Rafael Palmeiro lies like a cheap rug

Alleged or believed baseball steroid users have taken different angles in the court of public opinion (and, in the case of Barry Bonds, in the court of legal record, too).

Bonds has simply clammed up. Mark MacGwire gave a semi-apology, semi-tearful, pseudo-tearful or whatever. Roger Clemens got indignant and had a lawsuit backfire on him. Sammy Sosa forgot the English language, then bleached his face white in an apparent attempt to go undercover.

Meanwhile, nobody has lied about the issue as brazenly as Rafael Palmeiro, apparently, who gets more brazen, if anything, now that he's up for the Hall of Fame.

Here's a good example:

"I had no motivation to take steroids because I was at the end of my career."

Really? Canseco alleges he shot you up a full decade before the end of your career.

Raffy then says he doesn't understand why people don't believe him, and cites his own statistics as part of why he's believable.

"I don't want to take anything for granted, but there was a legitimate chance that I was going to get 3,000,"

I'm not arguing that, myself. I don't doubt Raffy would likely have had 3K hits without juicing. What IS in question is the source of a power surge that, throwing out 1991 as an outlier, began in 1993 at the relatively late age of 28, per your career record and actually got MORE unbelievable as you moved into your early, then middle, 30s. From the age of 30-38, Raffy, you hit 38 or more home runs nine straight seasons. Now, you may not have juiced as heavily as Bonds, but ...

These numbers are ... unusual, at the least, especially the homer numbers:

                                                     
Year   Age  Tm 2B 3B HR RBI   BA  OBP  SLG   OPS OPS+
1995    30 BAL 30  2 39 104 .310 .380 .583  .963  145
1996    31 BAL 40  2 39 142 .289 .381 .546  .927  132
1997    32 BAL 24  2 38 110 .254 .329 .485  .815  113
1998    33 BAL 36  1 43 121 .296 .379 .565  .945  144
1999    34 TEX 30  1 47 148 .324 .420 .630 1.050  159
2000    35 TEX 29  3 39 120 .288 .397 .558  .954  137
2001    36 TEX 33  0 47 123 .273 .381 .563  .944  141
2002    37 TEX 34  0 43 105 .273 .391 .571  .962  146
2003    38 TEX 21  2 38 112 .260 .359 .508  .867  117

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 12/30/2010.

And, as I've blogged before, there's the issue of a healthy star athlete in his late 30s doing Viagra commercials. Is there a reason you might know that much about Viagra? Have to use it?

Interestingly, given Raffy's 3K hits/500HRs and 1,800 RBIs, his OPS+ is "only" 132 and his career offensive WAR ranks only No. 78. Makes you realize, on the OPS+, just how much steroids, and other offensive tweaks, screwed with the era of about 1994-2005.