With the World Series on, I'm reminded that baseball has some exciting young players like 20-year-old Mike Trout, who might win the A.L. MVP despite one of the various Cabreras winning the Triple Crown, and 19-year-old Bryce Harper. But are they too exciting? I mean, Harper has looked like he's 30 years old since he was 16.
Last year, Ryan Braun won the MVP in the N.L., only to immediately get caught for performance enhancing drugs (although he managed to lawyer his way out of the 50 game suspension). This season, the San Francisco Cabrera was leading the N.L. in batting average when he got caught.
Judging by the depressed overall offensive totals, the game is cleaner than it was a 10-15 years ago. But does that just mean that whoever is racking up standout statistics this year is probably just one of the smaller number of juicers?
A vast amount of analytical talent is devoted to thinking about baseball (statistical talent that might more usefully be deployed upon more significant statistical issues, such as, say, figuring out the long-run impact of immigration policies, but never mind for now). But, the sabermetricians, led by the sainted Bill James, tended to be unenthusiastic in the 1990s and early 2000s about thinking about why exactly all the most famous slugging records were suddenly being broken.
Have they caught up? Are there websites that, say, explore how much confidence you can have that if you invest some loyalty in rooting for Player X based upon his impressive numbers, you won't suddenly find it's all been a fraud?
Was it PED's? Or was it something else:
ReplyDelete"The specs on major league baseballs, they almost don't deserve to be called specs, they're so loose that the range of performance from the top end to the bottom end is so different."
Indeed. The 49.1-foot discrepancy in flight for two balls at the extremes of tolerance is roughly three times the distance produced by a three percent increase in batted ball speed. That's according to the rule of thumb cited by Nathan in his evaluation of data on home run distances, whereby each additional mile per hour of batted ball speed increases the fly ball distance by 5.5 feet. That's a lot of extra homers added to the ledger without anyone violating the rules.
http://deadspin.com/5937432/was-mlbs-juiced-era-actually-a-juiced+ball-era
What do you know? Correlation proves correlation not causation.
If Harper and Trout are using PEDs it will be much harder to prove statistically. Bonds, McGuire, et al made unprecedented and suspicious mid career leaps. There's a pretty strong curve for career stats in baseball- rising early, then dropping in the mid-30s. Some rise earlier, some rise higher, some don't drop until later, but the shape is pretty similar.
ReplyDeleteSo, when we saw Bonds double his muscle mass in a few years in the late 1990s and go from Hall of Fame stats to never-before-seen stats, any sabermatrician could see something dodgy was going on.
But, if you consistently use PEDs from the minors through the majors through retirement, then the entire curve would simply be moved up. I think observers look for telltale signs like injuries but without a positive drug test, it's impossible to nail down and I assume most of the juicing today would be in the off-season.
unenthusiastic ... about thinking about why ... the most famous slugging records were suddenly being broken.
ReplyDeleteWell, let's see. Hack Wilson's RBI mark wasn't broken, DiMaggio's streak is intact, no one hit .400 and nobody's suggested Ichiro used PED's to break the single-season hit mark. But two home run records were broken. So is this randomness?
I enjoy the Giants because they're singlehandedly bringing back the 1970s glory days of major league baseball as the home of eccentric white guys with dubious facial hair.
ReplyDeleteHere's a heroic effort in 2004 to figure out whether Barry Bonds was on steroids or not. Looking for jumps in HR/500AB seems like as good stat as any.
ReplyDeletehttp://longgandhi.com/042204.html
It's tough to make 'predictions' about individuals. Sometimes, individuals do stand out.
ReplyDeleteBut the sheer volume of offensive output during the '90s should have allowed the statisticians to make statements about the samples (ie, seasons) involved.
"I enjoy the Giants because they're singlehandedly bringing back the 1970s glory days of major league baseball as the home of eccentric white guys with dubious facial hair."
ReplyDeleteLooking at Tim Lincecum, I would say it is not just the facial hair which is dubious.
Giants ... home of eccentric white guys with dubious facial hair
ReplyDeleteA deeply stupid comment. Posey, Belt, Vogelsong, Bumgarner all clean-shaven -it's more like the return of the 1970 Cincinnati Reds. Only guy with a significant beard now playing, Romo, isn't a white guy (though he does speak unaccented English.)
The thing about McGwire was that he had always been a power hitter. He hit 49 as a much thinner rookie, after all, for an extremely good homer/at-bat ratio of 8.8%. His biggest problem was injuries; after a great 1992, he spent much of the next several years hurt. In 1998, when he hit 70, it seemed like he played practically every game, and he did have more plate attempts than during any other year in his career.
ReplyDeleteA lot of other theories about the general boost in homers were floated at the time. Teams were generally moving the fences in and making short porches in the corners, because "chicks dig the long ball" (remember?). Maple bats could be made thinner, so they could be swung faster at the same rate. The ball was juiced. Umpires were giving the batters the top half of the strike zone (perhaps to compensate for giving Atlanta pitchers an extra 6 inches outside). And so on. Those factors may have all contributed to some extent.
I watched a lot of Cardinal games that year, and the main thing I remember was how effortless he made it look. He didn't even look like he was swinging hard; he was just connecting perfectly with everything. The other thing I distinctly remember was the low quality of the pitching. The Cardinals weren't in contention, so they generally didn't face the other teams' aces in the last few weeks. Pitching quality in general just didn't seem very high; maybe the pitchers hadn't caught up on the juicing yet. I remember pitches that hadn't gotten halfway to the plate, and I was already thinking, "That one's gone," because it was just setting up there right in his wheelhouse like he'd ordered it from a menu.
None of which is to say he wasn't juicing, of course. He was. They all were (and are, to whatever extent they can get away with it). But he wasn't one of the guys who went from legging out singles to swinging for the fences, so it was juuust possible to believe he could have done it without steroids, until we learned more.
I stopped following baseball several years ago, but I can't blame it on the steroids specifically. I think it was partly other things taking priority in my life, and partly just a seediness that seemed to be increasing in all pro sports (or maybe I just hadn't noticed it before). Steroids were probably part of that, but not a major part.
Seems to me that statheads generally are of the opinion that - (1) the amount by which PEDs improve performance is generally debatable (most players that were caught and punished were seemingly bad before, during, and after PED use), and (2) they don't care much - guys do on the field what they do on the field for whatever reason that they do it. For example, most statheads seem to generally be in awe of the sheer outlierness' of Bonds' 2000-2004 more than angry about it.
ReplyDeleteIt's more the "shock jock" kind of sports talk show guys and sports writes, and some of their callers (esp fans of teams who were hurt by opponents' high profile PED use) who have expressed strong condemnations.
I will say that, as a long-time Giants' fan, and someone who enjoyed Barry Bonds' late-career resurgence, I have long been sick of the way that the PEDs issue got framed. This article here didn't specifically mention Bonds, but it seemed that I used to constantly see articles used to say “Bonds steroids cheater Bonds asterix Giants steroids steroids OMG ruining the game Bonds Giants asterix steroids”. All this negative energy, much of the baseball fandom’s bad vibes supply, seemed to go into trying to derail/vilify the guy who our franchise specifically hinged on.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, the middle-of-the-order hitters for many other teams were juicing (identified: Alex Rodriguez, Manny Ramirez, Sammy Sosa, Mark MacGuire, Luis Gonzalez, Dave Ortiz, Gary Sheffield, Bret Boone, Ivan Rodriguez, Jose Guillen, Juan Gonzales, Miguel Tejada, Mike Piazza, Troy Glaus, Jason Giambi, Jose Canseco, David Justice, Mo Vaughn, Ken Caminiti, Gary Mathews Jr, Rafael Palmiero, Jack Cust). An many of the pitchers that these guys were playing were using PEDs too - some have been outed (Roger Clements, Eric Gagne, Kevin Brown, Andy Pettite, Chuck Finley, a number of small-name guys), and it would seem that probably many others used and didn't get caught.
Unlike Bonds, most of those dopers, while they played, were allowed to just go about their business and play their game like normal ballplayers without constant hassle, criticism, and distraction. And, since retirement and more careful investigation on the part of MLB, some of those other players have become poster children for the issue (McGwire, Palmiero, Sosa, Clements, Camanetti, Canseco) where, like Bonds, it seems impossible to for anyone to have an internet discussion of the players' career without roids becoming the main topic of the conversation. Most of the others have, inexplicably, not become so. I think the main reason people have such specific animus towards Bonds is: (1) he didn't had poor social skills, and (2) because he was so almost unbelievavly effective in his late season resurgence, and he absolutely destroyed other teams for years.
As many people point out, pro athletes using PEDs is damaging for the user's health and a bad example for kids. But that is a choice that informed many adults had made. Virtually every athlete endeavor to do their best. Some athletes will push the envelope only so far, while others would risk their lives if it made the difference between winning and losing. This is not only asked of athletes, it’s demanded - coaches demand it, teammates demand it, fans demand it. Be the best, win at all costs, do whatever it takes. And throughout baseball history, teams and players have constantly cheated in ways besides steroids and HGH - stealing signs, sandpapering spitting and scuffing the ball, spiking and dirty slides, cheating with corked bats and pine tar, amping up on speed or cocaine, throwing for the head, illegal recruiting and signing, lying about age, imbalanced use of humidor-ed balls in Denver, gambling on games and throwing world series, etc. And steroid use was apparently widespread in baseball long before the nineties (see Jim Bouton's book "Ball Four"). Steroid use has also, seems to me, been the norm rather than the exception in the NFL for decades now.
So, Bonds. Generally, I feel that he was an unanimous first-ballot inner-circle hall-of-famer, one of the handful of best players to ever play, before he ever used, and shattering all the records he did while juiced, to me, cemented that legacy rather than in any way diminished it. To my mind, if Bonds, Roger Clements, and ARod - three of the ten or twenty best players to ever take the field - don't eventually get elected to the Hall of Fame, it's the HOF that loses credibility, not those three.
ReplyDeleteNowadays to athletes, some of their best friends are juice.
I used to WORSHIP Bill James until the steroid scandals. His "head in the sand" "See no evil" approach showed me he was bought-off fraud. That, and his nauseating McCarthyite charges of "racism" against anyone who disagreed with him.
ReplyDeleteHas he admitted that Bonds took steroids and his HR Records are crap, or has he just "Moved on"?
Everyone knew Bonds was doping. The before and after pictures proved did it - as did the unheard of leap in HR performance by a man over 35. Before PEDs, Everyone hits less HR's after 35. Mays, Musial, Ruth, Yaz, Schmitt, Aaron, Greenberg, williams, etc. etc. etc.
ReplyDeleteIts just common sense. You've been in the big leagues for 12-15 years and you suddenly discover how to hit 70 Homers instead of 35; because of a new "weight lifting program". Yeah, right.
It has not been proven through properly randomized double blind trials that PED's actually improve performance. Until then it's inappropriate to talk of a juiced era or condemn individual ballplayers.
ReplyDeleteAaron hit a lot of homeruns after 35.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure that we should be so sure that no baseball player ever juiced before Jose Canseco. Dianabol came on the market around 1958 and Olympic shotputters and the like quickly started using it. Baseball players tend to be tradition bound, unscientific, and kind of lazy, but, still ...
just about any American or Latin American who is five ten or taller, normally coordinated, and was a starter on a high school team of any size believes that, if he had juiced, he would have made the majors. Most former high school pitchers believe they would have have (if juiced) easily struck out an average unjuiced hall of famer, again and again, if given that chance. (google the probably unjuiced Turk Wendell). I love baseball but have no respect for "records" anymore because I now assume that, just as the Bonds era was crooked in a way that I did not have time to figure out at the time, every previous era was crooked too. So my personal hall of fame would only include the obviously exceptional (the Chuck Yeagers and Neal Armstrongs of baseball, like Tom Seaver and Ted Williams) and the huge but coordinated big lugs (Walter JOhnson and Babe Ruth and Willy Mays). This is called "growing up", something Bill James, to my knowledge, never did.
ReplyDeleteDoc Ellis was the only player I'd ever heard of using LSD as a PED (though accidentally). His comments on his no-hitter-from Wikipedia:
ReplyDelete"I can only remember bits and pieces of the game. I was psyched. I had a feeling of euphoria. I was zeroed in on the [catcher's] glove, but I didn't hit the glove too much. I remember hitting a couple of batters, and the bases were loaded two or three times. The ball was small sometimes, the ball was large sometimes, sometimes I saw the catcher, sometimes I didn't. Sometimes, I tried to stare the hitter down and throw while I was looking at him. I chewed my gum until it turned to powder. I started having a crazy idea in the fourth inning that Richard Nixon was the home plate umpire, and once I thought I was pitching a baseball to Jimi Hendrix, who to me was holding a guitar and swinging it over the plate. They say I had about three to four fielding chances. I remember diving out of the way of a ball I thought was a line drive. I jumped, but the ball wasn't hit hard and never reached me.[26]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dock_Ellis
I am about 50 min into the Victor Conte interview w/ Joe Rogan on his podcast (2h, 30m!). Conte indicated the MLB, per the contract w/ the union, can test up to 375 players a year (31%). However, MLB randomly tests only about 50/year, which is about ~5%.
ReplyDeletekelsan said: It has not been proven through properly randomized double blind trials that PED's actually improve performance. Until then it's inappropriate to talk of a juiced era or condemn individual ballplayers.
ReplyDeleteI have seem some analyses that the biggest advantage that steroids provide baseball players is the ability to come back from injury more rapidly.
If you found out that your favorite hitter had used some high-tech training methods that were for some reason not available to many other players, would that be so different?
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure that we should be so sure that no baseball player ever juiced before Jose Canseco.
We should be certain that they juiced before then! Athletes have been imbibing chemicals to enhance their athletic performances since...well, probably since we first started playing sports however many thousands upon thousands of years ago.
"but without a positive drug test, it's impossible to nail down and I assume most of the juicing today would be in the off-season. "
ReplyDeleteyes and Victor Conte says in the interview posted in another thread that it's not drug test but IQ test since passing them should be possible for anyone with a little intelligence(except for some accident).
That guy Romo is the real SF "freak" of lights-out IMO, freaky like Levitt-Dubner. I say this as a lifelong Dodgers fan
ReplyDeletejust about any American or Latin American who is five ten or taller, normally coordinated, and was a starter on a high school team of any size believes that, if he had juiced, he would have made the majors.
ReplyDeleteSeriously, this has to be in the running for one of the most idiotic comments I've ever read. The difference in physical talent and skill between HS conference all star (let alone a starter) and a guy who washes out of A ball is enormous, PEDs or not.
You're probably one of those guys who thinks he could qualify for the champions tour in golf if only you had the time to practice.
"I love baseball but have no respect for "records" anymore because I now assume that, just as the Bonds era was crooked in a way that I did not have time to figure out at the time, every previous era was crooked too."
ReplyDeleteThis must win a prize for illogical thinking. But I guess if you "Feel" that way it must be true.
"I love baseball but have no respect for "records" anymore because I now assume that, just as the Bonds era was crooked in a way that I did not have time to figure out at the time, every previous era was crooked too."
ReplyDeleteOr you could go the other way, and figure that since they've all always been cheating, it's sort of a level playing field after all, so all the records are valid. Especially in baseball, where, cheating aside, even a factor like what park a player spends his career in can greatly affect a stat like home runs.
That's why I think that, eventually, once the emotion of finding out that your favorite player -- or the best player on the team that kept beating yours -- was juicing wears off, that's the attitude most people will take. "Hey, they've never been pure, so if a guy stood out from his contemporaries and did something impressive, I'll be impressed by it."
The fact is that juiced hitters were hitting against juiced pitchers. A greater percentage of pitchers were juicing than hitters.
ReplyDeleteClemens could not get his arm well, until he left Boston and found the needle. It wasn't that Clemens needed the velocity but that he needed the medicine.
Tom House related that he tried the juice, which had no effect upon his velocity, and that his experience showed him one half of users would experience an increase He was not of that half. It will promote healing in all cases though. Healing is what most helped McGuire. Bonds is a different story. I'm glad I saw him hit, juiced to the max. We will never see another hitter who actually had the statistical advantage over pitchers and I enjoyed seeing him work. Not the power thing, the waiting thing. He could wait until the ball was on him to start his swing. He knew place, speed, and direction. He knew how to use the juice in his craft like no one else. Sosa was a moron.
My favorite juicer is Pedro. That imp may have been the greatest pitcher of all time for a period of ten years. Art and bashing went hand in hand with juice for a time.
Now, the juicer has to be Lance Armstrong syndicate smart or he'll be caught, which is why Dominicans are dropping like flies.
Somewhat OT, but the gay marriage fight has invaded pro football. Pretty soon it will be everywhere and everyone will have to declare how they feel.
ReplyDeleteI saw Chris Kluwe on the cover of "OUT" magazine at a bookstore and I manfully took a look at the article. It showed him in a series of suggestive poses, like he was showing off for the gay male public. I know that Kluwe is married and has two kids. He is the prototype of the chump idiot straight man, who doesn't realize that gay men cruise other, men, esp. straight men, all the time.
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1374989-vikings-chris-kluwe-features-in-out-magazine-in-support-of-same-sex-marriage
Posey, Belt, Vogelsong, Bumgarner might have Brian Wilsonesque facial hair but Crawford, Zito, Pense are making a stab at having Brian Wilsonesque facial hair.
ReplyDeleteOlympic shotputters and the like quickly started using it. Baseball players tend to be tradition bound, unscientific, and kind of lazy, but, still ...
ReplyDeleteThe theory was that too much muscle would get in the way of the player being able to play their position.
When he muscled up Bonds was not as much a threat to steal a base as non-linebacker Barry of Pirates fame.
Does anyone think PEDs are used in politics? For example Provigil / Modafinil to stay "up" and focused. Apparently it's widespread in Silicon Valley.
ReplyDeletePiss tests for politicians!
"Does anyone think PEDs are used in politics? "
ReplyDeletefor politics? or in general?
"Guam will capsize" variety?
While the trailing end of comment sections is generally unread, let me try to explain myself to the anonymous detractors of my statement of 7:21 PM yesterday. A statement about what high school athletes "think" is not a statement about whether what those people think is true or not.
ReplyDeleteWhat I "feel" is an energy-saving algorithm. Let me explain. Having been informed after the fact that more than half of the HOF candidates of the 1990s had been cheating, I assume, using logic and the fact that human nature does not change, that cheating of one form or another was more prevalent than I had previously thought.
Therefore, I proposed that the way to assess talent of bygone years in such an environment is to observe the essence of talent, rather than the numbers - the amazingly coordinated small people, the people with unimpeachable character and courage, and the genetically large with athletic grace. I.e. Ted Williams, Babe Ruth, etcetera. This is similar to the way we assess tenors and sopranos.
Since you got personal, I knew at age 9 that I would be, at best, a minor leaguer, and by age 10 that such a dream was unlikely. I was never interested in spending money on golf. I know several elite athletes, and I know from the bottom of my heart that being a single-A washout is nowhere as big a deal as you appear to think it is. A triple-A washout, maybe, but a single-A washout, no.
Finally, if the phrases Black Sox, On the Waterfront, and Greenies mean nothing to you, please read up on them before insulting my assessment of a past through most of which (i.e. since 1915)I lived.
Yeah, cognitive enhancement drugs in politics is a joke that writes itself. But Silicon Valley has apparently imported the Provigil culture from the campus, and I'm wondering if this is one of those sub rosa things that explains a lot of behavior in retrospect, like cocaine and the 80's as seen from the 90's.
ReplyDeleteHopped up chiefs of staffs or media spinners on Ritalin or Modafinil? Maybe candidates?