It’s clear we need to move away from that heavy-hitting post about Tim Brewster’s assistant coaching accomplishments and get into something lighter like steroids in baseball to give everyone a chance to clear their heads and smile for a few hours. At issue: whether it is fair to players who are experiencing an increase in power numbers this season that many people assume, or at least consider, they are taking steroids. It’s been bandied about by fans and media members to explain David Ortiz’s power drop. Some fans — though casually and usually even jokingly — even wonder what’s gotten into Joe Mauer.

The issue had the spotlight on it yesterday, primarily through lattewarrior’s post over at TFP, but also via extensive coverage on ESPN.com and the WWL’s Outside The Lines program. The Phillies’ Raul Ibanez, having a monster season with 20 HRs already in his first year with Philadelphia, lashed out at a blogger who questioned whether his power was all natural. The nice thing about this situation is that, except for using the trite “blogging in the basement” routine, Ibanez stated his objections fairly and clearly. He said he’d take any test, anywhere and that he believes such accusations are irresponsible. That said, he also understands the era:

“Unfortunately, I understand the environment we’re in and the events that have led us to this era of speculation,” Ibanez said, according to the Inquirer. “At the same time, you can’t just walk down the street and accuse somebody of being a thief because they didn’t have a nice car yesterday and they do today. You can’t say that guy is a thief.“

Then again, the blogger — Jerod Morris of Midwest Sports Fan — never said Ibanez was a thief, to continue the analogy. His post was a long, pretty well-constructed look at Ibanez’s hot start that included analysis of ballparks and other trends. This was the bulk of the controversial stuff:

Thirdly, it’s time for me to begrudgingly acknowledge the elephant in the room: any aging hitter who puts up numbers this much better than his career averages is going to immediately generate suspicion that the numbers are not natural, that perhaps he is under the influence of some sort of performance enhancer. And since I was not able to draw any absolute parallels between his prodigiously improved HR rate and his new ballpark’s hitter-friendliness, it would be foolish to dismiss the possibility that “other” performance enhancers could be part of the equation. Sorry Raul Ibanez and Major League Baseball, that’s just the era that we are in — testing or no testing. Personally, I am withholding judgment until we see a full seasons’ worth of stats.

So what we have here is a pretty good spot for a debate, thanks to two men on opposite sides stating their cases reasonably. Has baseball done so much to lose fans’ trust when it comes to steroids that all players are fair game and unfortunate byproducts of the system when it comes to steroid suspicion? Or do players still deserve the benefit of the doubt and an innocent until proven guilty mindset when putting up power numbers that deviate from the norm?

Fasola-link! The overtime spike in the NBA.

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