Does Ryan Braun's failed test decrease the demand for Prince Fielder?

I think that if Braun is not suspended, it will possibly drive Fielder’s price up or down or possibly keep it close to the same.

Does that answer the question?

However, I appreciate your initial disclaimer, and so will attempt to evaluate your argument.

Your argue that since there are indications that perhaps Ryan Braun was using some sort of banned performance enhancing substance (with or without intent), that it is more likely that Fielder was as well, or at least that people will perceive that he was as well. Now, I don’t know much about clubhouse dynamics. I don’t think anyone on this blog knows enough about clubhouse dynamics to make an informed statement one way or another whether the notion that one player using PEDs meant that stuff was “going around the clubhouse” or whatever. Surely, one could presume, that if one player in a clubhouse had access to PEDs, that other players in that clubhouse would as well.

However, that is a presumption that I think we would be wise to steer away from. For starters, I’m pretty sure that just about any player could get their hands on PEDs if they really wanted to. I don’t think that opportunity or access to PEDs is really the key factor here. Just look, for instance, at this tweet from Dirk Hayhurst. Often, players just receive this garbage unsolicited. Second, I would suspect that this sort of behavior would be something that one hides from teammates these days, rather than something that teammates collaborate on. Therefore, that Ryan Braun has a PED question about him right now (that, remember, we still do not know much about) should not lead one to believe that his teammates are more (or less) likely to be using PEDs.

The other point of your argument, outside of the extra scrutiny or speculation awarded by the recent Braun controversy, is that players up for a contract have extra incentive to push the envelope by whatever means necessary. Certainly you are correct that players have fallen prey to this instinct before (or at least the timing between use and contract signing would so suggest). Again, I will defer to Hayhurst, who makes the point that from a struggling player’s perspective, use of PEDs can be rationalized. This is not to say that PED use is ok, of course, but more to focus on the fact that players have a lot at stake in doing whatever they can to earn a decent paycheck. To assume that this is not the case would be to ignore just how commonplace the use of PEDs has been in recent times.

However, I do not think that these observations shed any light on Prince Fielder as an individual. While one could speculate that he has incentive to do so, it would merely be idle speculation of PED use (all players have incentive to be better at baseball!), which is unfair and ridiculous. That said, I do not think you think this, or that this is the point of your post. Rather, you are concerned that the mere perception that he might be associated with PEDs could have some effect on his market value by making GMs nervous about how authentic his performance has been. To this notion, I agree with SuperDopaLiciousFunkStar’s elegant and concise conclusion. I don’t think that GMs would buy into that notion, or that the news that one of his teammates is suspected of using and therefore that stuff was “around the clubhouse” makes it any more likely that Fielder was using.

Sure, we don’t know the extent to which GMs evaluate that sort of thing. But given the purely speculative nature of the affair, I highly doubt that it should be a factor in competition with the more concrete concerns regarding contract length, amount, projected performance, signing team’s needs, etc. But we can hope that every other team’s GM does worry about that. Because that would mean, peaches, cheaper Fielder for us.