball world. Ankiel’s story is unique, and save for Cubs fans, nearly everyone has wished him the best in his comeback. I’m not quite sure how this will affect his future, but since the drug wasn’t banned at the time Ankiel was linked to it, he could walk away with little or no penalty.

Troy Glaus surely won’t get off that easy. The Blue Jays slugger has been linked to performance enhancing drugs. This wasn’t HGH like Ankiel — which, incidentally, might not enhance one’s ability to play baseball much. Rather, Glaus has been linked to nandrolone and testosterone, both anabolic steroids, both banned by baseball at the time they were shipped to Glaus: September 2003 and May 2004.

Glaus’s 2003 campaign ended in late July as he suffered from shoulder woes. He came back for the beginning of the 2004 season and tore the cover off the ball, keeping his OPS healthily above 1.000 until he went down again in mid-May, missing most of the next three and a half months, returning in late August.

So let’s recap. Glaus has season-ending surgery in July ’03. So you figure he started rehabbing in, oh, I don’t know, September. Then he suffers another injury in May of ’04. What were those shipment dates again?

Now, the Sports Illustrated article assures us that they can only confirm that the steroids were shipped to Glaus’s home, not that he actually took them. Whew! Sigh of relief. You know, because I know plenty of meatheads who buy steroids all the time and don’t use them. The syringes make great wall decorations, and the drugs themselves are great for training your Doberman to kill on command.

So it appears that Glaus was likely on the juice during the Angels’ 2002 World Series run. You know, the one where he knocked three homers against the Yanks? Then again, we have little room to talk. No doubt our resident Juicer shot himself up before knocking two homers off Pedro Martinez in Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS.

I’m willing to bet that Selig jumps on this opportunity and attempts to levy a 50-game suspension on Glaus. And we sure as shit know that the players’ union will have a thing or two to say about that.