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. ;-)

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

- 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.