Well we saw him comin' with a squinty eye.
He had a bat that boomed baseballs into the sky!
The Fens commenced to shakin' and they said "Pa-pi!"
He looked like a steroid cheater to me...

He was a big fat, gap-toothed, lyin', Red Sox steroid user!
(Big fat, gap-toothed, lyin', Red Sox steroid user)
A big fat, gap-toothed, lyin', Red Sox steroid user!
Their titles are tainted, you see!

Apologies to Sheb Wooley...

: )

Bon Papi's greatest hit:

Shot in the ass
And I'm to blame
I give Sox a bad name
Manny played his part and we stole those games
We give Sox a bad name

[100] the bubble of denial that steroids did not play a part in making some of these recent guys into better ball players than they would have been if they had not used steroids.

do we have any idea how much better? of course not. i think we'll never know becuase the data is too mixed up with natural ups and downs, hyperresponders vs wally joyners, placebo effect, and secret users spoiling the non-user data base.

anyway, this is supposed to be a happy occasion, no need to bicker and argue amongst ourselves.

you guys need a big study that's never going to happen to make the call, that's fine. i don't.

Ortiz just juiced a 3 run HR to give the Sox the lead against Oakland.

[103] I agree completely on the "no reason to argue this one", but let me just be sure I understand you. Your argument is: "I don't need any data to know that steroids help guys be better baseball players, and besides we'll never have the data - I just know that they help." Please let me know if I'm wrong, because that's what I've gotten out of all your comments on the subject.

I don't know what's made me crack up more, Sliced's "s is for steroids, that's good enough for me", his Bon Papi refrain in [102], or a.O.'s "Roid Sox".

The Sox are coming to the Bronx next Thursday, right? Wowie-zowie. That ought to be something to see.

[103] Huh.
So you think going with the empirical evidence is living in a bubble?? That's a weird view.

Sadly, Big Roidy just ripped a 3-run homer to put the Roid Sox on top. The occasion just got a little less happy.

From the laboratory in the AL East
To the Fenway Clubhouse where the cheaters feast
David Ortiz came from his humble abode
To catch a jolt from the secret commode

He did the mash
He did the baseball mash
The baseball mash
It was a Selig smash
He did the mash
It caught on in a flash
He did the mash
He did the baseball mash...

Man, this stuff writes itself!

: )

[105] & [106] My stance, stated now for the 3rd time, is that it is entirely logical to me, both as an intellectual and an amatuer baseball player and major league baseball fan, that if you take the same player and make him stronger, he will hit the ball further.

So if there are substances known to increase the recovery period between work outs, and increase the energy level during work outs, and that are known to produce bigger, stronger versions of the same athletes, that's enough for me to conclude that some baseball players of the recent era used steroids to increase their strength and that strength manifested itself in superior performance on the field than was otherwise attainable.

[105] & [106] And I respect your restraint from rushing to judgment. I don't think it's necessary here, but it's admirable nonetheless.

[108] Lots of things that are entirely logical, in that sense, are not true.
Sure, steroids increase muscle mass. But they will generally have other effects. It's not a matter of logic whether these other effects are negative or positive. That's why it's a good idea to look at empirical evidence.
The idea that looking at empirical evidence is living in a bubble is what seems so peculiar to me.

[110] i see it as living in a bubble of denial, protecting oneself from the hurtful truth that baseball's #'s are f-ed because of this stuff, but if the word's a problem, cheerfully withdrawn.

i think logic is the best we're going to get in this case. i don't see how it's possible to get any empirical evidence. of course it's prudent to wait for the data to emerge, but how exactly do you see that happening?

On the bright side, we may get to see Papelbon implode again.

[110] of course it's presumptive of me to assume you have protective reasons for not wanting to conclude that steroids have had a real, if ultimately immeasurable, impact on the game. so sorry if that rubbed you the wrong way.

Just one more time, I can't resist:

Roid Sox

[112] Always worth watching...

[111] There's already evidence -- the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel study, cited above, for example. It's far from conclusive evidence, of course. I agree there's no point in waiting for conclusive evidence -- it's not coming any time soon.

[113] No worries!

[116] No Worries Big Papi!

GM say your power is down
and you may have to wear a frown
No worries! Big Papi!

In this life everybody has trouble
When you juice it can cost you double
What happened, Big Papi?

[115] How do you isolate the "steroid effect" from any of the other multitude of factors that impact performance in that study? I just think we're left to our own best judgment here.

Rats. After game celebration at Big *'s locker. BYOHGH.

So, let me get this straight. . . The evidence that steroids may not help you play baseball is that some players' numbers didn't improve when on the juice? No-one here is saying that they are a magic pill that allows you to center more balls on the bat.

Are we in agreement that there are PEDs that exist that give you a workout/musculature edge? (I think that's not debatable)

Now, if you're thinking from a probability standpoint, ,some percentage (20%? 50%? 80%?) of those using PEDs will use them to effectively enhance their bodies for baseball use. Some percentage of that first group of players will actually have enough talent to actually have the enhancement make a difference. An even smaller percentage of the second group will actually have such a pronounced uptick in their stats as to arouse suspicion and make people tend to think their is a correlation to PED use. (this is a simplification--there are many more variables)

for example: prove that Jeremy Giambi and Ozzie Canseco didn't improve or hit long-balls further because of PEDs. Maybe Giambi would never had made the majors without steroids. It's not really possible to know.

In short, just because it doesn't help everyone, doesn't mean it doesn't help anyone.

[111] There are many statistical ways of analyzing the existing data without having to rely on what seems logical.

For example, one can look at the people on the Mitchell report and compare their performance to the average player in MLB. But one needs to adjust for park factor, age, etc... Then after all the adjustments, the PED players should perform better than the ones not on PED. Or one can compare before and after PED and look for performance increase. These studies have been done (see my links above).

Additionally, it is NOT true that increased muscle mass leads to better baseball performance. Not according to doctors, physicists and baseball people. For example, most of home run power comes from your lower torso. So you can bulk up your biceps all you want and you won't hit a ton more homers. Steroids increase muscles in your upper body more than your lower body. There is a lot of scientific literature that talks about that.

For pitchers it is even less helpful to bulk up.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/29/AR2006042901195.html
Medical experts say that the muscle growth promoted by steroids does not include a corresponding growth in the tendons, ligaments and other connective tissue that effectively hold the arm together when it is catapulted violently during a pitch. A side effect of steroids, in fact, is a weakening of that connective tissue, which can lead to a variety of injuries when artificially strengthened muscles apply too much force.

""It's a question in everybody's head: Has it helped anybody in terms of performance?" said Robert Donatelli, a physical therapist who has consulted for the Milwaukee Brewers and Philadelphia Phillies and tennis player Andy Roddick. "With pitchers, I don't really see how that would help them in terms of improving velocity. The velocity is mostly dependent upon how far the arm goes back . . . [and] how much time the hand has to develop speed to throw the ball.

"I don't care how strong you are; you can't have a short arc of rotation."

Donatelli said reaching peak velocity in the pitching motion could be compared to a race car's acceleration. If a car can climb from zero to 60 mph in four seconds, it might reach 75 mph in five. The theory is similar for pitching: The farther back a pitcher can take his arm, the more time he has to accelerate the ball before releasing it. Brute strength has little to do with it, Donatelli said, which is why skinny pitchers such as New York Yankees reliever Mariano Rivera and New York Mets ace Pedro Martinez are able to throw hard."

[119] The Unabridged RSN Dictionary defines "BYOHGH" as "Brown-bagged 'Guava Juice'!"

: )

[121] I'm definitely not discounting that PED use could be neutral or detrimental to any given player, but at the same time how can we look at the career arcs of Clemens, Sosa, Bonds, Brady Anderson, etc. and think anything other than that they figured out an artificial advantage that worked. I don't see another explanation.

How do you isolate the “steroid effect” from any of the other multitude of factors that impact performance in that study?

You don't. Unless there is some bias in the sample, you just figure those other factors cancel out. So, for instance, some guys who took steroids also started to wear out mentally, let's suppose, while others improved because they learned something from a hitting coach. But overall, if steroids really helped, you'd expect to see more improvement than deterioration. And that doesn't show up.

So, let me get this straight. . . The evidence that steroids may not help you play baseball is that some players’ numbers didn’t improve when on the juice?

No. That is not the evidence. The evidence is that in the sample, there was no gain on average from steroid use.
Do you see the difference? That really is evidence, whereas what you said would not be evidence.

Hmmmmmmm.........Guava Juice.........

@ #121: Clearly, you do not understand why players took/take PEDs. Strength is part of it, but the biggest thing is artificially faster healing so that you can simply play more games with less fatigue (i.e., at closer to "full strength"). ARod said as much when he discussed what advantage he thought the PEDs gave him.

Speaking as someone who has played ~80 games in a season, I can tell you that the hardest part of the game is the drain on your energy, without necessarily any identifiable injury (or perhaps only minor aches) that occurs over the course of the season. This is why players previously took amphetamines. Except amphetamines do not help you heal faster, as the modern PEDs do.

[126] That seems very plausible -- and it does seem to me that that's the reason most users had in mind. For HGG it's the overwhelming reason.

I suspect the reason the popular conception hasn't caught up with this news is that it's much harder to get outraged about a guy who cheated by taking something to help him get back on the field faster than it if the way it helps is to make your biceps huge and home-run-inducing.

[123] et al.

Those who do not seem to care much about the PED issue will never be convinced, because there will NEVER be enough data to meet their threshold for evidence on the effects of PEDs on the game. Even if it were proven conclusively that PEDs had a definite measurable impact, their response would then be:

a. but everyone was using so everyone had an advantage (ie, no advantage); or
b. we'll never know how much individual players took, when, for how long, etc., so even if we know that X amount of steroid Y yields Z effect, we will never know impact of steroid Y had on the game.

I think this is completely the wrong way to approach the issue, as most anyone who reads these threads knows already. I think the very fact that we will never, because so many players (and owners, etc) systematically lied, obfuscated, turned a blind eye, acted naively, etc, means that an entire generation of MLB is under suspicion. The entire era is tainted (or whatever) because an entire generation of baseball people have ruptured the trust and credibility it had with its fans.

For me, personally, every record, achievement, number, total, etc from this generation is rendered meaningless. Further, the cynicism of both players and fans really turns me off. This era has, frankly, stolen a part of my enjoyment for the game.

It doesn't mean that I will stop being a fan, but I have a hard time getting excited about great performances anymore. they are no longer historical achievements to me..they are just nintendo game scores.

[109] Much obliged. I am happy to agree to disagree on this one. Its a tough issue to deal with, no doubt. One night I got into a two-hour long, very loud argument - on the phone, no less! - with my dad over steroids and PEDs. End result: neither of us convinced the other of anything, my wife was so mad at how stupid I was (arguing on the phone for 2 hours) that she didn't talk to me for a day, and for the same reason, my mom was ticked at my dad for at least two days. The moral of the story - you can never win. ;)

[121] i don't think anything you said in that post is at all meaningful to the question we are posing. but looking at what you offer, it's clear we're just not even talking about the same things and really not going to meet anywhere.

plus the red sox won, papi was the big hero, and karmically, i feel responsible since i was so happy he got busted. the red sox are like rats, they're most dangerous when backed into corner.

[124] "if steroids really helped, you’d expect to see more improvement than deterioration."

I don't see why that's true. It's very possible that only a small percentage understand or are effective at using them to great advantage. The big assumption at the heart of your assertion seems to be that steroids are either like a medicine that cures Baseball Skills Deficiency or there's no evidence that they work at all.

You still haven't addressed the question of how Clemens and Bonds got markedly better at an age that no-one else in the previous 125 years had gotten markedly better. And how Sosa & Ortiz went form mediocre to Babe Ruth overnight at ages when they should have already peaked.

I admit I'm going on circumstantial evidence. But then again, how did I know five years ago that Papi was on something? I was just waiting for the inevitable news.

[126] good point on PEDs from a different (and probably more significant) angle

[123] Given what I said before about muscle mass not helping pitchers before, I would be curious to see how you explain how steroids helped Clemens.

BTW, Nolan Ryan struck out 301 batters at the age of 42 after switching TO the AL. His career arc is very similar to Clemens numbers. Was he on roids also? (assuming roids help)

Superstars are different animals from normal players who in turn are different from us. What is the normal career arc for a superstar?

So I don't see how your compare Superstars declining arcs from normal players. To use a different sport as an analogy, Michael Jordan scored 20 points per game in his last year at age 39. That was still better than many players average in their peak! Ruth's OPS+ at 39? 161.

[128]

Those who do not seem to care much about the PED issue will never be convinced, because there will NEVER be enough data to meet their threshold for evidence on the effects of PEDs on the game.

Do you have any grounds at all for saying that?

If there were good evidence for the effects of PEDs on the game, I would certainly listen to it and adjust my beliefs accordingly. I'm actually paying attention to the evidence and my beliefs are guided by it, and I'll definitely continue to do so.

I don't think you're on good grounds here at all. If you write off the empirical evidence we have so far, you're in an extremely bad position to assert that your opponents are the ones who will "never be convinced" by evidence.

(I don't mean to be tacitly admitting that I "do not care much" about PED use. I care in some ways.)

[128] I see your point, but monkeypants, the problem is that every "era" of baseball records are tainted in some way.

Pre-1900 records are tainted because the game was so different - balls and strikes and whatnot.

1901-1947 - African-Americans (and many others) excluded. Shoot, to be fair, we probably should say 1959, since that's the first year in which every team in MLB finally had at least one African-American player.

1960-1968 - artificial mucking with the pitchers' mound and strike zone

1969-2005 - drug use: amphetamines, recreational drugs, and then steroids/PEDs - and its entirely possible that greenies were around from well into the 50s, but '69 was the season covered by "Ball Four", so I picked that

[127] I'm pretty sure that JC Bradbury, over at the Sabernomics blog has done an admirable job collected plenty of stuides, including IIRC peer-reviewed, journal-published studies, that show hGH has zero effect on healing time.

I'm chiming in late here without having read much of the preceding. I just want to say that, while the "Roid Sox" parody songs etc. are quite clever, there's a serious glass-house effect going on here. I suppose Red Sox fans can get some because they dealt some, but the main take-away from this for me is that no one's hands were clean, which we thought we know, but which it seems we're still surprised when we find out for sure. I don't mean there weren't clean players, but I don't think there were any clean teams. Not one. So to say the Sox's titles are devalued because of Manny and Ortiz or the Yankees' titles were devalued because of Clemens, Pettitte, Knoblauch, Justice, etc., it's really something of a Mexican standoff. And don't try to split hairs about how many players did what or how much it helped them or how important they were to the team's success. Integrity isn't saying "you cheated more so we're better," it's saying "we all screwed up, let's forgive, repent, and move on."

[132]

I wouldn't bet Ryan wasn't taking steroids. I would bet he was taking greenies. But let's just assume he wasn't doing PEDs

- Ryan had no apparent decline in his 30s like Clemens obviously did for multiple years, followed by an unprecedented and sustained rebound to greatness.

- Ryan didn't get markedly better. Neither did Jordan (20 ppg? that's a huge decline from 35) or Ruth.

[131] Hank Aaron had is best season at the age of 37. That's just off the top of my head. I think that with research, you can find others that had good seasons at an old age.

Plus Clemens did not get markedly better at an old age. There are many ways of explaining his results as he got older.
1. He didn't improve until he switched to the NL -- weaker league and weaker division plus pitchers hit.
2. His strikeouts still diminished as he aged. ERA is based on team defense as much as the pitcher.

“if steroids really helped, you’d expect to see more improvement than deterioration.”
I don’t see why that’s true. It’s very possible that only a small percentage understand or are effective at using them to great advantage.

If so, then why doesn't the evidence show that the guys who took steroids on average improved? Of the ones who didn't use them to great advantage, you'd expect no net change. Add in the ones who used them effectively and the net change among all users should be positive.

You still haven’t addressed the question of how Clemens and Bonds got markedly better at an age that no-one else in the previous 125 years had gotten markedly better. And how Sosa & Ortiz went form mediocre to Babe Ruth overnight at ages when they should have already peaked.

I'd like to see the evidence that nobody in the previous 125 years got markedly better at those ages. (And Clemens' best years didn't come after his steroid use, for that matter.) The Ortiz example isn't very good, either, since we have no idea when he started using.
Look, lots of players in ML history have gotten strikingly better mid-career. Nolan Ryan did, for instance. [I see Start Spreading also points to this example.] I don't know why this happens, maybe it varies from case to case.

[134] Excellent point Shaun. If you start dismissing achievements for one reason or another you'll eventually find a reason to discount every achievement the game ever had (curious scoring decisions during DiMaggio's streak? Jeffrey Maier? etc.).

What happened happened, both the cheating and the achieving, you can't change it. It just makes historical context all that more important, which isn't necessarily a bad thing for those of us who love to read, talk, and think about the game.

[136] Nolan Ryan didn't get markedly better? He was much better from 30 to 44 than he was before age 30. Much.

[131] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/22/opinion/22cole.html?

"What should not be overlooked is that Bonds’s profile is strikingly like Babe Ruth’s high performance level until near the end of his career, with one standout home run year — a year in which other players on other teams also exceeded their previous levels.

During the last six years of Ruth’s 22-year career he hit 198 — or 28 percent — of his 714 home runs; Bonds, in the last six years of his 22-year career, hit 195 — 26 percent — of his 762. There is no convincing way to demonstrate that Bonds’s performance owed more to drugs than Ruth’s did to his prodigious use of alcohol and tobacco."

[138] "Of the ones who didn’t use them to great advantage, you’d expect no net change. "

- What if they could be detrimental if used improperly? Then you'd expect many players numbers to go down as well.

- Clemens won two Cy Youngs (and at least one pitching Triple Crown) in Toronto immediately after leaving Boston and following 3 or 4 decidedly down seasons. McNamee was his trainer there.

- A quick check of Ryan B-R page shows that his greatest years were, as expected 25-32 after which he sustained very good for another 10 or 11 years.
(a better example for a unexpected late career excellence tis Randy Johnson, but again there is no severe, sustained drop-off followed by huge, sustained rebound).

Hank Aaron (Mays, Ruth, Musial, Rose etc.) - sustained brilliance followed by slightly late, but expected drop-off

- Look, we'll never know for sure why anything happens, I'm just looking at the available evidence (and I'm no Nate Silver) and then deciding what I think is likely to be the reason. I am a huge Barry Bonds fan. He was my absolute favorite player for the ENTIRE time he was in the league. I'm not one of those crying about the sanctity of the record book and all of that. I fully believe Bonds did PEDs. I fully believe he wouldn't have hit 73 homers in any season without them, let alone at an advanced baseball age. I still think he was great. I'm not trying to cast aspersions, I just can't understand how some insist there's no potential advantage in PEDs--not for every user, but for some.

[134] The reference to the segregated era is a red herring that gets trotted out all the time. The reality is that blacks made up a relatively small percentage of the population, so unless you feel that they are inherently superior from an athletic standpoint, the amount that the league was "weakened" because they were excluded is likely exaggerated.

But even if we accept that the league was significantly weaker, at least all lily white players were competing against the same competition more or less. This is far different from the PED era when some subset of players--we don't know who or how many--took some amount of PEDs which had some effect (how much we don't know).

And this era seems to correspond to a period when offensive records were blown out of the water.

[139] And who appreciate the history of it all. Thanks, Cliff.

In a nutshell, that's why I don't care about PED use: no number is pure, everything is subject to context.

[133] RIYank,

My position is an extrapolation from what I read on these threads in other sports forums. Perhaps I overstate the case, but by and large I stand by what I said. The beauty of the PED era is that for those who are scandalized (like me), the impossibility of proving who did what when casts a shadow on everyone, while for those who refuse to be scandalized, the ambiguities and gaps in the evidence provide infinite cover.

[135]

Integrity isn’t saying “you cheated more so we’re better,” it’s saying “we all screwed up, let’s forgive, repent, and move on.”

I disagree with your formulation of integrity, which requires forgiveness. But in any case, I have yet to see repenting on anyone's part--at least not plausible repentance. Finally, from what I have been reading over the last year or two, the prevailing attitude of most fans is that no one "screwed up."

[144] I agree that all numbers are subject to context. But several of baseball's great, all-time records appeared to be applicable across generations. 60 HRs seemed like the maximum, more or less, for 60 or 70 years, for example. Then suddenly these records are blown out of the water.

I have no problem accepting numbers in context, so long as we also choose to ignore all-time records (whose relevance matters only if we compare achievements across eras rather than only within a given era). Fine. Then let us not celebrate, say, A-Rod's pursuit of the all-time HR record--he may merely end up as the 1990s-2000s HR leader. Let us not marvel at Ichiro's all-time single season hit record, and so on.

[141] last 6 years of career is arbitrary (coincidentally Bonds hit 73 in his 7th to last year).

What's significant is age and arc:
Ruth peaked at 32, (60 HR) then sustained slightly lower in the first half of his 30s (46 to 54 HR) then moved steadily downward from age 37 on.

Bonds had hit more than 45 HR only once until age 35 when he went 49, 73, 46, 45, 45 to get to age 39, was injured for a year, then hit 26 & 28 in his early 40s at age that Ruth was retired. He was still among the most feared hitters in baseball, but was most likely blackballed/driven from the game.

markedly different arcs.

[143] I can appreciate your point.

However, my point wasn't that the league was weaker without Afrcian-American participation, but rather different due to a choice made by many within the game, which created an impact on the numbers we can't ever know. If Satchel Paige was allowed to play in the majors in the 1930s, its entirely possible he may have faced Babe Ruth, instead of a white-skinned pitcher who actually did. Ruth might have hit 705 career home runs as a result - or he might have hit 720. Maybe the leagues would have expanded earlier, with more players to choose from - we know expansion tends to muck numbers up. Etc.

Context matters, and context is ever-present when it comes to the numbers.

[135] Cliff, more or less what I said (or tried to say) somewhere in the 50s on this thread. I'm not as happy as some people seem to be, nor did I ever think Ortiz was a bad person, an evil man, a doofus. He does seem to be an exhibit A sort for the benefits of the drugs, and this does NOT discount the argument made here (at length!) that steroids may not help every player (or every position).

Glass houses are indeed, an issue here, with some 90+ names left on that one list.

[147] Decades seems like a pretty arbitrary way of splitting up records, no?

As for things applying across generations, it entirely depends on one's generation. Sure, for 34 years (1927 to 1961), 60 was the all-time single-season home run record. And then for 37 years (1961 to 1998), it was 61. But note that those alive in the teens and 20s saw it go from 29 to 59 - more than double! - in just two years.

And that's just home runs. The longevity of a record is a nice thing, but not the only thing.

[151] Yes, and everyone recognizes that the "live ball" ear represented a quantum leap in the game play on the field, such that often (but not always) those records are kept separate from the numbers achieved before c. 1920.

I only picked decades because they line up more or less with A-Rod's career. You are correct--it is arbitrary, and points out just how meaningless records really are unless you can reasonably compare across a wider time frame.

[142] NoamSane,

- What if they could be detrimental if used improperly? Then you’d expect many players numbers to go down as well.

Fair enough, that's entirely consistent with the evidence.
I don't say the evidence can rule out all possible scenarios in which PEDs are actually effective. If someone has some evidence that there's a particularly good way to use them and other ways are detrimental, I'll buy that.

[153]

McGwire is an interesting example. He hit like 49 HRs his rookie year, skinny as a rail, but soon after bulked up big time. I was living in San Francisco, and everyone baseball fan in the Bay Area suspected the Bash Bros. were on the juice. McGwire missed a LOT of time in the early & mid 90s with ankle and foot injuries. I always theorized that his bulked up body was too big for his lower extremities to support. Who knows he might have been a better player without PEDs, y' never know.

[142] "I’m not trying to cast aspersions, I just can’t understand how some insist there’s no potential advantage in PEDs–not for every user, but for some."

First, of course Bonds did PEDs. That is documented in gov't files that eventually became "Book of Shadows" so there is no doubting it.

Or maybe Barry is just a freak of nature? Maybe Barry's renewed devotion to physical fitness (while in SF) contributed to his improved performance? Maybe he is an anomaly? Ruth was more of an outlier when he hit more homers than any TEAM.

Or maybe, as you say, PEDs affected Barry differently than others. If you want to say that on the average there is no advantage to PEDs but for some people it really packs a wallop. Then I need a reason why Barry benefits from PED and training when Ozzie Canseco doesn't benefit from PED and training. The anomaly explanation is more believable to me than "PEDs helped Barry more than other people" theory.

BTW, Nate Silver did look for an effect of PEDs on baseball performance in Baseball Prospectus and found nothing.

[142] There is no evidence that PEDs didn't help (or hurt) Ozzie Canseco--maybe he wouldn't have even been in Single A without them. Maybe he didn't take good advice from Jose on how to use them and they actually hurt his chances: we can't know (I believe anyway).

Statistical analysis is not the end answer for every question. It's merely a tool. I believe that N. Silver is a brilliant statistician, but he has no records of who was using, what substances were used, how much, for how long, etc. so his findings don't really prove much on this question.

Nate Silver may not have been looking for evidence that in the Selig/Steroid era actually there was actually a divergence from the mean--a wider statistical spread. Stephen J. Gould did an analysis that showed that the extremes of baseball achievement were being muted, moving toward the center throughout the history of the game (up to the early 90s I believe). No more .400 hitters, but also no more .150 hitting position players either. I don't know this, but perhaps Nate wasn't looking for that type of statistical change.

[155] Besides the obvious:

Barry Bonds could already hit.
Ozzie Canseco could not.
PEDs weren't going to magically change O. Canseco into someone who could consistently put fat part of bat on ball.

[156] True. I will eventually getting around to reading the book "Baseball between the Numbers" where his analysis is shown. So I don't know how he looked for a PED effect.

But I guess my gripe is that every time some player does something extraordinary, we assume that it is steroids. You probably have seen all the articles talking about bulging biceps and head sizes when neither contribute to home run production. And all of it is mostly some uneducated hack sports writer taking a break from his "send Joba to the bullpen" analysis to write about something he thinks he sees.

We live in a steroid era. True. But we also live in a small baseball park era. And in a year-round conditioning era. And in the juiced ball era. Maybe those explain things better?

[159] I don't subscribe to the idea that we can tell by looking at their bodies who's using and who's not. And I agree about ballpark size and many other things being big factors, so I'd say we're mainly in agreement.

[158] But presumbably the guys who make it to the Bigs can hit, like Jay Gibbons. Gibbons went from hitting 23 homers to 10. Gibbons admitted to PEDs. So why did Bonds improve and Gibbons not?

Goes to show that there is more to this thing called life than just DNA and Environment. Ozzie and Jose Canseco are identical twins. Both look alike and have the same build. Presumably they both had the same upbringing -- both were groomed for baseball. Yet, Ozzie never hit a MLB homer. He has the same DNA as the guy who hit 462 homers and stole 200 bases in 17 seasons.

[161] You don't know that PEDs didn't get Gibbons to the majors. His quick descent was after the testing regime was instituted IIRC.

We don't know that Ozzie & Jose took the same doses, worked out the same hours in the same style, ate the same, treated their eyes the same. Since when do identical twins have identical skill sets anyway? I went to music school with identical twins. They were both good musicians, but one couldn't play bass and the other couldn't play sax. Maybe Ozzie C. would have been a great boxer. ;-)