Chris Davis belted his league-leading 25th home run of the season on Wednesday against the Detroit Tigers. It’s official, this is a career year for The Hulk. Every time Davis homers, you’ll see morons on Twitter accuse him of using performance enhancing drugs. The Twitterverse is full of bitter fans and they come in all shapes and sizes and from various locations.
Local sportstalker Nestor Aparicio, who never shies away from making controversial comments, joined the angry mob with a Facebook status that alluded he believes Davis is using illegal drugs for his power surge this season.
So, you mean to tell me you’re a thinking, intelligent baseball fan in touch with reality and aren’t thinking “Hmmmm?” every time Chris Davis hits another home run?
No. I haven’t once thought that Davis was using PEDs. In fact, most people who watch the Orioles day in and day out haven’t either. Davis’ season is a result of a power hitter finally being given a consistent chance during his breakout year. It’s ridiculous to even hint that he’s a cheater.
Furthermore, it’s stupid to think that the league hasn’t tested Davis or anyone else having a breakout season. Baseball gets looked at differently because of the steroid era, and rightfully so, but they’re the only major sport with in-season HGH testing and have a player’s union that’s actually supportive of cleaning up the game.
All information that is conveniently overlooked in Aparicio’s status.
Sometimes I let Nestor’s comments go by without highlighting them here on the blog, like last night when he called Zach Britton “Zach Britian” and then blamed autocorrect for the error even though autocorrect doesn’t change words that you manually capitalize. But this one needed to be pointed out. It’s important to showcase idiotic comments that are supported by no factual information.
So, you mean to tell me you’re a thinking, intelligent person from Baltimore in touch with reality and aren’t thinking “Some people actually give credence to this a-hole’s opinion?”, any time Nestor writes or says anything? He’s become a parody of himself. Now that the Orioles are relevant again, he can’t stand that he has nothing about which he can complain. So he’s just dying for any type of attention from anyone. That and more personalized “Nasty” jerseys
I would LOVE to be wrong, but I feel it’s completely fair to speculate. He’s on pace for 60+ home runs. The only other 60+ home run guys in the last twenty years have ALL been using PEDs. To sit there and say that just because he’s tested that he’s clean is laughable at best. The synthetic testosterone these guys are taking is out of their system in 24 hours and is virtually undetectable unless they were tested almost immediately after adminstering it. Marion Jones passed HUNDREDS of tests and she was as juiced as Jose Canseco. We all want to believe in Superman, but I’m here to tell you there is no such thing in today’s professional athletics.
Looking at Davis though, no major body transformation. No major jump in stats as compared to his Minor League performance. No inexplicable muscle tears. These are the hallmarks of PED use. Innocent until proven guilty.
umm; his face doesn’t remotely look like it did 5 years ago…
Really Bro? His face is different? I think he lost some weight, but he pretty much looks exactly the same as he did when he came up with Texas
No major jump in stats? How about teh fact that hes a career .270 hitter hitting .340……. yeah 70 points overnight is pretty insignificant right? the dude is juicing.
Sully, if you read the entire post, instead of taking what I said out of context, I said “No major jump in stats as compared to his Minor League performance.” He killed it in AA and AAA. So much that he was often referred to by fans as a AAAA player since he couldn’t adjust to the Bigs. So maybe next time, read the ENTIRE post.
Get your facts correct….there is an OBVIOUS jump in stats as compared to his Minor League performance. In four seasons of facing Triple-A pitching, he hit only 54 home runs. Now, in one major league season, he’s on pace to hit 62? And EVERY other player who hit 60 in the past several decades were ALL using PEDs…but go ahead & look at him through your rose colored glasses…of couse he is the one & only innocent player that jumped to such a level….you have GOT to be kidding?!
Well, considering he is on pace for 55, your complete arguement is invalid.
Just hit two more so you may want to recalculate. It may not be 60, but it’s close.enough to make the argument completely valid.
Hippo said it best. The Lil Frosted Tipped fella has nothing more to complain about. You know every night he hopes against hope that the Orioles lose so he can gloat and sell t-shirts to raise awareness.
Just go away, Nestor.
Negative attention. I believe there’s a medical term for that condition.
” Richard Cranium “
Nestor needs to go back to worrying about what Jen Royle says about him……douchebag.
Been an O’s fan all my life yet moved away 20+ years ago so I’ve never even heard of this guy. He sounds like a local yocal with either a Napolean complex or a severely undersized piece of equipment that needs to make other people look small in order to feel big. It’s a shame that this little man can’t earn a living like most other people and has to try and ruin the reputations of fine upstanding athletes who achieve some success. What a pitiful existence this poor little man must be experiencing. I do feel sorry for Lester.
Zach , you are guity of your last sentence in your blog,,,,,,,,,,,,many times over……………
Nestor just hates the fact the Orioles are winning and he cant complain any more. if you read his journal he wrote a couple of years ago he talks about the 83 Orioles, Yet he admits to being a big Phillie fan and his love of the powder blue jerseys they had. he is such a phony. all his good host left for 105.7. his station is wortless and so are all the owners of wnst
There should be public access to who and when players are tested. The public pays thier salaries. We have the right to know which players are honest.
correct , MLB is getting like the Gov’t.
All you need to know about Nestor the “Journalist” can be found on the background of his Twitter page. My favorite is the picture of him w/ Jeter while Jeter is on the phone at the ’99 ASG.
The author writes
“No. I haven’t once thought that Davis was using PEDs. In fact, most people who watch the Orioles day in and day out haven’t either.”
Is the author being sarcastic with that statement?
I heard someone put it well over lunch in Canton last week when a young woman speaking to her friend said that CDavis is “high on more than Christ, but who cares? He’s hot.”
I’m willing to ignore that CDavis is putting up numbers that are at best an anomaly. We’re here to watch the team win, not defend the players as people.
Nestor?
Nestor can be fun to mock but I was referring to the author of the above article. To insinuate that “most people who watch the Orioles day in and day out haven’t [considered PED use]” is indicative of the author’s naïveté or that he was speaking with a small subset of Orioles fans. Sitting in my section of OPACY when asked, among the fans’ first words regarding CDavis is “boy I hope they don’t test him”. I hope he’s clean, but we’ll never know if that’s true.
It’s one thing for fans to laugh or joke about it, quite another for a so called “media member” to insinuate it.
In the past, Nestor has resorted to anti-semetic remarks, disparaging remarks about the homeless, wishing death on people in his columns and commentary, and an overall disdain for the Orioles franchise. Nothing, NOTHING he says has any merit at all. He’s a loose cannon harboring a grudge that just wont go away.
I was asking if you were Nestor, you have to question the legitmacy of any comment defending his logic
I personally think that there is a lot to be learned from examples which are both bad and good. There is not a shortage of “media members” which can draw ridicule for their comments, but if such “media members” warrant a post on BSR, I suppose the point of the article deserves intelligent consideration as well. Good discussion all.
All good, Critical Thinker. Hope to debate with you here more often.
Everyone is talking about the lack of facts here, but no one is mentioning any to substantiate an arguement. I do not believe Davis is using PEDs, and like some other commentors have eluded to, fell it is due to mainly to his consistent playing time, as well as some other factors. With last season being only the second time in his career that he has played over 100 games (2009 with the Rangers was the first), Davis has played inl 72 of the orioles 73 games this season. That’s a pace to miss 2, maybe 3, games this season. He played in 139 last year and 113 in 2009. In comparing his STRIKEOUT numbers in those three years (he didn’t earn the Deputy moniker from 105.7 for no reason remember), he struck out 150 times in 2009, 169 times last year, and only 78 times this year. That’s 1.32 strikouts per game in 2009, 1.21 per game last year, and only 1.08 this season. In those three seasons, Chris has hit 21, 33, and now 26 home runs which corresponds to .18 HRs per game in 09, .23 per game last year, and .36 so far this season. It would seem Chris is making better pitch slections, as his batting average overall, not just his power numbers, are reflecting this as well. I do not recall if it was here, over on MASNsports.com, maybe ESPN.com, or elsewhere, but many have attributed both of these statistics to Orioles hitting coach, Jim Presley. Sometime in mid September last year, Jim talked Chris into taking fewer cuts during batting practice, and taking some of them off of a tee as opposed to all live pitching. It was a great piece and I wish I could find it to reference in my point, but I believe even the numbers begin to stand on their own.
LMAO!!!! Talk about cherry picking and ignoring other overwhelming stats….you have lost all credibility in your weak argument.
Nestor works without a net. No editor(numerous mistakes in his new slobberfest..I mean book about the Ravens) means that he says outrageous things. He considers himself the only REAL journalist in town. Just in the past two weeks he called Kevin Cowherd a “fossil” because he is not knee deep in Social Media(although the facts are that Kevin has a FB page and Twitter). So if Kevin decides not to publish his every waking thought about his cat or any other inane subject it disqualifies him as a journalist? That is Nestor’s worldview. He’s wrong.
Last week he stated(Nestor on WNST) that “I hope Angelos dies” and “I can’t wait for Angelos to die”. That is really “good journalism”. If it were not so pathetic it would be comical. I am constantly amazed that he gets ticked off at people throwing criticism
his way(he has a tissue thing skin) yet he can cast aspirations on any one he chooses.
His whole persona is one of hypocrisy and lies. Just ask some of his ex employees how righteous they think he is. He is the biggest joke in town. Many of the Ravens players call him a pee pee watcher or worse.
You are correct about Nestor and his terrible comments but that doesn’t mean once in a while he says something that has merrit,,,,,,even a broken clock is correct twice a day…………………
valid points. But you could also look at past steroid users such as Bonds, Bell, Boone, etc and they all have VERY similar performance gains. The most important number to me is slugging. Bonds’ slugging jumped 180 points in 2001. Bell’s jumped 125 in ’99. Boone’s jumped 156 in ’01 and etc etc. Davis’ slugging has jumped in excess of 200 points!. The fact is his performance jump is even more pronounced than the biggest PED users of the past 15 years should give every fan pause.
And for those of you who think because he entered baseball “already big”, that doesn’t mean jack. Minor leaguers do them just as much if not more. From a guy who used to lift weights regularly his whole life, it is super difficult to carry the physique these guys do AND play major league baseball.
IamMe, so PEDs have also helped Davis strike out less, too huh? PEDs allow you to improve your vision and approach at the plate. Didn’t know that.
HGH has been proven to improve vision so , yes I am saying that. Google is your friend.
Look, I’m not saying he IS on PEDs, but we should ALL be skeptical of his 200 point increase in slugging and 100 point increase in batting average. The fact is the vast majority of players who exhibited these types of performance gains in one season were PED users. But of course, the guy on my team is Superman and he doesn’t need PEDs, right?
It’s a shame what Bonds, Sosa, and McGwire have done to the game. Davis has had power throughout his major and minor league career, when given ABs. I liken him to a Jose Bautista who found his stroke and had an organization willing to give him ABs.
Experts – including our friends here at BSR – predicted a 40 homerun season for Davis and it looks like he should achieve that.
From all accounts, he’s a standup, spiritual guy, but he has a breakthrough season and people question him.
Bautista used HGH for a year and a half , then stopped when baseball was getting close to the famous blood test for HGH,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,If you think Bautista was clean for those two years , you’re spending too much time with Zach……………….
Nestor is a joke. Used to follow him on Facebook till I realized what a loser and crap “journalist” he is. Nobody takes him seriously, and I loved the post about the Ravens calling him a pee pee watcher. LOL
Correction, 66 point batting average increase. Which is still a significant jump, but makes the 200 point slugging increase even more impressive.
2013 26 Home runs, 66 RBI’s, hitting .337. Maybe he is finally starting to hit with consistency. I know he has great power, the only thing that I’m curious about is the average, I know he is getting more playing time but his minor league stats don’t show him as a guy who hits for average, he went from hitting around .290 to .337. So I still don’t know.
His average is up because he’s become more selective at the plate. He’s not swinging at everything. A prime example was the at bat he had against Scherzer last week. Twice he threw that outside fastball that Davis laid off. Scherzer was pleading for a strike and didn’t get it. Davis would eventually strike out swinging on the same pitch, but he worked the count full, fouled off one or two, and made Scherzer work. You even saw Davis look at the ump afterwards and say “That was a strike wasn’t it…” Last year, he’s down on 3 pitches. This year, he’s waiting for his pitch.
hate to tell ya C Davis fans…, but when your face begins to look like this guy..
http://ts4.mm.bing.net/th?id=H.4815041659079427&pid=15.1
you kinda know whats going on. MLB will come down on him soon
You believers are the same that thought Maguire, Sosa and Bonds were legit..look at the dudes face..clearly on PEDs
Now he’s on pace for 64+ homeruns. He’s already surpassed last season’s home run total before the all star break while maintaining the same strike out ratio.
While you are simply an antagonist with nothing real to offer (Davis’ strikeout ratio is down in 2013, but don’t let facts influence you), read the USA Today article mentioned above and which I linked below. If you dont think Davis has been tested over and over and over again this year, you should just go back to listening to Nestor and let him continue to brainwash you.
http://dailynewsonlineforyou.com/why-is-chris-davis-suddenly-awesome-usa-today/
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