Red Sox Exercise 2023-24 Club Option On Alex Cora

dennyd – No measurable impact. Taking any substance whether it’s steroids, cocaine, amphetamines, coffee, tobacco or even Red Bull impacts a person’s system. The question that must be answered is how do you relate it to performance. If Red Bull awakens your senses do you therefore hit the baseball better? Are you faster on the bases? There is no way to answer that question so there is no way to know if the use of specific substances changed the outcome of any specific game. There are also so many other considerations when it comes to steroids and it’s impact. The timing of taking it, the dosage, the rate in metabolizes. If you take it right before an at bat is that too late or right before you pitch an inning. All that can be concluded is that there is no measurable impact during the course of a game. So that leads to measuring it as a whole.

In the case of the Astros, the process is well documented and you can hear the cans being banged and you can literally count the hits that happen during the game after the banging of the can. That links the action of cheating to specific outcomes.

With steroids, it was a double edged sword. They were banned to help stop the side effects from happening to players. It was a safety issue. How did the steroids help in any at bat? There is no way to pinpoint the impact and there is no way to know if it was positive or negative. Also, since both pitchers and hitters were taking them what was the net impact on any at bat which led to a net impact on the game results. Steroids were declared cheating based on theoretical reasons not empirical evidence. It wasn’t so much the proof of impact that fans cared about it was the idea that players were trying to gain an edge and make more money by taking them. That’s why it’s so personal for some people. It’s not about how many more games the team won, it’s about an individual attempting to get an advantage over another player. When you take that concept and realize that steroids began in the 70s and existed 20 years without any complaints you have to ask yourself why in the 90s did the public suddenly start being concerned? The answer is the jump in home runs and individual performances that were greater than in previous years, decades and even generations. Baseball heroes were beginning to be surpassed by the next generation and that did not sit well with the previous generation much like when Maris was harassed for beating Babe Ruth’s record. It was public pettiness.

Nobody took the time to evaluate the impact of a hitter and pitcher facing each other after both had taken steroids, they ONLY saw the rising home runs and jumped to wrong conclusions. It’s no coincidence that Canseco was a trigger for outing steroids. People saw what he did when he came into the league and had to justify why he could do what he was doing compared to the good old days.

By sheer coincidence, the MLB had received a more juiced set of baseballs for the 1987 season and the result was a 16.5% jump in home runs per game between 1986 and 1987. Since nobody was closing in on any significant records there was no public uproar at that time and when the home runs per game in 1988 dropped nearly 30% the issue of steroids, which was actually the juiced baseball went away.

When you consider 1987 was over 10 years after steroids first became popular in baseball, there should have been a growth in HRS/GAME/YEAR beginning in the 70s but there wasn’t. In fact, the early 80s HR rate dropped to numbers comparable to the late sixties when pitchers dominated the game. So, it’s hard so say steroids were impacting the overall game of baseball in the 80s and since 1987 was the only abnormal year for home runs you have to ask yourself if there was a sudden surge in steroid use that year or was the anomaly caused by something else. The huge drop off in HRs in 1988 could have been from a major portion of the steroid users suddenly quitting them OR the more logical explanation is MLB went back to the 1986 baseball.

Clearly, Canseco was a steroid user as was McGwire whether through his Andro or physical shots as Canseco described so why did their HRs track more closely to the juice in the ball rather than rise from more and more use of steroids? They lifted more weights, got greater stamina and Canseco improved his foot speed from taking the steroids, why didn’t that translate into more home runs, a higher average or more extra base hits? My conclusion is that steroids while being considered a performance enhancer didn’t enhance the right things to improve home run hitting, batting average or total bases. It can be argued it helped base stealing and I have no evidence to refute that claim but from the hitting side there is no direct correlation between steroids and hitting.

There is, however, a direct correlation between the juice in the baseball and the home runs hit per game per year. Since the ball changed at the start of the 1994 season when a strike was looming, would it shock you to know that Selig was doing his part to popularize baseball? After all this guy just ousted his predecessor and convinced the owners he’d be an improved commissioner that would follow their direction and promote the hell out of baseball. Would it be such a shock to find out he went back to the 1987 baseball to generate interest in the game? Well, he did.

Beginning in 1994, the juice in the baseball jumped to a new plateau. Until then 1987 was the ONLY year with the juice level over 1.0. For the next 16 years (yes the hey day for the supposed Steroid Era) the juice factor was over 1.0. Then, in 2010, it dropped back to 0.95.

So, if steroids had such a profound impact on the game why didn’t it show up in the numbers? No steady growth in HRs, in fact, no growth at all for the first 20 years. Think back now to the events during the congressional investigation. It was Selig who gained from throwing guys like Bonds, Sosa and McGwire under the bus. Fifteen years earlier Selig was promoting steroid use as an owner of the Brewers and now he was becoming the savior of baseball by destroying the careers of select players. Why? Ego. It got him elected to the baseball hall of fame and all he was during his baseball life was a bad owner of a small market team.

That’s the true story of the Steroid Era lie. Today, the juice levels far exceed the Bonds era yet nobody is suggesting it’s because steroids are being masked better than any time in history or HGH is being masked far better than steroids were. Nobody wants that scandal because nobody has anything to gain from it. The cheating scandal superseded any HGH/Steroid scandal since home run rates are at an all time high.

If it wasn’t for me and all the other “juiced ball” conspiracy theorists nobody would even be talking about why guys like Tatis and Devers are hitting home runs at such a young age. Are they like Aaron or Mays? Or is it because Aaron and Mays also started their careers when the juice in the baseball was peaking?

dennyd – you are right that no impact should have been no measurable impact. The net effect of pitchers and catchers in an individual game situation can not be measured like the cheating scandal. My overall point was more targeted at the fact that the data supports no correlation of steroids and HRs but a huge correlation between the juice in the ball and home runs. The index for 2019 was 1.39 and 2020 was 1.28. I am in the process of calculating the 2021 index.

FYI
Aaron hit 47 (most in his career) in 1971 with a juice factor of 0.74
Bonds hit 73 (most in his career) in 2001 with a juice factor of 1.12
Ruth hit 60 (most in his career) in 1927 with a juice factor of 0.37

Ruth peaked at age 32, Aaron peaked at age 37, Bonds peaked at age 36

Ruth peaked during the first jump in juice labeled the LIVE BALL ERA
Aaron peaked during the second jump in juice beginning in 1950
Bonds peaked during the third jump in juice beginning in 1994

The juice in the ball has impacted the HRs in the game for 150 years.
The impact of steroids can not be measured nor observed from the data.