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Weight gain doesn’t prove Ruben Sierra cheated
Granted, it’s a highly tenuous link at best, but, believe it or not, that’s pretty much all anyone has when it comes to Sierra and steroids.
Here’s what we have on Sierra when it comes to PEDs: He played for the Rangers, was Latin American, was very, very good, and in the spring of 1990, showed up at Port Charlotte looking like a different person.
Ruben had gained maybe 30 pounds, but to say it was all muscle would be a stretch.
But that’s it. He was not mentioned in the Mitchell Report, was not indicted in Jose Canseco’s tell-all book Juiced — Ruben actually went to Oakland along with Jeff Russell and Bobby Witt in the Canseco deal — and, to the best of our knowledge, has never failed a drug test.
The only test he ever failed, in fact, was that eye-test, in the spring of 1990.
On that basis and because of subsequent media speculation, I’ve seen several indignant blogs, comments and e-mails wondering if the Rangers just opened the steroids wing to their Hall of Fame this week with the announcement that Sierra and Toby Harrah are the club’s newest honorees.
Let me assure you that the 17-person committee that carefully studied the candidates and voted Sierra and Harrah into the Rangers Hall of Fame took the steroids issue into account before considering anyone. The possibility of Sierra using steroids was fully discussed.
Ruben missed being a unanimous choice by one vote, which tells you what our consensus was. Not one of the 18 qualified candidates whose name has been linked to steroids made the final cut to five.
The more I study the situation and talk to people, the more I become convinced that Sierra may be the most wronged player in the entire Major League Baseball steroid controversy, and I say that knowing full well that next week we could learn that he failed a drug test at some point in his career. That’s the baseball world we live in now.
The best evidence in Sierra’s favor is the numbers themselves. In 1989, at the tender age of 24, he was arguably the best player in baseball. He hit .306 with 14 triples, 29 home runs and an American League-leading 119 RBI.
He was the classic five-tool player. He could hit for average, hit for power, run, field and throw. In a voting travesty, he narrowly lost the MVP award to Milwaukee’s Robin Yount, a highway robbery that would change Sierra’s life.
The following spring, Rangers general manager Tom Grieve and manager Bobby Valentine were looking out the window of an office at Port Charlotte Stadium and saw Sierra’s car pull into the parking lot. They didn’t recognize the 200-plus pounder who got out from behind the wheel, though, so changed was Sierra.
The player who had been listed in the Rangers ’89 media guide at 6-foot-1, 175 pounds was literally bulging out of his tank top and not in a flattering way. If this was steroid bulk, Sierra had obviously gotten his hands on the worst batch of "juice" in PED history. He should have sued his dealer, if he had one.
There was no performance spike for Sierra that might have confirmed suspicions. Instead, he never again approached the remarkable numbers he had posted in ’89. In the subsequent 16 seasons, Sierra hit 20-plus homers only four more times and topped out at 25 in 1991. He managed 100 RBI on only two more occasions and hit over .300 just once.
If Sierra was cheating, he was terrible at it. At 24, his career had already begun sliding downhill. Instead of helping him, the bulk and muscle he’d added slowed him down, changed his swing and made him less of a player than he was before.
"During the [1989] season when Ruben should have been the American League’s Most Valuable Player, his performance, his body and his athleticism led most people in baseball to envision a Hall of Fame career for him," said Grieve, who like me, served on the Rangers HOF committee. "When he came to spring training the next year, 20-35 pounds overweight, he didn’t look like the same athlete.
"Talking to Ruben, he said he had tried to put on the weight, he lifted weights and he miscalculated. He thought in order to win the MVP, he needed to hit more home runs, so he tried to get stronger."
Maybe he did, but it changed him as a player and not in the way he’d hoped.
Like a lot of people, when the steroids issue first came to the forefront after Canseco’s book was released, I wondered about Sierra, remembering that spring when his body changed. It was difficult not to be suspicious in the harsh light of the developing steroids story.
But while Canseco claimed he personally injected Rafael Palmeiro, Juan Gonzalez and Pudge Rodriguez with PEDs, the only mention of Sierra in the book was that he was one of the three players who went to Oakland in the trade.
"He was such a physically talented player when he first came up and he was still a very talented player after the weight change," Grieve said, "but not the player he could have become if he’d stayed at 185 pounds.
"His career hit a plateau and went down. Nothing in his performance indicated he used steroids. He was never implicated, never charged. There was no way you could preclude Ruben from [the Rangers] Hall of Fame based on steroid use. There was no indication of it to us."
No, there wasn’t, but I arrived at the HOF meeting believing I would have to leave Sierra off my ballot, just as I would Palmeiro and Gonzalez, both highly deserving if not for the steroid issue.
What I discovered in Sierra’s case, though, was little more than innuendo, suspicion, speculation and 30 misplaced pounds.
This should be a time of celebration for Sierra, not only because of his election to the Rangers Hall of Fame but because his son was recently drafted (sixth round) and signed by the Rangers.
Ruben Sierra Jr. is listed at 6-3, 175 pounds and the scouting report says he’s an athletic center fielder with impressive tools and, as he fills out, more power.
Sounds familiar in a very good way. I suspect his dad will have some sound fatherly advice when it comes to taking care of that body.
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