Are Any of the League's Top Power Hitters Clean?

• By: Chris Liss
• On: 6/24/2009 7:09:00 PM

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Looking over the last 20-odd years, nearly all of baseball's top power hitters are accused or confirmed PED users. Here are the top-10 career home run leaders from this era:

1. Barry Bonds, 762 HR, (1), strongly suspected
2. Ken Griffey, 619 HR, (5), not suspected
3. Sammy Sosa, 609 HR, (6,) confirmed
4. Mark McGwire, 583 HR, (8), strongly suspected
5. Rafael Palmeiro, 569 HR, (10), confirmed
6. Alex Rodriguez, 562 HR, (12), confirmed
7. Jim Thome, 553 HR, (13) not suspected
8. Manny Ramirez, 533 HR (17), confirmed
9. Frank Thomas, 521 HR, (18) not suspected
10. Gary Sheffield, 507 HR (24), suspected

Seven of the top 10 home run hitters of this era were at least suspected, and six were strongly so.

Half of the top 12 all-time home run leaders are on this list, and of those, only Griffey is not strongly suspected.

Based on baseball's 2003 survey which found that 104 players tested positive for steroids, it's clear the number of unidentified PED users is greater than the number of identified ones. (And that's not even including those who used but were clean at the time of the 2003 test).

If six of the top 10 power hitters over the last 20 years almost certainly used, a seventh was suspected and we know there are more unknown ones that known ones, what are the odds that Thome, Thomas and Griffey were all clean? I'd say the odds are excellent that one is dirty, decent that two are and quite plausible that it's all three.

And if we presume everyone's guilty, the best way to solve the Hall of Fame problem is not to scapegoat ARod, Manny and Bonds, but simply to "roids adjust" the criteria for entry. So those three get in, but simply getting 500 homers or 300 wins should no longer be enough because it should be presumed you did that on roids. The only other solution is for baseball volunarily to disclose the entire list, but they'd need the consent of all the positive testing players to do that, and even then, some former users who didn't get flagged on that one test would get off scot-free.