I am shocked, absolutely shocked, by who leads the AL in OPS (on-base plus slugging). It is none other than Jason Giambi, he of the feloniously leaked grand-jury testimony in which he admitted to taking steriods, he of the mysterious gastrointestinal ailments, he of the shrunken arms and forsaken swings. It's the same Giambi who almost got sent to the minors a couple of months ago, the same one who couldn't muster enough power to send a pop-up out of the infield.
Well, he's up to 21 home runs after two last night, and leads everyone else by a mile in on-base percentage. Maybe he still has the speed to turn a double into a single, but his complete reversal is stunning.
What does this mean for our conventional wisdom about steroids? Is Giambi back on the juice? Unlikely, given the new testing environment, but possible, I suppose. Is he simply better after a long time off and a potentially serious illness? Was he just in a slump before? And now that he's hitting as well has he did when he won the AL MVP, don't we have to back off our assumptions about how much steroids fueled his (and by extension Rafael Palmeiro's or Barry Bonds') success?