Iron Fisk

Posted: January 19th, 2010 | Filed under: Baseball | 202 Comments »

“But this is the point I want to make: When you talk about steroids and you talk about what it means to the game, the three greatest home run hitters of all time—Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth and Willie Mays, right? When they were 39 years old, how many home runs do you think they averaged? The three greatest home run hitters of all time averaged 18 home runs at age 39. Now, how many home runs did Barry Bonds hit when he was 39? He hit 73!”
– Carlton Fisk from this story

I guess when it comes down to it, this is the thing that bothers me most about the steroid screaming: Why is it that people have to bring in all of these crazy exaggerations to the party? Why can’t we just talk about this stuff without getting livid? Why can’t we just do what Joe Paterno suggests we do about all of our problems, all of the mysteries, all of the disagreements: Just ask questions.

Look, I think just about everyone in America believes that steroid use and the massive weight training that goes along with it played a major role in the home run explosion of the 1990s and 2000s. Players got a lot stronger, and being a lot stronger that they hit more home runs (especially opposite field home runs). That isn’t hard math. It is a simple baseball fact that 16 of the 17 biggest home run seasons in baseball history (measured by home runs hit per game) have come since the 1994 strike, which seems to be when steroids abuse ratcheted up. The only other year that sneaks in there is that nutty 1987 season where the baseballs were apparently punched up with helium and rabbit juice.

I’ll take just a moment to note here that 2009 — which supposedly represented a return to normalcy because there is steroid testing in place and because nobody in either league hit 50 home runs, and nobody in the AL hit 40 — was actually the 10th biggest home run season ever. The home runs were just more spread out. The huge home run numbers have been sanded down, but there were only 17 fewer home runs hit in 2009 than there were in 2002. There were MORE homers hit per game than in 1997, the year McGwire hit 58 and Griffey hit 56 — the year that led into the year.

In 2009, 54 players hit 25-plus homers — fourth most in the decade and sixth most all-time. Home runs are still flying.

Here’s a funny statistic that I have not seen mentioned much: The 2009 New York Yankees hit more home runs than any Yankees team ever. More than any of the steroid era Yankees teams. More than the 1961 Yankees. Fifty percent more than the ‘27 Yankees. It seemed to go relatively unnoticed for a couple of reasons:

1. Because no Yankees player hit 40 home runs in 2009.
2. Because New Yankee Stadium was reportedly a pinball machine.

The New Yankee Stadium thing was pretty significant. The Yankees hit 28 home runs at home than on the road. More to the point, they hit 46 more home runs at home than they did in 2008.

Home runs hit by the Yankees at home:

2009: 136
2008: 90
2007: 107
2006: 111
2005: 126
2004: 126
2003: 106
2002: 108
2001: 116
2000: 117
1961: 112

So, you would have to say that home ballpark played a role in the record-setting home run numbers. Well, of course it did. And this is the point that I can’t help but think people miss all the time. Of course steroids played a role in the home run years. But maybe, just maybe, there were other factors. Lots of other factors.

Stadiums: New Comiskey Park — what has become a massive home run hitters park — was introduced in 1991. Camden Yards, a big home run park, opened in 1992. Baseball was expanded to high elevation Denver in 1993, and the homerlicious Ballpark at Arlington opened in 1994. Kansas City moved in the fences in 1995 and turned Royals Stadium into an absurd home run haven. Before 1995, the Royals had never given up more than 163 homers in a season (and from 1985-1994, they averaged 107 homers allowed). From 1996-2003, they allowed on average more than 200 homers per season. They waved the white flag and moved the fences back after 2003 and the home run numbers have normalized. Baseball also added high-elevation Phoenix in 1998.

The strike zone: Before the 1963 season, a group of baseball people were worried that hitters had gained too much of an advantage. They were thinking, I suspect, about Roger Maris’ home run record and some other big offensive seasons (more on this in a second). And they decided to expand the strike zone. At the time, they claimed they only were expanding the zone to “pre-1950 standards” but by expanding the zone from top of the shoulder to bottom of the knee, they were actually going bigger than the strike zone had ever been before.

It had a massive effect on the game. Massive. The strike zone was not the only factor in the 1960s hitter outage — the main point of this post is that it’s never just one factor. As Bill James has written, the stadiums in those days tended to be pitcher friendly. The hitters in many parks were not given a hitting background — they were staring into white signs and white T-shirts. There were more night games … and the lights weren’t all great. The umpires were not especially vigilant either about checking the heights of the mounds. At Dodger Stadium in particular, they were like pro wrestling referees. The mound kept getting higher and higher … and, yes, there were RULES about this sort of thing. But nobody was paying attention to the rules. The Dodgers were in fact cheating. But, as we like to say, nobody was testing.

Sandy Koufax at home (1962-66): 57-15, 1.37 ERA, 23 shutouts, 754 Ks, 142 walks, .822 WHIP.
Sandy Koufax on road (1962-66): 54-19, 2.57 ERA, 10 shutouts, 690 Ks, 174 walks, 1.04 WHIP.

Koufax was still a dazzling pitcher on the road. But he was not the dominant force — wasn’t NEARLY the dominant force — that he was at home. It is accepted baseball wisdom that Koufax found himself (and his control) in 1962. It’s striking that at Los Angeles Memorial Stadium, Koufax was 17-23, with a 4.33 ERA and 188 walks in 364 inning. Dodger Stadium, and the high mound, and the larger strike zone probably played a role in helping Koufax find himself.

But Koufax was only one half of the dominant combo. What about Don Drysdale? He was a good pitcher before 1962 — he was 79-64 with a 3.30 ERA and he twice led the league in strikeouts. Then the move to Dodger Stadium:

Don Drysdale at home (1962-66): 49-28, 2.27 ERA, 10 shutouts, 559 Ks, 148 walks, 1.01 WHIP
Don Drysdale on road (1962-66): 49-42, 3.24 ERA, 10 shutouts, 548 Ks, 166 walks, 1.16 WHIP.

Now, to be fair, a big part of this is that Drysdale was awful on the road in 1966 (6-13, 4.65 ERA) … but the main point is that Drysdale was pretty much the same pitcher on the road from 1962-66 that he was before that year. But he was a full run better at Dodger Stadium.

So — higher mounds, bigger strike zone, better pitcher’s stadiums … and we had the most remarkable pitching era since Deadball. From 1963-68 …

– Bob Gibson punched up a 1.12 ERA in ‘68, the best since Dutch Leonard, and nobody has touched him since.
– Sandy Koufax put up the best sustained stretch of pitching in memory; many will tell you he’s the best they ever saw.
– Juan Marichal went 151-65 with a 2.51 ERA.
– Denny McLain won 30 games.
– There were 14 season with an ERA of less than 2.00 — these included legends (Koufax, Gibson, Niekro), some really good pitchers (Tommy John, Luis Tiant, Dave McNally) and some surprises (Dean Chance, Joe Horlen, Bobby Bolin). In the 15 seasons leading into the high-strike zone era, there had only been one season with an ERA of less than 2.00 — Billy Pierce’s 1.97 in 1955.
– An interesting stat: The American League had not batted less than .250 since Deadball. Consecutively, from 1963-68, the league batted .247, .247, .242, .240, .236, .230. That last year, famously, only Carl Yastrzemski hit .300. The National League batted .250 or less four of the six seasons.

The point is to show how just a couple of seemingly small factors — a slightly bigger strike zone, an almost imperceptibly higher mound, a few good pitcher’s parks — could wildly turn baseball’s fortunes. Enforcing the height of the mound in 1969 balanced things slightly. Adding the designated hitter to the American League in 1972 balanced things a touch more. But just a few things, none of them diabolical in nature, turned the game upside down.

I suspect — it would be a hard thing to prove, but I do believe — that the strike zone shrunk dramatically in the 1990s. Offense was going to save the game. The high strike was completely taken away. Anything above the belt — and some pitches at the belt — seemed to be automatic balls. This is a perception — I don’t know if anyone has done a study measuring the 1990s strike zone. But it sure seemed smaller. And, as shown in the 1960s, a change in the strike zone can have overwhelming ramifications.

Expansion: In 1961, the addition of two teams to the American League — pushing the league from eight to 10 — had a fairly dramatic effect on some individual performances. Roger Maris, of course, hit 61 home runs*, Norm Cash had his preposterously great year (later admitting that he corked his bat), Jim Gentile had his preposterously great year, Mickey Mantle hit his career-high 54 homers, Rocky Colavito hit his career-high 45 homers, Dick Howser had a rather spectacular rookie year, and so on.

*I don’t mean to put an asterisk anywhere near Maris’ record, but I did find it interesting that these were the pitchers Maris hit multiple home runs off of in 1961:

– 3 off Jim Perry (10-17, 4.71 ERA — before he found himself).
– 3 off Frank Lary, who had a good year.
– 3 off Pete Burnside.
– 2 off Eli Grba, who had two vowels in his first name and one in his second.
– 2 off Ray Herbert.
– 2 off the 34-year-old, moderately effective Billy Pierce.
– 2 off Gene Conley (11-14, 4.91 ERA)
– 2 off Russ Kemmerer.
– 2 off Ding Dong Bell, who gave up 32 homers that year.
– 2 off Bill Monbouquette.
– 2 off Pedro Ramos who, rather remarkably, led league in losses FOUR STRAIGHT YEARS. Consecutively, he lost: 18, 19, 18, 20. It is a unique achievement.

In 1962, the addition of two teams to the National League — pushing the league from eight to 10 — created a few huge years. Tommy Davis’ remarkable .346, 27 homers, 153 RBIs, 120 runs scored was probably the most eye-popping of the bunch. He would lead the league in hitting again in 1963, but he never got within 10 homers, 60 RBIs, 45 runs of that numbers extravaganza. Stan Musial at age 41 — and having not hit .300 since 1958 — hit .330. Mostly, this was the case of a few pitchers years — Drysdale, Koufax, Bob Purkey, Jack Sanford — having some big years.

In 1969, there was more expansion. And seven players hit 40-plus homers — as many as 1968 (1), 1967 (2), 1966 (3) and 1965 (1) combined. In fact, 1969 was just one short of the record for most 40-plus homers seasons … and that record was set in 1961, the last AL expansion year.

In 1977, two teams were added to the American League. And the league hit 10 points higher and slugged more than 40 points better. Graig Nettles was the only player in 1976 to hit 30-plus homers; he hit 32. Six players hit 25 or more homers that year. But in 1977, nine players hit 30-plus homers, and 11 more hit 25 or more. The point is expansion does change the dynamic.

And there was expansion in the 1990s. Colorado and Florida joined in 1993. Arizona and Tampa Bay joined in 1998.

Better bats and better equipment: Bill James points out that nobody has been caught using a corked bat since the century began, and he thinks there’s a reason for this … the bats are already so good, why would you cork them? The bats have the thinner handles, which apparently allows them to whip more. And the bats are solid now, dense, players don’t have to bone them. Manufacturers layer them with coats of shellac. How many home runs would Hank Aaron have hit with these bats?

The better equipment can be something as simple as body armor (allowing batters to feel more confident as they crowd the plate) or as complicated as LASIK surgery. It is the new weight training techniques and legal supplements — a player doesn’t have to do steroids to become much stronger than he would have been 30 years ago.

There are so many other factors or possible factors. I don’t know. What about the scouting reliance on the radar gun (perhaps pushing good armed pitchers with no command and subpar breaking stuff to the big leagues)? What about the ever-shifting sensibility of strikeouts (how many home runs would Gehrig, Kluszewski and Kiner have hit had they swung from the heels with two strikes and been willing to strike out 150 times?). How much of a factor was baseball’s strategy shift from speed and defense to power (the demand for home run hitters will usually increase the supply)?

There are countless other things … it’s always more complicated than people want to make it. The problem is that whenever you try to talk about the whole picture, people will think you’re trying to downplay the evil of steroids. And this is just not a good time to be downplaying the evil of steroids. It seemed to me that people were beginning to come to grips with the Steroid Era, a time without testing, a time when I imagine hundreds of players cheated, when hundreds of players used some form of performance enhancer to help out in the workout room and help coax them through long seasons and give them some extra strength. But with the backlash against Mark McGwire, I sense that, no, we’re not there yet. You can bet players who used steroids won’t be coming out to apologize any time soon.

And that brings me to the Carlton Fisk quote at the top of the post. I am a very big fan of Fisk’s. I loved the way he played the game. I loved the toughness he brought to it. He was all ballplayer. But the quote really struck me, and not only because he got it complete wrong. The quote again:

OK, first, the numbers are all off. At age 39, Babe Ruth hit 22 home runs — and and it isn’t like Ruth was famous for keeping himself in shape. Willie Mays hit 28 home runs at age 39. Hank Aaron hit 40 home runs at age 39. So that’s an average of 30 per player, not 18. Not close to 18. None of the three hit 18. And not only that: Carlton Fisk at age 39 hit more than 18 homers too — he hit 23.

He got the Barry Bonds thing wrong too. Look, at any age, hitting 73 home runs is going to be an eye-opener. But, in fact, Bonds hit the 73 when he was 36 years old. At 39, he hit 45 homers — a lot, absolutely, the most ever for a player 39 or older. But it ain’t 73.

So, the point he wants to make is based on entirely faulty information. Whatever. I guess the thing I wish is that old ballplayers — especially great old ballplayers like Fisk — would look a little bit deeper rather than falling into the “In my day, we had to walk uphill through the snow” act. Can’t we have a conversation? Can’t we talk about this without constantly expressing our own moral superiority.

Yes, players were using steroids, and that use of steroids does indeed — as Bob Costas put it the other day — make their numbers inauthentic. But let’s talk about that for a second. Did illegal amphetamines that were apparently a part of every day baseball in the 1960s, ‘70s, 80s, 90s make those numbers inauthentic? I don’t know. There is pretty good reason to suspect that Babe Ruth corked his bat — does that make those numbers inauthentic? I don’t know. There is every reason to suspect that the Los Angeles Dodgers broke baseball’s rules — in letter and in spirit — by raising the mound above the limits. Does that make those numbers inauthentic? I don’t know.

And beyond cheating: Does playing in an all-white league make every number before 1947 inauthentic? And it’s not like the league was fully integrated the day Jackie Robinson stepped on the field — it took a decade or more, so maybe all numbers before 1961 are inauthentic. And the game did not really open up to Latin players until the 1980s — just look at one country, the Dominican Republic. The only regulars from the Dominican Republic throughout the 1960s were the Alou brothers, Julian Javier, Rico Carty and Manny Jiminez (for one year). Even in 1979, there were only five regulars in the big leagues (Carty, Cesar Cedeno, Pepe Frias, Alfredo Griffin, Frank Taveras).

In 1985 alone, there were 12 regulars — including stars like George Bell, Tony Fernandez, Pedro Guerrero, Tony Pena and my guy Julio Franco. And of course the last 20 years, you have MannyBManny, Papi, Tejada, Vlad Guerrero, Hanley Ramirez, Adrian Beltre, Alfonso Soriano, on and on and on. And these are just the hitters — we’re not even getting into Pedro and Bartolo Colon and so on.

So what is authentic? I am not defending those players who cheated — they knew it was wrong, they knew why they were doing it, they knew — but I don’t even know who were those players and neither does anyone else. Was it 50% of baseball, like Ken Caminiti said long ago before he was bullied into backtracking? Was it MORE than 50%? Were teams complicit? Were people behind the scenes in baseball quietly cheering? Or, worse, were they putting subtle and perhaps even not-so-subtle pressures on players to get stronger, however necessary? And how much of what we saw was steroid induced? Was it 90%? Was it 40% How much?

We don’t know. And while some people seem endlessly interested in standing on soap boxes and shouting down at the cheaters who have been caught or have come forward for whatever reason, it seems like we don’t want to know. Yes, the era may be defined by steroids, but it’s like people don’t want to hear that steroids were not the only reason that people hit a bunch more home runs. There are a lot of reasons people hit home runs.

For instance, there was a player, a really good player, who had never hit more than 26 home runs in a season. He was a good hitter but he was just not a 30-home run guy. And he was also a catcher, which meant that it was likely his body had taken a terrible beating and had worn down.

But this is the point I want to make: When you talk about the three greatest power hitting catchers of all time — Mike Piazza, Johnny Bench and Yogi Berra, right? Well, there’s Josh Gibson, of course, but we don’t have his numbers. When the three power catchers (Piazza, Bench and Berra) were 37 years old, how many home runs do you think they averaged? The three greatest power-hitting catchers of all time averaged 11 home runs at age 37. How many do you think our guy hit? He hit 37!

Of course, our guy is Carlton Fisk. And I am not suggesting that he did anything illegal — I am in fact entirely convinced that he did not do anything illegal and never would. But he had never hit more than 26 homers in his career. And he was a 37-year-old catcher — no 37-year old catcher had ever even hit 20 homers before. And at 37, he hit 37 home runs because, well, baseball isn’t always easy to reduce to a few indignant words.

See, there’s a lot that goes into baseball. Stuff usually isn’t black or white, up or down, left or right. It’s complicated. Carlton Fisk, of all people, should know that. If it makes people feel better to shout “fraud” in a crowded theater, hey, it’s a free country. But it seems to me there’s already enough noise out there.

202 Comments on “Iron Fisk”

1: jayaresea said at 11:22 pm on January 19th, 2010:
that was an awesome read. thank you.
2: Kevin S. said at 11:25 pm on January 19th, 2010:
I’m glad you noticed the inconsistencies in the numbers, too. At age 39, not only did the Hammer hit 40 HR, he did it in 392 PA. Bonds hit 45 in 373, but Hank’s rate, in a much lower run environment, was comparable.

Oh, and circle me Pudge.
3: Paul said at 11:28 pm on January 19th, 2010:
“Bill James points out that nobody has been caught using a corked bat since the century began”

Sammy Sosa was ejected from a game in 2003 for using a corked bat in a game.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/baseball/news/2003/06/03/sosa_ejected_ap/
4: BG said at 11:28 pm on January 19th, 2010:
Circle me, Silly.
5: Daniel Louden said at 11:28 pm on January 19th, 2010:
Circle Me Pudge!
6: TD said at 11:29 pm on January 19th, 2010:
Circle me Lasix is a horse drug, Lasik is a surgery
7: Mike L. said at 11:30 pm on January 19th, 2010:
Fantastic post. This encapsulates my feelings about the steroid era rather well.
8: Bryz said at 11:34 pm on January 19th, 2010:
Very good point about the opinions of the retired players. Look, if these retired players had been given the chance to cheat when they were still playing without getting caught, how many of them would have took advantage of it?
9: Melody said at 11:39 pm on January 19th, 2010:
I’m always amazed by the human desire to simplify things as much as possible, to give a three-sentence explanation for phenomena so complex that no one could really claim to fully understand them.
Damn that’s annoying. And then they get annoyed with me for sighing and repeatedly saying, “Well, it’s complicated…”
10: matt said at 11:52 pm on January 19th, 2010:
No way a writer in his 40s can post blogs of this caliber on nearly a daily basis. You must be using!
11: uberVU - social comments said at 11:54 pm on January 19th, 2010:
Social comments and analytics for this post…

This post was mentioned on Twitter by JPosnanski: I have no idea what the point is, but Carlton Fisk’s quote got me started on a rambling 3,300-word post: http://bit.ly/5AyTsJ...
12: Aaron B. said at 12:02 am on January 20th, 2010:
As the kids on the Internet say these days: “LOL pwned Fisk”
13: Coach said at 12:04 am on January 20th, 2010:
Joe, great article. You are really missed in KC.
14: Pat said at 12:08 am on January 20th, 2010:
Joe, why do you feel the need to defend steroid users and the steroid era? Perhaps I’m reading this into your posts, but that is the way it seems to me. Were these not public figures playing a recognized and revered sport, many of them would likely be serving time in prison. Using AAS without a legitimate prescription is a felony. There is no one in professional baseball who would qualify for a legitimate prescription. Baseball players have been given a pass by law enforcement, in my opinion, because they play the national game. If they were bodybuilders, they would be in jail. I don’t see the rationale for defending or downplaying their flaunting of the law.
15: Jon H. said at 12:12 am on January 20th, 2010:
I was going to say Sosa got caught using a corked bat in 03 against the D-Rays (my dad was at that game, still has the score card by his bed at home).

A couple of days earlier he may have used that corked bat in the bottom of the 16th inning to score the Cubs only run in a victory against the Astros (box score here: http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/CHN/CHN200305310.shtml). Some Astros were/are still mad about that. In continuing with Joe’s point do we invalidate that game as Sosa may have cheated?
16: Chris C. said at 12:27 am on January 20th, 2010:
Pat #14
Amphetamine’s are illegal too. How come you’re not arguing for the prosecution of all the players over the last 50 years who openly admit to using them?

Carlton Fisk made a statement that was completely false. As stupid as his statement is, it’s fairly representative of the general tone the media and former players have taken on this issue. If you think Joe is in some way defending steroid use by pointing out the lack of thought that has gone into those positions, then you’ve missed the point entirely.
17: Tom Folgate said at 1:03 am on January 20th, 2010:
Don’t forget steroids were used in baseball even in the 60’s and 70’s. So yeah, a juiced up Fisk hit 37 home runs when he was 37. Reggie Jackson was obviously using roids too.
Still, roids in baseball exploded after the 94 strike and DESIGNER STEROIDS made the epidemic much, much worse. A perfect cocktail of roids made players like Bonds into superhuman home run hitters. He would have hit 100 homers if they didn’t walk him 200+ times.
18: McKingford said at 1:22 am on January 20th, 2010:
#14: There is a difference between defending steroid users (which Joe is most certainly not doing – hell, he says it right in his post) and cautioning against hysterics.

Now you want to see people going to *jail* for using steroids? If there is one thing that is clear about the US in the last 25 years, its that it has entirely lost its mind when it comes to drugs – at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars, the largest incarceration rate in the world, and a generation lost to the violence that is inherent with prohibition. Most rational people have come to the conclusion that this is a bad thing, but you are evidence that a few still think the problem will be solved by putting just a few more in jail…
19: Richard said at 1:47 am on January 20th, 2010:
People seem to forget that pitchers used PED too. Andy Pettitte, Roger Clemens, and countless others hurlers juiced. This obviously served as a countervailing force to the increased offensive numbers.

Be that as it may, the factors you mentioned are obviously real- it ain’t just drugs that boosted home run totals- but that only explains the overall rise of home runs. The distribution of home runs amongst players was undoubtedly influenced by who cheated and who didn’t. Bonds, McGwire, and Sosa didn’t play in smaller parks or against weaker pitching than their contemporaries- they just had better pharmacology.
20: Spud said at 1:52 am on January 20th, 2010:
“Why can’t we just talk about this stuff without getting livid?”

We seem to have lost that ability, maybe with the addition of the 24-hour news cycle, more talk shows than games and the constant need to be in front of the story. Some columnists, who are the biggest screamers of all, feel they have to scream even louder because of fading influence.
21: Rec’d: Posnanski’s “Iron Fisk” | Pro Ball NW said at 1:55 am on January 20th, 2010:
[...] Check it out. « Felix El Rey – The Money [...]
22: Graphite said at 2:11 am on January 20th, 2010:
The war against drugs is over . . .

. . . drugs won.
23: Damon Rutherford said at 2:48 am on January 20th, 2010:
Am I overlooking the quote from the linked chicagobreakingsports.com article, or did the writer remove the quote since Fisk’s data have been proven incorrect?

If the latter, is it acceptable for writers to drastically change their column/story/article after it has been published? Where is a retraction or edit statement explaining the changes?

Because now does it not look foolish for Posnanski to quote Fisk and then link to an article that does not contain the quote (any more)?

At least with newspapers, magazines, etc., content could not be whisked away never to be seen again.

I think if you put something out there on the Internet, you keep it out there. If more information is gained, or a problem develops, etc., you ADD to the content in a noted fashion, rather than make things disappear.

But I hope I’m wrong and that the quote is still somewhere to be found on that website.
24: Jud said at 4:02 am on January 20th, 2010:
I don’t think the Yankee HR split between home and away was that all significant. I note that while 55.7% of the Yanks HR’s this year were at home, in both 2001 & 2000 they hit 57.1% at home, and in 2005 55% of their HR’s were at home. so this years splits aren’t all that abnormal
The main reasons for the upswing in the total HR’s were bounce back years from Matsui, Posada, Cano and Damon.
25: Don in Dallas said at 6:29 am on January 20th, 2010:
Thank you for your thoughtful post. Much of the doubt centers on home runs. So I’ll do the Paterno thing and ask two questions. If major league baseball could make system changes that reduced the number of home runs, would players be less inclined to juice up? And second, how many fans could live with, or would even prefer, fewer home runs? For my own part, watching Juan Pierre or Ichiro dance off first base and drive pitchers and defenses crazy is more fun than watching some brute bash a home run. But maybe I’m all alone with that preference.
26: Chris B said at 6:39 am on January 20th, 2010:
I am not so sure about the role of new parks – after all, Seattle, Detroit and San Diego have all opened new parks that are not very homer friendly, and Seattle in articular went from a bandbox to a spacious, humid outdoor park.
27: Laid Off Too said at 6:50 am on January 20th, 2010:
Re Yankees 2009 home run numbers, remember A-Rod missed the start of the season. In a ‘normal’ year (if there is such a thing anymore) would he have hit 7-9 homers in that time? Also, MannyBManny was out for a third of the season, impacting the 2009 HR grand total.
Another great post Joe. I read everything you write even though I haven’t watched a ball game since Red Sox 2003.
28: DaveJ said at 7:01 am on January 20th, 2010:
I bet Barry Bonds wishes he hadn’t hit those 73 home runs in 2001. Because, really, that’s where all of baseball’s problems started. If Bonds hadn’t hit 73:

1. The gloss would still attach itself to that wonderful McGwire-Sosa contest in 1998. Let’s face it, we knew McGwire was on Andro, which was unavailable to Roger Maris, and we didn’t care. It was just so much fun. Barry robbed us of those special memories even before they had hardened into nostalgia. And by doing so, he made McGwire and Sosa less heroic and more challengeable.

2. He would have never broken Aaron’s all-time home run record. We could look back at the 1995-2005 period without feeling as though the records books had been torched. The old timers–both ballplayers and fans–would have had at least one record to cling to, making them far less ferocious and relentless.

3. He would have faced the unending flurry of intentional and barely unintentional walks that plagued him through the 2000’s and inflated his OBP–and to some extent batting average–to ridiculous heights.

4. He would never have been such an easy target for the sportswriters who despised him. Bonds, after all, never reached the 50 home run plateau either before or after 2001. Without ‘01, he simply wouldn’t have stood out the way he did.

I would argue that it was Bonds’ 2001 season that really triggered all the uproar that led to the indictments and the congressional hearings and the media caterwauling and everything else. Without Bonds’ 2001 season, baseball could have made the necessary moves, subtle and otherwise, to put as much of the genie as possible back in the bottle, and ESPN Classic would still be treating us to the highlights of the 1998 season. And we would be looking forward to telling our grandchildren about it.
29: Chris Fiorentino said at 7:07 am on January 20th, 2010:
The single biggest thing that is overlooked in all of the “Steroid” discussion is the effect of HGH on ballplayers as they got older. Look, steroids making a guy like McGwire become twice his size is one thing. But HGH, which allowed McGwire do what Mattingly could not is something else. Imagine if Donnie Baseball could have used HGH to help his ailing back. Could he have hit 600 Home Runs, batted .330, and become a top-5 all-timer? Absolutely, if he could have been allowed to do what McGwire did, which was cheat because “he was hurt a couple years in a row and wanted to get better”. Sorry, Mark, you don’t get my sympathy as long as there were thousands of guys who could have used HGH and played better…not because of the pop in their bats, but because they healed much faster.

Which leads me to my biggest point…I still firmly believe that Cal Ripken Jr. did HGH. There is just no way, in the era of the terrible playing surfaces of the 80’s, that this guy NEVER missed a game without some type of “outside help”. I am sorry. I was at the Vet when Moises Alou rounded first base and his knee gave out when he stepped on the cutout. I was there when not one, but BOTH of Wendell Davis’s knees were torn up in 1993.

To me, the story of the “Iron Man” is the biggest mystery of all.
30: Bryan Adams said at 7:12 am on January 20th, 2010:
I agree that moralizing by people who got rich playing a game for a living is distasteful. To quote A Few Good Men, “I’d rather you just said ‘thank you’ and went on your way.”

However, I don’t agree with the argument that steroids are just one more form of inauthenticity. Two points:

One: of all the cheating methods you pointed out, steroids are the only source of inauthenticity that stemmed from the decision of an individual (as opposed to a team, or a grounds crew, or the whole league). To me, that makes it worse.

Two: in the case of Bonds 73, that was 58% (!) better than his non-steroid career best. New Yankee Stadium increased HRs by 8% over the previous max. Even Drysdale’s full run of ERA was only a 30% improvement. To me, it’s possible steroids were actually WAY more influential than everything else. I answered your poll question by saying that I think McGwire was almost entirely a steroid creation.

On the second point, I would love for you (or some other statistical fellow, but ideally you) to make an argument about this point. What influence, quantitatively, did steroids have? Can we find someone who we trust to tell the truth give us the drug history, look at the numbers, and make an argument about this? Do they make you 5% better? Do they make you 20% better? 60%? This is a critical point to me.
31: Richard said at 7:14 am on January 20th, 2010:
Hi Joe, Great article, but haven’t they (Mythbusters and I thought other people) proven in experiments that corking the bat doesn’t really help? I think the benefit is just mental at that point, so should it really be considered an advantage?

I may be wrong on this though.
32: bsg said at 7:15 am on January 20th, 2010:
one major point that people tend to overlook… the reason steroids are banned in the first place. it is not simply because they make a person who takes them stronger, they are banned because of long term health consequences. if the health concerns are ever minimized or eliminated, will mlb or any other sport overturn their steroid bans?

despite all the players known or suspected of using steroids over the past 15 years, i do not recall any baseball repeats of lyle alzado (and even here there is disagreement over whether steroids were a cause of his brain tumor).

call me a generation x cynic, but people cheat because cheaters win*. praise ken griffey jr for playing straight (as far as we know), but the man has never appeared in a world series, and his years in hometown cincinnati were marred by injury (the number 1 excuse for players that admit using) and he was run out of town. i dont know the answer for sure, but one could argue had he taken steroids and led the reds to the playoffs or beyond, would cincinnati fans be the first to defend him?

* and not just in baseball, why has there not been a single high profile prosecution of the rampant fraud that led to the fiancial crisis and bailout? martha stewart and bernie madoff were only sideshows.
33: dtro said at 7:21 am on January 20th, 2010:
The funny thing, Joe, is that your colleagues were bringing up all of these reasons for increased homeruns during that magical summer of 98. That was probably because they were deliberately ignoring the steroids elephant in the room, but they were actually right about all these factors. It’s weird that all these things have been completely laid aside now that we know for certain about widespread steroid use. Yeah, McGwire did steroids, but he also could wait for knee-to-thigh-high fastballs without fear of getting burned on high
34: dtro said at 7:22 am on January 20th, 2010:
I was going to say that Big Mac couldn’t handle the high heat, but he never had to worry about starting sometime in the mid-90s.
35: Bill@TDS said at 7:27 am on January 20th, 2010:
Good call, Damon Rutherford: someone went in and removed that Aaron-Ruth-Mays quote from the story. It was definitely there yesterday.

Disappointing. Apparently, “Chicago Breaking Sports News” is in no way a “news” source, and the collaboration between WGN news and the Chicago Tribune in fact exists solely and entirely to protect Carlton Fisk’s sterling public image.
36: Slave to the Traffic Light said at 7:35 am on January 20th, 2010:
Well said, dtro. Was recently watching Game 6, ‘93, Phillies vs Blue Jays. Mitch “Wild Thing” Williams’s first two pitches to Rickey Henderson leading off the fateful ninth were actually right below the belt, but called high. I was stunned. Watch any game from those years, you’ll see it.

When guys don’t respect themselves, that’s their problem. But when they don’t respect the game, that’s Pudge’s problem.
37: Adam said at 7:36 am on January 20th, 2010:
Great article, Joe. Lots of the same arguments I’ve been making for years, written much better than I could ever hope to write them.

One small quibble though, all the stuff about corked bats in there is pretty meaningless. It has been scientifically proven that corking your bat doesn’t increase power. At all. If it anything it might decrease it a little. It makes the bat lighter, so you can swing faster. So would, ya know, using a lighter fucking bat, and I don’t think anyone thinks that’s cheating. The bat and ball simply aren’t in contact long enough for the cork to have the sort of “springing” effect that baseball people (who, by and large are not exactly noble prize winners) think it does either. Cork doesn’t react that fast. Just because people a bunch of dumb people a long time ago thought it was a huge advantage doesn’t mean it actually was. We know more now, and we should adjust our views as such.
38: mike in MN said at 7:41 am on January 20th, 2010:
I love that Joe called out someone for just blatantly making up facts. If only our “news” stations would do that to the politicians, we might then be able to solve some of the world’s problems, instead of just blaming others for them….
39: DJ Spooklight said at 7:41 am on January 20th, 2010:
We are not worthy. Another great column.
40: Rick A. said at 7:47 am on January 20th, 2010:
Great article, Joe. Just wish some of the moralizers in baseball would read it and consider their opinions more carefully.
41: Mitch said at 7:59 am on January 20th, 2010:
High elevation Phoenix? Phoenix has a mean elevation of 1,100 feet, 100 feet lower than Pittsburgh. Last time I checked, the thin air of the Alleghanies didn’t have much to do with offense in Pittsburgh.
42: Robert S said at 8:01 am on January 20th, 2010:
The reason that steroids are blamed for the explosion in HRs is that the three poster children for the steroid era (McGuire, Bonds and Sosa) turned into musclebound behemoths and their literal growth coincided with their explosion in HRs.

We see these newly massive men hitting more home runs than anyone has ever hit and attribute their increased power to their increased size. We can see them as bigger much easier than we can see fields as smaller or pitching staffs as more watered down.

This is just the scouts v stats debate writ small. Scouts trust what they see, analysts don’t.
43: Jeff Parker said at 8:13 am on January 20th, 2010:
Fisk also stole 17 bases when he was 37 years old, that also had never been done.

Great post.
44: Craig said at 8:16 am on January 20th, 2010:
And one other factor that keeps getting neglected- Pitchers were apparently using steroids as well. So it was “cheater” versus “cheater,” which is another mitigating factor.
45: Kev said at 8:18 am on January 20th, 2010:
Bryan #30 -

So you’re saying amphetamines weren’t an individual choice? And if that was a “whole league” thing, how do we know ‘roids weren’t? We’ll never know how many players were using.

I agree on your last point, though. Sure, they kept you healthy and able to play but what true effect do they have? How much does strength training increase bat speed? That would seem the telling measurement to me.
46: mike in MN said at 8:40 am on January 20th, 2010:
It’s not just strength training. Today’s athletes stay in shape year round. They eat better. They stretch better. EVERYTHING they do is advanced beyond what people knew/did 40-50 years ago….think about it, we are talking about 30-50 years of advancements in training and technology. That’s a lot of advancement.
47: Marc R said at 8:43 am on January 20th, 2010:
“In my day, we had to walk uphill through the snow”

You forgot to add “both ways” to that statement.
48: Matt in NM said at 8:50 am on January 20th, 2010:
Good catch, Mitch (41). Although when it’s 100 deg with no humidity, balls fly (even with the roof closed). There are always multiple factors.
49: Mikey G said at 8:56 am on January 20th, 2010:
Amen! McGwire has it right…steroids for many of these players was primarily about staying in the lineup, not necessarily adding bulk. Still cheating, but it was the ABs coupled with the factors that you mentioned that was responsible for the spike in numbers, not the 3-4 feet of added distance from any “strength” that steroids gave.
50: Jon Morse said at 8:56 am on January 20th, 2010:
Chris @29:

The “he had this available while this guy in the past didn’t” argument is utterly flawed, regardless of legal or illegal behavior.

I could just as easily point out that players in the 70s didn’t have the benefit of Lasik surgery. Players in the 60s couldn’t have a new ligament attached to their elbow. For that matter, players nowadays are just BIGGER and it has nothing to do with drugs.

Seriously, go look at the average size of a middle linebacker in 1980, and look now. And I don’t just mean the NFL. Hell, high school. We, as a species, have been getting larger and larger since the dawn of time, and it seems to have accelerated over the last 50 years. You know that joke about how the 1972 Miami Dolphins would get steamrolled by the 2009 (insert bad college team here)? It’s true, and this is why.

So it’s one thing to argue that a player has an unfair advantage compared to his peers due to HGH when using HGH is illegal. It’s another thing entirely to argue that it’s bad because they didn’t have HGH 20 years ago.

Or, if you object to that premise, then I await everyone claiming that the next .400 hitter is a fraud because he had his eyes tampered with. I want to see people railing against pitchers who have successful careers after having Frankenstein surgery on their elbows. I mean, let’s be consistent here. In comparison to players from the 1920s, all of these guys are “cheating” in a sense; if you were a ballplayer in the 1920s who couldn’t see well enough to hit, that’s it. Your career’s over. If you blew your elbow out? Have fun selling insurance.
51: Mark McRoid said at 8:57 am on January 20th, 2010:
My favorite Fisk memory is when he was ready to fight Dion Sanders (an opponent) for not hustling. I wish the current crop of players had Fisk’s heart and desire.
52: Josh said at 9:02 am on January 20th, 2010:
That was a great read. Thank you.
53: David said at 9:16 am on January 20th, 2010:
I could not agree with you more. People are with one sound bite or stroke of a pen wiping out these peoples entire contribution to the game of Baseball. Steroids are wrong, it is just that simple, but how it impacted them and or the game is not. So I agree, why can’t we have those conversations?
54: David said at 9:16 am on January 20th, 2010:
Echoing #14 Pat, I don’t understand why some of the baseball writers I respect the most (Joe, Keith Law, Will Carroll et al.) so often exhibit this knee-jerk need to dispute the extent to which steroids changed the game. Yeah, I find the moralizing tiresome, too, but that’s no reason to go to the other end of the spectrum just for a balance-of-preachiness. Conceding that no one really knows the precise extent to which steroids helped users, it seems that we really do know an awful lot more than some might suggest:

1) For about a century, Babe Ruth’s single-season HR record had been broken just once; from 1999-2001, it was broken six times by three players, each linked to steroid use.
2) From 1994 to 2004, single-season HR totals climbed dramatically; after testing began, they dropped dramatically.

Conceding again the lack of real statistical rigor, I submit that the above nevertheless say a lot. Point (1) might be explained partially by other contextual factors, but it can’t be explained by the randomness of small samples. Point (2) might be explained a bit by the randomness of small samples, but it can’t be explained by other contextual factors. Yes, the parks and training and bats and equipment and expansion had a lot to do with the 1990s environment, but those things are all still around, with the solitary exception of steroids (well, one assumes testing has reduced their presence, but then there’s the Manny test…). It seems impossible to explain the disparity of the steroid era without, you know, including steroids in it, and a little slippery to say we don’t know how exactly much of the rise was due to steroids, so there’s no point in saying it had any effect. Indeed it seems that the 60-HR seasons that happened every year for a while there were, absent steroids, a twice-a-century event, even with the new parks. That seems prima facie significant, at least to me.

Again, I understand the emotional reaction one gets when some ESPN blowhard issues a disingenuous tirade against the cheaters of that era. (Not sure I have the same reaction to Carlton Fisk, though—isn’t this an unusually high standard to hold a former ballplayer to?) But surely the right reaction can’t be to go this far in the other direction, can it?
55: Bellwether Johnson said at 9:19 am on January 20th, 2010:
“punched up with helium and rabbit juice”

Just like Luke Wilson!!
56: Adam said at 9:26 am on January 20th, 2010:
Joe, they’re still not testing for Human Growth Hormone.
57: hector said at 9:31 am on January 20th, 2010:
Thanks for post No. 54, David. I’d hate to see everyone agree with Joe so much here that people stop seeing that there’s a rational other side to things, that you *can* be frustrated by the steroid era without automatically earning a one-way ticket into the irrational spiteful jaded lunatic file.

Maybe the sky isn’t falling because of steroids, but there was a very lengthy storm. Let’s not pretend otherwise.
58: tarhoosier said at 9:34 am on January 20th, 2010:
Where were these players and their indignation in 1998, 2003, 2004? They are critical now, why not then? If just three or four men like Schilling, Thomas, Griffey, Fisk and some others had spoken plainly, without calling names, their reputation would have grown. Now they are victims of ageism, sour grapes, late-to-the-party claims. After the man admits his crime it is to late to call the police.
59: Steak said at 9:38 am on January 20th, 2010:
Great piece of writing… still amazed at the Fisk numbers from the conclusion.
60: Stanton said at 9:40 am on January 20th, 2010:
Great post. In fact, almost all of your posts/columns are great posts/columns. I’ll even print this one out for my Dad to read.
61: Ricky said at 9:42 am on January 20th, 2010:
David @ #54:

Great post.
62: Latch-Key Kid said at 9:46 am on January 20th, 2010:
@58

As I recall the Big Hurt, for one, WAS saying some of this stuff back then, or at least hinting at it. I have a feeling he didn’t say more was that the reaction to what he DID say was to dismiss/put him down as a jealous, injury-prone hater.
63: Alex said at 9:50 am on January 20th, 2010:
It is curious that big league pro sports in the US seemed (until very recently) to be the last safe islands in the middle of a global ocean where PED users, dealers and doctors were hunted and punished.

European soccer, the world´s most followed sport, has an Olympic-standard testing system since very long ago.

Athletics and cycling were at one point near extinction because of doping. Records were falling like leaves, athletes looked like comic book characters or showed inhuman tolerance to effort and pain. remember Ben Johnson and Floyd Landis? It wasn´t sport anymore, it was pharmacology (not talent, not ability, just cheating massively) and audiences were falling. The world felt like watching pro-wrestling and reacted setting up tough norms on drugs.

Apparently, Usain Bolt has improved Johnson´s chrono without PED´s. Cycling has come back from the grave. Ultimately it is not a choice between “spectacular” and “boring but clean”, but between “true” and “false”.

The ban on drugs actually improve performance by pushing sport science forward: physics, medicine and sports psychology are now more advanced than ever. If PED´s were allowed we would have a more primitive situation.

It is true that outside the US the ethical mindset regarding sport is slightly different. There is still a certain”Olympian” ideal and monstrous performance needs to be clean to be appreciated. A doping athlete seldom (or never) finds understanding in the public or support among journalists.

As I love baseball dearly, I would like it to be clean. I feel it just wasn´t.-
64: Gary said at 9:51 am on January 20th, 2010:
One thing that is often overlooked in the increase in hitting (not just home runs, but overall hitting) is how much more training players receive as low as elementary school. When I was in school in the ’60s and ’70s we had Ted Williams’ book The Science of Hitting and, if we were lucky, a few chances each spring to hit against the Jugs machine. Now kids have baseball camps and videos year-round that turn them into much better hitters earlier. When the truly gifted players reach the minors and majors, they are much better equipped to go with pitches the other way. Look how many opposite field homers A-Rod, Manny, Thome and other power hitters are hitting. That isn’t just because they’re juicing or much stronger, it’s that they’re not trying to pull every pitch like the power hitters of the ’60s and ’70s did. How many opposite field homers did Nettles or Killebrew hit. My guess is none, unless it was an accident. My point is that today’s hitters aren’t just stronger hitters, they are better and smarter hitters.
65: Chuck2 said at 9:54 am on January 20th, 2010:
> baseball people (who, by and large are not exactly noble prize winners)

Well, whether they’re noble or not is a matter of opinion (although I would probably tend to agree with you).

The matter of whether they’ve ever won a Nobel Prize definitely is a fact, though.
66: Thomas Tu said at 9:54 am on January 20th, 2010:
I would argue that it was Bonds’ 2001 season that really triggered all the uproar that led to the indictments and the congressional hearings and the media caterwauling and everything else. Without Bonds’ 2001 season, baseball could have made the necessary moves, subtle and otherwise, to put as much of the genie as possible back in the bottle, and ESPN Classic would still be treating us to the highlights of the 1998 season. And we would be looking forward to telling our grandchildren about it.

—-

I will be telling my children that I was lucky enough to see the most complete player in baseball history when I got to see Bonds.

I don’t care if he used steroids. I know guys who paid people to take their SATs and did better than I did. I know guys who used nepotism to get jobs. Deal with it people.
67: Diane said at 10:00 am on January 20th, 2010:
Great article as always.

One small note …. the AL introduced the DH in ‘73, not ‘72.
68: Lawrence From Plattekill said at 10:03 am on January 20th, 2010:
So which of these was responsible for Bonds’ sudden increase in power right after he took steroids? Smaller stadiums? The strike zone? Did he suddenly find the perfect bat?

Is there anyone trying to run numbers and figure out how much of the increase in home runs in actually due to steroids, and how much these other factors affected them?
69: Chet O said at 10:10 am on January 20th, 2010:
Mr. Posnanski is one of my favorite writers, but he does a lot of rambling and gives some misleading information in this post.
Fisk’s numbers are way off, but the fact of the matter is that the Steroid Era did produce unbelievable performances by many players who should have been well past their primes. Guys who had been lifting weights since puberty suddenly started looking like professional wrestlers and saw their stats explode across the board. The effect was about as subtle as a wave of brain transplants, and it’s left a swell of cognitive dissonance in its wake. We have to consider Mark McGwire and some of his fellow users to be a whole lot better than most of the players already in the Hall of Fame or resolve that he was a supreme fraud, because the stats are going to keep staring us in the face until we decide how to interpret them.
Tossing in the fact that Fisk hit 37 HRs at age 37 further obscures the point. Fisk hit .238 in 1985–31 points below his career average. Fisk DHed 28 times that year and got in 153 games–the second highest total of his career. He was an aging veteran who was swinging for the fences and making huge sacrifices in his contact rate. He was not a better player at 37 than he had been at 27.
Yes, Hank Aaron did have a remarkable power run from age 32 to 39. Prior to that stretch, he didn’t look like a guy who could threaten Ruth’s record. But moving from one of the league’s worst HR parks in Milwaukee to one of the best in Atlanta can do that to a fellow. Aaron averaged 48 HR per 650 PA’s in The Launching Pad, 31 HR per 650 PA’s in County Stadium. And even though Aaron kept his batting averages fairly high during that late run, he did drop about 30 points from where he had been during his peak years. Hank kept going and going, but he didn’t suddenly become a better hitter in his 30’s than he had been in his 20’s.
Fisk had the numbers wrong, but his argument was on target: For the first 100 years of the sport, players got worse when they started getting old. Steroids didn’t just lengthen careers; they radically altered the trajectory of many of those careers. Before he started juicing regularly, McGwire’s numbers looked a lot like Gorman Thomas’–good enough to pick up a few MVP votes, but not good enough enough to make you a baseball immortal. On steroids, McGwire made Harmon Killebrew and Ralph Kiner look like pansies. They deserve better.
Posnanski makes several good points about the impact of ballparks, rules, expansion and integration. The good news there is that all of those things happened in full view of the public and have been chronicled in the history books. We can look at home/road splits, consider rule changes and calculate how many able-bodied men were competing for roster spots when we try to compare Sandy Koufax to Lefty Grove and Randy Johnson. But taking steroids is done in secret, one player at a time, at different levels. All we know is that they made players better than their natural talent and hard work should have made them. And when Mark McGwire says through his tears that he’s sorry he took them, yet goes on to claim that they aren’t the reason he (according to the numbers) became one of the greatest power hitters in the history of the game, he deserves all the incredulity and scorn we can heap upon him.
70: Deb said at 10:13 am on January 20th, 2010:
I’m looking forward to the follow up – how big banks were just caught in a “perfect storm” and didn’t really cause the economy to implode.

Dan Patrick had a great interview with Mark Grace last week and discussed this issue. He explained that the excuse that steriods didn’t cause a huge jump in home runs in bull – a clean hitter had to hit the ball just right to have the power to knock it out of the park. Juicers, because they had so much more strength, didn’t have to hit it nearly as well to have the same result. (Also loved that Gracie explained that he never juiced because he was afraid of what it would do to his, um, virility)
71: Pitchers Hit Eighth said at 10:14 am on January 20th, 2010:
Well said, Joe, as always.

As you said, the steroids guys cheated, no way around it. But it’s bad enough with most of the morally superior media coming down and issuing their decrees on what is and isn’t an acceptable apology et al without having players spout off at the mouth without knowing the facts.

It’s one thing for a player to just say “I don’t agree with what they did, and they cheated.” Fine. When they go the self-important route – “look at these statistics that are completely bogus to support my claim!” – without even a thought that someone might actually know the stats or look them up?

Just shut up.
72: Dodger300 said at 10:16 am on January 20th, 2010:
David@54 wrote: “Not sure I have the same reaction to Carlton Fisk, though—isn’t this an unusually high standard to hold a former ballplayer to?”

Which standard?

1. It is better to keep your mouth shut and have people think you are stupid than to open it and prove they are right?

2. Don’t be ridiculously, outrageously wrong?

3. Don’t be such an arrogant ass?

4. Especially when you are lying like a sack of sh**?
73: Alan said at 10:19 am on January 20th, 2010:
Maybe someone here can confirm this, but wasn’t there some test that showed the baseballs used in ‘93-’94 or thereabouts bounced significantly higher than the ones used previously? I remember MLB and Rawlings denying there was any difference, and maybe the study was debunked, but I always thought it was odd that there was such a sudden, dramatic leap in offense from ‘92-’93-’94 — more dramatic than expansion alone could account for, I’d think.
74: Clayton Trapp said at 10:19 am on January 20th, 2010:
“The high strike was completely taken away. Anything above the belt — and some pitches at the belt — seemed to be automatic balls.”

We who were watching don’t need no proof or talk. The incredible thing was how quickly the Mazzone guys learned to pitch low and wide.
75: Tim Kelly said at 10:23 am on January 20th, 2010:
We are mad at Mark McGwire and others who admit to steroid use because they don’t answer the questions you lay out in your post:

1. Did McGwire (or other steroid users) feel pressure from the teams?
2. Did they know other players were doing it?
3. What was the personal feeling towards making the decision to do steroids?

Each of these guys wants to make it sound like, oops, I tripped up and made a mistake. But we know that’s not the case. We know that they had a set of motivations & hesitations that influenced a calculated decision to break the law/cheat (And don’t tell me these guys didn’t know it was cheating. Anyone who was alive in ‘88 when they stripped Ben Johnson of his Gold medal saw that steroids were not going to be well-received). We know that they were introduced to the drugs by someone, but we don’t know who.

I think what most people want from the steroid users is the chance to understand, to be put in their shoes for a moment. I want the answers to all the questions you have Joe, and every time someone comes forward that can give me a glimpse at those answers they always let me down.
76: Mark Daniel said at 10:27 am on January 20th, 2010:
Brilliant post, Joe. It should be pointed out that in the 60s, teams in the AL scored 4.05 runs per game. In the ’70s, even with expansion in ‘77, AL teams scored only 4.16 runs/game. Compare that to the 90s (4.87 runs/g) and 00s, (4.91 runs/g). The 70s wasn’t a very good hitter’s era either. I think people miss that point a lot, saying the 60s was a pitcher’s era and ignoring the ’70s.

The 4-man rotation and the fact that the team’s best relievers often went well over 100 innings also contributed to the reduced hitting. It’s interesting that 1988, which was about the very beginning of the steroid era, was when league leading games started totals dropped from 40 games to 34-36 games.
77: Deb said at 10:30 am on January 20th, 2010:
Oh… And in the Dan Patrick interview, Mark Grace flat-out said that Sosa knew his bat was corked: “You know what bat you’re taking out to the plate.”
78: Dodger300 said at 10:35 am on January 20th, 2010:
Alex@63 wrote “It is curious that big league pro sports in the US seemed (until very recently) to be the last safe islands in the middle of a global ocean where PED users, dealers and doctors were hunted and punished.”

Then he stated that “cycling has come back from the grave” after Floyd Landis was caught doping.

In 2006.

2006? I believe that was long after McGwire, Sosa, and Bonds were breaking records on “the last safe island” for PED users.

Oh, and this from Wikipedia, concernig how CLEAN cycling has been since it “came back from the grave:”

On 24 May 2007, Erik Zabel admitted using EPO during the first week of the 1996 Tour,[157] when he won the maillot vert (green jersey). Following his plea that other cyclists admit to drugs, former winner Bjarne Riis admitted in Copenhagen on 25 May 2007 that he used EPO regularly from 1993 to 1998, including when he won the 1996 Tour.[158] His admission meant the top three in 1996 were all linked to doping, two admitting cheating.

On 24 July 2007 Alexander Vinokourov tested positive for a blood transfusion (blood doping) after winning a time trial, prompting his Astana team to pull out and police to raid the team’s hotel.[159] Next day Cristian Moreni tested positive for testosterone. His Cofidis team pulled out.[160]

The same day, leader Michael Rasmussen was removed for “violating internal team rules” by missing random tests on 9 May and 28 June. Rasmussen claimed to have been in Mexico. The Italian journalist Davide Cassani told Danish television he had seen Rasmussen in Italy. The alleged lying prompted his firing by Rabobank.[161]

On 11 July 2008 Manuel Beltrán tested positive for EPO after the first stage.[162]

On 17 July 2008, Ricardo Riccò tested positive for continuous erythropoiesis receptor activator, a variant of EPO,[163] after the fourth stage.

In October 2008, it was revealed that Ricco’s teammate and Stage 10 winner Leonardo Piepoli, as well as Stefan Schumacher[164] – who won both time trials – and Bernhard Kohl[165] – third on general classification and King of the Mountains – had tested positive.
79: Brian Shephard said at 10:40 am on January 20th, 2010:
Another incredible post, Joe. I wish you were doing this kind of thinking about health care or education!
80: Ian said at 10:41 am on January 20th, 2010:
As I skimmed your post and you mentioned that this years Yankees hit more HR than any of the steroid years, my thought was well, sure, they’re loaded with roiders now and no one seems to care. But let’s blame everything else first.
81: CA said at 10:42 am on January 20th, 2010:
Fantastic post. I think the question it ultimately raises is this:

Should the “steroid era” be considered just that–a historical era in which steroids were prevalent, in the same way we think of, say, the Deadball era, or the ’60s pitchers’ era, or the pre-integration era?

If so, then steroids ought to be treated something like ballpark factors or rule changes in the era, as simply another contributor to offensive production. Maybe you shake your head at the individual players who used, but in the end you just have to shrug and accept that that’s how the game was at that time.

On the other hand, you could view steroids as an anomaly characterized by a minority of individual players who cheated. In that case, you place most of the responsibility on the individual users themselves, and you go after them and their records in an attempt to “purify” the game from the stain they put on it.

Just to make things more complicated, there’s probably a middle ground in there somewhere too.
82: RotoLogo said at 10:48 am on January 20th, 2010:
I respect Fisk but guys like him are always leaving out the notion that the old-timers were never confronted with the potent combo of the PEDs being invented + financial incentive to use.
83: BigSteve said at 10:55 am on January 20th, 2010:
“It is the new weight training techniques and legal supplements — a player doesn’t have to do steroids to become much stronger than he would have been 30 years ago.”

Joe makes this point in passing, but I think it deserves more play. I agree with mike@46 — advancements in our knowledge about nutrition and strength training would make for bigger, stronger, and healthier players even without steroids.
84: Siberian Khatru said at 11:04 am on January 20th, 2010:
Phenomenal job, Joe.
85: Chuck said at 11:08 am on January 20th, 2010:
OK, it is time for the word “moralizing” or any variant thereof to be banned from all further discussions of the doping era in baseball or any other sport. It is a lazy and anti-intellectual means of dismissing arguments that the user of the word wants to taint without actually having to address. Worse, it is a word that is virtually impossible to use without engaging in the behavior yourself; that is, you can’t accuse someone else of “moralizing” without being guilty of “moralizing” yourself, only based on a different set of morals (or lack thereof), and in fact imposing your moral standards (or lack thereof) on others. So stop it.
86: John Q said at 11:10 am on January 20th, 2010:
I think the Joe Paterno quote is the best point of this article in that we should ask questions without getting livid. And I think Joe P, brings up some excellent points about other mitigating factors related to baseball home runs during the last 18 odd years.

Fisk really screws up what he’s trying to do by messing up the numbers to try to prove his point. But at the heart of his statement, I think he raises some valid points in that steroids helped players play longer and hit more home runs.

But to defend Fisk, I think Joe P is downplaying the effect steroids had on hitting home runs. Using just 39 year olds gives you a pretty small sample size, but let’s take a look a Fisk’s point.

Here’s the top 5 HR by a 39 year old:

Bonds: 45-2004
Aaron: 40-1973
STEVE FINLEY: 36-2004
Willie Stargell: 32-1979
Cy Williams: 30-1927

Aaron, Stargell and Williams obviously didn’t use steroids. But the real “red flag” and the one that Fisk should have brought up to make his point is Steve Finley.

Here’s a point I think Joe completely overlooks as far as the impact steroids had on hitting home runs: A guy that never hit more than 11 home before the age of 30 and then suddenly he hits the third most HR in baseball history by a 39 year old player???

Steve Finley never hit more than 11 Home Runs before the age of 30. After age 30 he hit over 30 Home runs 4 Times!!. Players just don’t TRIPLE their Home Run totals from ballparks and body armor and bats especially past the age of 30.

Luis Gonzalez never hit more than 15 Home Runs before the age of 30. Then from age 30+ he hit 23+ home runs 7 times!! and he hit 57 HR in 01!!!

Bret Boone never hit more than 15 Home Runs and 69 RBI by the age of 29. Then from age 30+ he hit 24 Home Runs 5 times!! and 37 HR and 141 RBI in 2001!!! Those 37hr were the 7th highest single season total by a second basemen in baseball history!! All from a guy who never topped 15 before the age of 30?

Jay Bell never hit more than 16 HR by the age of 30 and then hit 38HR at the age of 33??, which at the time was the 6th highest total by a second basemen.

Brady Anderson never hit more than 21HR by the age of 31, then at age 32 he hit 50HR???

Greg Vaughn had only ONE 30 HR season by the age of 29, he hit exactly 30HR at age 29. From ages 30-33, he hit 40, 50, and 45 Home Runs in a pitcher’s park no less.
87: Padman Jones said at 11:24 am on January 20th, 2010:
16/17 of the most prolific home run seasons of all time have come since 1994 and beyond…when there were more teams (28-30) than ever before. I know that HR/game was mentioned briefly, but it seems like looking at raw league totals isn’t a good way to go about calling out the steroid era. Of course the 2007 league’s going to hit more home runs than the 1942 league when it plays 162 games with 30 teams.
88: Mark Daniel said at 11:34 am on January 20th, 2010:
The 4-man rotation in the 60s and 70s led to more starts for elite pitchers. During those times, these same pitchers pitched more complete games (see Bert Blyleven). Thus, they pitched more often and more innings per start.
And, if you look at 70s relievers, you had guys like Rollie Fingers throwing well over 100 innings per year from ‘70-’78. Sparky Lyle threw 137 innings in ‘77. Gossage and Lyle threw a combined 245 innings in 1978. Mike Marshall threw 179 innings in ‘73, and 208 in ‘74. Bill Campbell threw 167 innings in ‘76. Kent Tekulve threw 130+ innings in ‘78 and ‘79. Even up into the mid-80s, you had guys like Quisenberry throwing 130 innings for 4 straight seasons. This just doesn’t happen anymore. Combine the increased innings of top relievers with increased innings and starts by top starters, and you had a much tougher hitting environment in the ’60s, ’70s and into the mid ’80s compared to today.
89: Joe R said at 11:35 am on January 20th, 2010:
I’m going to be honest right now.

I ran a regression of every year of the NL (1876 = 0, 1877 = 1) to league ISO. The spike over expectation in the mid 20’s to 50’s annihilates the spike in the 90’s.

The “steroid era” is overrated.

Of course a simple regression analysis might not be the best way to show that, but still.
90: John Q said at 11:48 am on January 20th, 2010:
Small correction, When Jay Bell hit his 38 HR in 1999, that was the 4rth best single season HR mark for a second basemen in BB history. All from a guy who never hit more than 16HR by 30 years old.

Here’s some other interesting things:

Jeff Kent hit 78 Home Runs by age 28.
From the ages 29-40 Jeff Kent hit 299 HR??? Suddenly he began hitting home runs when he went to San Francisco in 1997.

Jeff Kent who never hit more than 21 HR by the age of 28, later had (5 ) 27+ home run seasons that are among the top 17 HR seasons by a second basemen in baseball history??

Bret Boone broke Joe Gordon’s A.L. record for Home Runs in a season by second
91: Ross said at 12:02 pm on January 20th, 2010:
This article/blog entry/op-ed piece…however you wish to categorize it… should be required reading not just for baseball fans, but for people in general as the principles of the piece hold true for many, many facets of life. Great work.
92: John Q said at 12:16 pm on January 20th, 2010:
got cut-off.

Brett Boone broke Joe Gordon’s A.L. Home Run record by 2b, twice with 37 in ‘01, and 35 in ‘03. All this from a man who never hit more than 15HR by the age of 29.

Bobby Grich’s 30HR in 1979 was 5th all time by a second baseman from 1901-1995. By 2005, simply 10 years later, Grich’s 30HR season was now 11th all time!!

Lou Whitaker’s 28HR in 1989 was 7th all time by a second baseman from 1901-1995. By 2005, again simply 10 years later, Whitaker’s 28HR was 14th all time!!
93: mockcarr said at 12:22 pm on January 20th, 2010:
Everyone ought to accuse Nolan Ryan too. Two of this best four seasons come after age 40, and he led the league in strikeouts a few times after 40 as well. Power pitchers are supposed to lose a lot off their fastball in their 30s and have to adjust. Better control doesn’t explain all of it.

Did anyone test Fisk’s protein shakes? Did he get them from Ron Kittle?

Mays and Schmidt have admitted they would have done them if they were available, since they were extremely competitive guys, and didn’t want to lose any edge to another player. When you get better as a hitter, it helps your team. What club is going to tell their player not to get stronger? Drug users get every chance to play if they have talent. When strength or endurance are a big part of your game, and it’s obvious that a lot of players are using these drugs to their advantage, it’s a lot to ask a competitive player to just eschew these things that could help them and their team win.
94: Keith - Triple Dead Heat said at 12:26 pm on January 20th, 2010:
Joe,

Long time reader, first time commenter…

I would have enjoyed this article a lot more if it had started with the statement:

“Players who used steroids knew they were taking performance enhancers that made them better hitters than they had ever been previously.”

There may not have been a rule in place in the steroid era to deem all the players involved cheaters – but it bothers me that the players have a new wall of information to hide behind.

All of baseball’s various eras (whites only, dead ball, juiced ball, expansion, blind umpires, corked bats, DH, greenies and the horrible jim sundberg wind-aided triple era) make it impossible to compare stats from one decade to another – but I still think deep down that the players invovlved knew they were getting away with something.

It’s unsportsmanlike.

Still – love the blogs. Keep ‘em coming!
95: Cooper Nielson said at 12:27 pm on January 20th, 2010:
@54 David:

You raise some good points, but I think you ignore the *possibility* that there was a rare collection of home-run hitting talent in MLB in the 1998-2001 era. (Like center fielders in New York in the ’50s.) Maybe the numbers went down in part because those extreme talents declined/retired after 2001.

The three big guys were obviously Bonds, McGwire and Sosa — all linked in some way to steroids. Well, McGwire hit 49 home runs as a rookie (supposedly pre-steroids) and was always a candidate to break Ruth/Maris’s record. Bonds, by 1998, was already considered possibly one of the top 10 players in history, and a hard worker who liked to prove people wrong. It’s *possible* he started hitting HR at a higher rate in 1999 because he *focused* on hitting HR. Sosa’s the sore thumb here… his transformation from OK-but-overrated power hitter to elite slugger happened seemingly overnight. But at least his peak occurred at a fairly typical age (29-33), and he always was considered talented (he was an everyday player at age 20).

It’s *possible* that, steroids or not, these were three of the greatest home-run hitting talents in baseball history, and they all happened to peak at the same time. Maybe that’s not *likely,* but it’s *possible.*

I’m not saying steroids didn’t help McGwire, Bonds and Sosa hit home runs. I’m sure they probably did. But when *all* conditions in the game favor home runs, the guys who are naturally talented home run hitters are naturally going to stand out, with or without illegal enhancement.

(Griffey hit 56 HR twice. Most people claim he *wasn’t* on steroids. In fact, many people have called him “lazy.” Imagine Griffey’s talent coupled with Bonds’ work ethic — that’s how you get 60+ HR seasons.)

The evidence you presented is still consistent with the thesis “Steroids help you hit home runs, but they don’t help much.” Maybe the steroids added 5-10% to these guys’ home run totals. Maris’s record still would have fallen.

@86 John Q:

Are you suggesting that Finley, Gonzalez, Boone, Bell, Anderson and Vaughn were all on steroids? If even one of them wasn’t, doesn’t that prove that it was very possible to improve your HR total by leaps and bounds in a short time *without* steroids? (Especially in the mid-’90s.)

There have been plenty of fluke HR seasons throughout baseball history — Dave Johnson (1973), Barry Larkin (1996), Goose Goslin (1930), heck, Roger Maris (1961).

I don’t know (or don’t remember) if Steve Finley et al. took steroids, and it wouldn’t surprise me if they did. But all of these numbers could be interpreted in another way: Athletes in their 30s are keeping their bodies in much better shape than ever before.

Today’s baseball players are more aware of nutrition, they train year-round, they have (legal) medical advances to help them get and stay healthy, they come from a wider gene pool to start with, and they focus on baseball from a young age. They’re *better* than the athletes of the ’60s. Plus, hitting a baseball probably takes more skill than raw talent anyway, and most players get more *skilled* as they age, while their talent fades. Maybe modern players are able to hold on longer to their talent, and maybe age 30 is when experience and talent finally “click” for those who aren’t elite talents. Maybe that’s why 30-year-olds suddenly become better hitters. I don’t know.

But it seems silly to assume that all “out-of-nowhere” power spikes were the direct result of steroids, when we know that these spikes have been around longer than steroids, and we know that many admitted/named steroid users *haven’t* seen these power spikes.

In other words, I’m not sure why Steve Finley’s age-39 season is so much more nefarious than Cy Williams’. (Cy hit 6 fewer home runs but played 31 fewer games.) Williams never hit more than 13 HR before the age of 30, then he hit 41 at age 35 and 30 at age 39. (Very similar to what Finley did as an older player.) Finley’s peak OPS+ came when he was 31; he never surpassed 120 after that. Those aren’t ridiculous numbers for a guy in his late-30s. He kept himself in shape. Sure, maybe he took steroids. But I don’t think you can determine that strictly from the stats. Cy Williams was able to do the same thing in the ’20s, as you pointed out.
96: Jason Grimsley said at 12:29 pm on January 20th, 2010:
The one thing that I think people forget is that mediocre players used steroids also, and they didn’t instantly become great
97: McKingford said at 12:44 pm on January 20th, 2010:
#90: Lou Whitaker hit 52 HRs by age 28, and 192 HRs after that. He retired at age 38, despite posting a 128 OPS+ season. He had never hit more than 15 HR in a season until age 28 and after that had 7 seasons with more than 15.

One conclusion one may draw from this is that Lou was juicing. Another, and one most people are likely to draw, is that power increases with age.
98: Joe Posnanski » Blog Archive » Iron Fisk | Drakz Free Online Service said at 12:48 pm on January 20th, 2010:
[...] the original: Joe Posnanski » Blog Archive » Iron Fisk Share and [...]
99: McKingford said at 1:00 pm on January 20th, 2010:
“Players who used steroids knew they were taking performance enhancers that made them better hitters than they had ever been previously.”

See, that’s the thing. We don’t know this to be true.

It isn’t obvious to me that steroid use makes one a HR hitter. Brute strength doesn’t a HR hitter make. Rather, it seems to me that bat speed is exponentially more important, and it isn’t clear to me at all that steroid use, and the additional muscle mass that may come from steroid use improves bat speed.

It does seem to me that steroid use can help players recover from injury faster (ie. the purported basis for McGwire’s use), but this is a couple direct links removed from the causal connection between steroid use and home runs. Players who use steroids are probably (key word, since we don’t *know* for sure) able to keep their bodies together longer, so as to prolong their careers; a steroid user (assuming no negative side effects from steroid use) likely will play more career games both through more games played per season and more years played. But that is a cause for an increase in career home runs, rather than the types of spikes people are complaining about.

The focus on production late in a player’s career misses an important point. With or without steroids, players are playing longer and are much better at staying in shape (and there is – at least to me – a clear causal connection there). The number one complaint an older or retired player will cite is that “if only” they had the wisdom of their age with the body of their youth. Well, today’s better fitness regimens certainly make this a greater possibility. An in-shape Steve Finley, with the wisdom of all his playing years, is able to put together a great home run hitting season at age 36; how do you think a 36 year old Dale Murphy would have performed with Steve Finley’s body?
100: Ghost of the Bambino said at 1:06 pm on January 20th, 2010:
Joe:

Once again the thought you put into an contentious debate is worthwhile reading. That said, I do have a question (a quibble?) with a line you wrote:

“There is pretty good reason to suspect that Babe Ruth corked his bat”

If ever there was a JP throwaway line that deserved an asterisk it was that one. Can you support that allegation?

Just curious…
101: ME said at 1:10 pm on January 20th, 2010:
WE NEED TO STOP MAKING EXCUSES FOR THESE CHEATERS
102: electric said at 1:14 pm on January 20th, 2010:
@ ME

Looks like you’re already there. Well done.
103: Chris said at 1:19 pm on January 20th, 2010:
For those of you questioning Joe, I don’t think he was trying to take any blame away from steroids, rather he was attempting to explain that there was a multitude of factors involved with the increase in HR during the last 20 years.

His point was that too many times, people want to put 100% of the blame on steroids instead of even considering other factors.

Why hasn’t it been mentioned that other than 1961, Roger Maris never topped 40 HR in a season. His 2nd best season total is 39. That’s a big jump is it not? But we forgive this anomaly because we are sure steroids were not involved. But McGwire going from 49 in his rookie season to 70 is wildly outrageous and the absolute only factor is steroids.

Again the point is not to absolve steroids of any blame, just to look at other factors.
104: dave said at 1:26 pm on January 20th, 2010:
Hey Pat – how many bodybuilders are in jail? Seriously? If they were bodybuilders they would be in jail? Really?
105: Mark said at 1:31 pm on January 20th, 2010:
Re John Q @ 86:

At age 39, Bonds hit 45 homers . . . in 373 official at bats.

For those counting, that’s a home run every 8.29 at bats. Not quite the ridiculous 6.52 he had in 2001. But not too shabby for a 39 year old.
106: Mike McManus said at 1:38 pm on January 20th, 2010:
@54

Actually your second point was addressed by Joe in the OP and while I think your intention was solid, and I tend to agree with your line of thinking, it’s also false. The BIG numbers went away when testing began, but the overall numbers remain relatively unchanged. We probably won’t ever see another 70 homerun season, but the ball is still flying out of the park at an alarming rate.

It’s fascinating which numbers we as fans find important. 61, 66, 70, 73, 714, 755. That we’re so fascinated by individual achievements in a sport that’s a case study in the concept of team may tell a large part of the story about the continuing vitriol that surrounds the steroid discussion.

And don’t think for a second that personalities don’t play a role in all of this as well. While I’m not ready to hang the “Iron Man” out as chemically enhanced, it’s telling that this post is the first time I’ve ever heard a peep of suspicion about Cal. Barry’s being a certifiable asshole certainly didn’t help his case.
107: John Q said at 1:39 pm on January 20th, 2010:
Mckingford,

Your using his age 27 season (1984) as a split not his age 28 season (1985).

Whitaker had 73Hr after he was 28 years old
Kent had 78HR after he was 28 years old

From 29+ Whitaker hit 171
From 29+ Kent hit 299

That’s a huge disparity on Kent’s part.

Whitaker hit 20Hr twice before age 30 and twice after which would suggest a normal aging pattern like you said.

Kent never had more than 80RBi in a season before age 29, From 29+ he has over 100 8 times??.

He was a slightly above average second basemen when he was traded by Cleveland at the end of 1996 after his age 28 season, and then he becomes a HOF secondbasemen??

Kent never made an all star team or received an MVP vote before he was 29, then from 29+ he was in the top ten in MVP voting 4 times top 20 6 times, won the MVP and made 5 all star teams, and won 4 silver sluggers.
108: Josh in DC said at 1:44 pm on January 20th, 2010:
The people who get worked up over “cheaters” … is there an organization for these people so they can have their own message boards?

They have have ongoing threads about Gaylord Perry, Kent Hrbek, and that minor league catcher who threw a potato into the outfield a few years back. Oh, and they can take their complaints about steroids there, too. Though everything there would have be to be written in all caps.
109: Joe said at 1:45 pm on January 20th, 2010:
I just don’t get it – why all the fuss. I get that Steroids were illegal without a prescription but so what if people used them and other things to look for an edge. I was never around players at that level but I am pretty confident that most of those guys are so competitive that they would have eaten nails if it gave them an advantage.

The Hall of Fame is for players who distinguished themselves in their day. Each era has distinctive features – from equipment and rules to pharmacology, surgical advancements, labor agreements, federal and state laws – that impact performance.

Is it ok if someone wears glasses? How about contact lenses? How about contact lenses that help to focus the light better making it easier to pick up the ball? Lasik surgery?

Just how much science is too much? Do an article on that perhaps??

If Mantle had access to today’s orthopedic surgery techniques he might have hit 800 home runs.

And what about Tommy John surgery? Didn’t he win more games after the surgery than Koufax won in his brief Hall of Fame career.

Enough already – the comparison from year to year is an interesting debate but not worth this much energy.

And given that the owners, union and press were all part of the mess with the players perhaps it is time to just let it all go and move on. I for one am getting bored with it.

Let’s Go Phillies!
110: Kevin Sidders said at 1:49 pm on January 20th, 2010:
@BSG #32 -

Football : Baseball
Lyle Alzado : Ken Caminiti?
111: Cooper Nielson said at 1:52 pm on January 20th, 2010:
@John Q

Unless you have first-hand knowledge that all these players you’re naming were steroid users, you’re making a much stronger argument that it was the *era* they were playing in that led to the high home run totals, not the substances.

Jeff Kent, Bret Boone, Jay Bell et al. started hitting home runs when the entire *league* started hitting home runs. (You’re also focusing on players who didn’t get regular playing time until their mid-20s.)

The more names you throw out there, the more it seems that *everyone* benefited from the era. (Either that, or *everyone* was on steroids. And to me that makes it pointless to single out anyone as a villain or cheater.)

There are many ways to interpret these stats:

1. Players used steroids in the ’90s to instantly become better HR hitters in their 30s than in their 20s.
2. It became much easier to hit home runs in the mid-to-late ’90s.
3. There are more late-bloomers now than there used to be.

I don’t see why (1) has to be the answer.
112: Howard said at 1:56 pm on January 20th, 2010:
This is all interesting, and yes,I agree that players were juicing with whatever the could find. It doesn’t make it right. It especially doesn’t make it ok to lie TO THE US CONGRESS while under oath. So its two different problems here- PEDS and then the lying.
Players are always going to look for an edge, and we’re all still trying to decide how to respond to it (to those of you who seem not to care much,would you let your son or daughter use these drugs). I don’timagine this will go away.
But if you’re caught and you lie about it,then I’ve got no further interest in ever hearing that persons opinion ever again
113: Tony M said at 1:56 pm on January 20th, 2010:
Good points to consider in determining all the reasons for the increased homers. However, with the exception of steriods, all those reasons are still in place – yet the monster individual homer numbers are gone. The additional reasons seem to explain the overall increase in homer numbers, but not the monster individual years. Your explanation seems to solidify the claim they came from steriods. With the overall raised homer numbers without (or with less) PED’s, think what the total numbers would be with the elite hitters still juicing.
114: Shane said at 1:59 pm on January 20th, 2010:
Argument over.
115: Brent said at 2:04 pm on January 20th, 2010:
McKingford @99

I agree with you. Most discussions by writers (and some fans) of steroid use in baseball proves to me that those writers paid very little attention in science class in high school (just as their slavish devotion to BA and RBIs to the detriment of superior stats like Win Shares and ERA+ proves they also paid very little attention in math class).

I suspect some writers think steroids works like Popeye’s spinach. Or Peter’s Parker’s radioactive spider or maybe Bruce Banner’s exposure to gamma rays.
116: Bugg said at 2:10 pm on January 20th, 2010:
When does Selena Roberts(this week in the pages of SI hammering McGwire’s apology) apologize to the Duke lacrosse players? When is the media going to police it’s own? Big picture her trying to ruin these guys’ lives to fit her PC view of the world is worse than any of this.
117: John Q said at 2:16 pm on January 20th, 2010:
Cooper Nielson,

I would say that Bell, Boone, Finley, Anderson, Gonzalez, and Vaughn were on steroids.

There’s way too many red flags in the careers. Vaughn never hitting more than 30 HR by age 30 then he hit 40, 50 HR in Jack Murphy stadium and another 45 for the Reds. Finley never hit more than 11 HR and then suddenly he hit 30HR in Jack Murphy stadium in 1996. The 9th highest total in Padre history when he was 31 years old when his previous high was 11???

Gonzalez never hitting more than 15 in a season by age 30 then hit 24HR+ 7 times with a 57HR season at age 33 in ‘01??

A one year fluke is one thing but when a player does it consistently, that raises the red flag.

Finley never hit more than 11HR before age 31, from age 31 forward he hit 30+HR 4 times!! That’s nearly triple his single season high.

Steve Finley hit 77HR by his age 30 season. From ages-31-40 Finley hit 227HR???

Cy Williams was actually a big home run hitter for the time period. He was often in the top 3, hit 41HR in 1923 and lead the league in HR 4 times. So his 30 isn’t really that much of fluke when you put it into the context of time.
118: Mike McManus said at 2:17 pm on January 20th, 2010:
Tony @ 113

The one thing your reasoning neglects to mention is the overall numbers in the monster individual years.

In 1998, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa went off. There were 5,064 homeruns hit that year. In 2009, post-testing when the monster individual seasons have supposedly disappeared, there were 5,042 homeruns hit.

How inflated would the numbers be if the ‘elite’ hitters were still juicing? 1998 suggests not that different at all.

The obsession with the individual underscores just how flawed the ‘Only steroids’ reasoning really is.
119: electric said at 2:29 pm on January 20th, 2010:
@ 112

So all the players who did steroids also lied? Ok.

And I thought McGwire was one of the few who did not lie to Congress, but rather chose not to comment.
120: Ed Gilmore said at 2:54 pm on January 20th, 2010:
I think another factor is that players train year round and show up at spring training in shape and ready to play for the most part. In earlier times, spring training was used to get in shape, not to fine tune your game. I also think owners turned a blind eye to the usage after the lost season. you’re right almost all new modern stadiums are smaller than their predessors.
121: Josh in DC said at 3:05 pm on January 20th, 2010:
I’m with @119. I’m pretty sure McGwire never lied to Congress.

Incidentally, tobacco executives DID lie to Congress, and they’re still at large.
122: Brent said at 3:06 pm on January 20th, 2010:
One thing not mentioned by Joe, but it is also possible that MLB “juiced” the baseballs, ala the 1920s and 1930s.
123: Mike K. said at 3:22 pm on January 20th, 2010:
World Mitchell hit 47 homers in a season in which the league slugged .375.

Clearly, he was juicing.

Killebrew, Howard, and Jackson went 49-48-47 in a season in which the league slugged .369.

Clearly, they were juicing.

Maris hit 61 in a .399 season.

Juiced.
124: Jay Gibbons said at 3:32 pm on January 20th, 2010:
@96 Jason Grimsley,

Just taking steroids doesn’t do much if you don’t cycle correctly, workout properly and vigorously, and eat well.

Also, PEDs can help a player go from Double-A farm hand to marginal major league player. Just because you take them effectively doesn’t make you a HOFer, it just makes you better than you would be – to what extent… who knows?
125: biff buttocks said at 3:34 pm on January 20th, 2010:
There is no evidence that steroids causes any long-term health problems. The anti-steroid movement is filled with hysteria and hype. Steroids has side effects like any drug. The problem is that steroids are illegal so they are used without doctor supervision.
126: Brent said at 3:35 pm on January 20th, 2010:
Mike @123:

We can keep going, Ruth hit 54 in 1920 when the league slugged .387.

Of course, the 2nd place finisher in the AL in HRs that year did hit 50. Oh wait, that was the 2nd place team finisher. Yes, Ruth hit 54 and the next highest team, the Browns, hit 50 HRs.

Clearly juicing.
127: Chris D said at 3:36 pm on January 20th, 2010:
This elaborate article seems to have lost track of the point. Fisk is correct that McGuire’s numbers are inflated due to PED’s. He has a right to be angry when these numbers are compared to his own. The fact that Fisk has an abrasive manner and that he overstates his case doesn’t change the basic point. McGuire is just appeasing his ego when he says that he would have hit the same number of homeruns and everyone reading this knows it.
128: Meh said at 3:48 pm on January 20th, 2010:
“– 2 off Pedro Ramos who, rather remarkably, led league in losses FOUR STRAIGHT YEARS. Consecutively, he lost: 18, 19, 18, 20. It is a unique achievement.”

Actually, Phil Niekro also led the league in losses four straight years, losing 20, 18, 20, 18 (and twice posting winning records in that run!). It is not a unique achievement.

But that’s just nitpicking. Good article, as always.
129: PST Jeff said at 3:51 pm on January 20th, 2010:
Scanning the comments and noticing that a few BRs have made the comparison between the financial meltdown and steroid era. Hadn’t thought about this, but seems especially apt.

I think if any system skews its rewards to one outcome (say dingers or short-term profits), that system is going to evolve a bunch of methods to reach that outcome. It’s a shame we typically whack only the most visible or morally prickly methods (big muscles and greed). I wish I had more econ under my belt so I could use some snazzier terms here.

A quick response to Chris D. I would argue that the point of this article is not to disregard Fisk’s point out of hand, but rather to show that his methods of argument, i.e. overstating his case and doing so in an abrasive manner, actually work to subvert the complexity of the issue here. Come to think of it arguments buttressed by these two tactics have come to be pretty damn responsible for the boondoggle that is regulation in the aftermath of the financial meltdown as well.
130: Tim Lacy said at 4:00 pm on January 20th, 2010:
JoeP: It seems to me that you’re making an argument not just against steroids, but against statistical projections for 30-something-plus players. It seems they’re all capable of big comeback years. With a little healing, a lot knowledge, and some luck, and they might put up HOF-type numbers. – TL
131: electric said at 4:00 pm on January 20th, 2010:
@ 127

Who’s comparing McGwire’s numbers to Fisk’s? McGwire was a first baseman whose value came solely from his offense, while Fisk was a catcher who helped his teams on offense and defense. They aren’t really comparable, except using stats like WAR, in which case Fisk beats McGwire, 67.5 to 63.1 (according to Rally’s WAR Database). As to McGwire’s comments about his steroid use, I will point you to Joe’s S. I. article.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2010/writers/joe_posnanski/01/12/posnanski.mcgwire/index.html
132: Vin said at 4:03 pm on January 20th, 2010:
Re: #30

It is impossible to quantify, for two reasons:

1) We don’t know how took and when, and may never know the full extent of it.
2) Even if we did, we do not know – and probably cannot know – the specific effects of specific steroids on specific individuals.

It is actually, to me, point number two that is the most salient. Though it would be a mightily tall task, it is at least plausible that we could piece together many of the details of who took what and when. But that still leaves us with the gaping question – what does it all mean?

To reiterate – pitchers took steroids. ALEX SANCHEZ took steroids. Does it now stand to reason that steroids had no impact on Bonds’ or McGwire’s home run totals? Of course not. But just like I can take a Benadryl and not feel tired at all while someone else may fall asleep at their desk, the actual effects of drugs tend to vary quite widely among individuals. This is especially true for steroids, which are frequently designed to do a particular thing for a particular person.

And even if we could determine that steroids somehow made Mark McGwire 20% stronger, it doesn’t necessarily follow that they made him hit 20% more home runs. What about extra-base hits? What about pitchers being more afraid of him and pitching around him (as happened with Bonds)? What about the other things Joe mentioned – remember, 1998 was an expansion year?

The fact is that there is so much that goes into the individual chemistry of a steroid and a human being, and so much that goes into hitting a home run, that it is well-nigh impossible to say “x number of steroids = y number of home runs.” It’s just not that simple. We want it to be, but it isn’t.
133: Justyo said at 4:06 pm on January 20th, 2010:
I was a decent ballplayer growing up. Could really hit in High School, was approached by a few colleges to come play for them. And I can honestly say, without hesitation. If I took every steroid known to man with the guidance of a nutritionist whatever – I would still have NEVER made it to the Show. One thing I am convinced of – the best they can do is make a good player great or a great player a HOF’er. But you got to start with extraordinary talent, otherwise, every team would’ve had an All-Star lineup top to bottom thoughout the era.

My point? To approach historic marks in pro baseball you have to be a top 1% player to begin with. No matter what you take. IMO.
134: Ben said at 4:10 pm on January 20th, 2010:
Great thoughts. Here are few more: Do we really know that all the guys playing now are “clean”… I know we have testing, but is it really catching everything?

We can’t give guys that used steroids a pass, it sends the wrong message to current and future players about the consequences of cheating (any kind of cheating).

Expanding on your thoughts about the increase in technology, etc. People now have the ability to go to camps, get scientific instruction about their form, etc. from the time they can walk. Pro athletes today are just plain bigger, stronger, faster than they were years ago. They can make ridiculous money doing it, it’s a real job. Pitchers are better today though too, throwing pitches that guys 50 years ago had never even heard of. Reminds me of watching the so called “Greatest Game Ever Played” (1958 NFL Championship)… as I sat there watching the guys play, I just was saying to myself, any current NFL team, even the Lions would absolutely kill either of these teams (I think the problem is that the old timers don’t want to admit that current players are better).
135: John Q said at 5:19 pm on January 20th, 2010:
@133 Justyo,

I think that’s a valid point. Most of those guys I listed were above average players good but they never made all star teams, or got MVP votes let alone finished in the top 5 in MVP voting. Then suddenly after age 30 when most players go into what’s called a “decline phase” these player actually got better . So steroids took them from average/above average to All Star/MVP.

Kent was an a slightly above average second basemen, steroids turned him into a HOF second basemen.

Kent had a career ops+ of 106 when he was 29 years old. When he retired he finished with a career ops+ of 123!!. That’s insane, he didn’t have a decline phase, he didn’t age like everybody else.

Luis Gonzalez had a career ops+ of 108 at age 30. When he retired he finished with a career ops+ of 118.

Brett Boone had a ops+ of 87 at age 30. He finished with an ops+ of 101.
136: What I’ve Learned So Far » Blog Archive » What I was going to say about steroids. said at 5:24 pm on January 20th, 2010:
[...] Read it here. And make sure to pause, think, and think again before you ascribe all of the offensive explosion in baseball in the 1990s and 2000s to performance-enhancing drugs. [...]
137: Al said at 6:11 pm on January 20th, 2010:
Thanks — well-reasoned and well-written.

And calm!
138: Steven P said at 6:46 pm on January 20th, 2010:
Joe,

I want to say I love reading your stuff. It is insightful beyond belief, as well researched as any I can find, always thought provoking and, above all else, interesting. But the one things that you always sound like a steroid apologist.
I don’t want to hear Greenies compared to steroids. I don’t care about spit balls, and raising the mound or even expanding the strike zone. Professional men used illegal substances to improve performance in a sport I love. This is the same thing that happened to the WWE and why it is now listed as Entertainment and not a Sport.
All of the things you said in this article I take as true, but for me, the issue is not the records, or the fact that these men knowingly cheated (as did the spit ballers, and bat corkers, and greenie takers of yesterday) but it is the fact that these men are professional athletes who have lied, and cheated and taken the trust out of the part of sport that we all love. I fear my children will not worship their favorite baseball player anymore as this god among men. My children will not be able to experience that child- like joy I took in watching Bo Jackson or Ken Griffy Jr. track down a fly ball that looked like it would drop in for a double or was heading over the fence for a sure home run. There won’t be the same feelings for the Ricky Henderson glove snap on a pop up or the way he took second and then knew would take third. It all becomes cheapened for this generation of baseball fans when a Big Papi home run might have had a little help, or an A-Rod rocket leaves the park so fast you didn’t even see the ball, but think that he may have had some Boli for breakfast.
We all know that men are flawed. We all know we would all do whatever it took in a competitive environment to get that edge. But taking illegal drugs is a line that I think most people look at and know that it comes down to the integrity of the man when they decide to take it or not. All of the other things are slightly more arbitrary when you compartmentalize them in your mind. Steroids are a much clearer issue. Any athlete, college, high school, pro, has that chance at some point to do something to improve that is over the line. Some of us were even exposed to Steroids in the ‘90’s and decided not to take them because that WAS crossing the line.
These are the reasons there is such an up roar, in my opinion. I will continue to enjoy your writing, but please stop apologizing for the steroid users.

Thanks,

Steven
139: electric said at 6:54 pm on January 20th, 2010:
@ Steven P

Did you not read? Greenies were illegal too, but people still hold the players who used them at a much different standard to those who used steroids.
140: Chuck2 said at 7:26 pm on January 20th, 2010:
I think it’s interesting to read the commenters who say that McGwire’s 49 homers as a rookie don’t translate into what he did later.

I would point out that the previous rookie record was 38 homers, shared by a 1930 Brave most people probably never heard of (Wally Berger), although he had a very good but somewhat short career — and Frank Robinson. (49 is 129% of 38, by the way.)

Which all goes to show that having only hit 38 lousy homers as a rookie is what obviously kept F. Robbie from having much of a subsequent career, homer-wise.
141: Jason B said at 8:25 pm on January 20th, 2010:
Deb @ #70 stated “I’m looking forward to the follow up – how big banks were just caught in a “perfect storm” and didn’t really cause the economy to implode.”

Methinks this is the kind of gross oversimplification that Joe is speaking to in this article. Big banks’ loose lending and securitization practices were *one* contributing factor, not *the* factor. Add in the consumers’ easy access to free-flowing and cheap credit (from banks, credit cards, and other sources), plus their penchant for spending beyond their means, plus an unsustainable rise in real estate values, particularly commercial real estate, plus overbuilding and overdevelopment that needed to be flushed out of the system, and the staggering rise in health care costs, and the volatility in oil prices, and…and…

You get the picture. It’s easy to pick our favorite target du jour and rail against them and the greivous harms they visited upon us all, but life tends to be a little more complicated than that.
142: Jason B said at 8:29 pm on January 20th, 2010:
Bryan @ #30 – “What influence, quantitatively, did steroids have? Can we find someone who we trust to tell the truth give us the drug history, look at the numbers, and make an argument about this? Do they make you 5% better? Do they make you 20% better? 60%?”

Good luck with that. I don’t think there’s any easy way to definitively tease out the extent to which steroids contributed to the HR binge and the changing of hitters’ and pitchers’ career arcs, particularly in their twilight years, versus the effects of new ballparks and changing park dimensions, expansion, better training regimens and (legal) nutritional/supplemental/surgical advances.

We simply can’t know, because we’ll never know for sure how much/how often McGwire took steroids during that season or any other (unless we get our hands on an authentic doping schedule covering a player’s entire career). Surely taking them x times during the course of the season would have a different short-term and perhaps long-term impact than taking them 2x times, or 5x times.

I think it hurts our minds sometimes that questions like these remain open-ended, and we can’t neatly wrap it up in a tidy sentence like “McGwire’s use of steroids contributed to a 34.17% increase in home runs over the course of his career, highlighted by a 46.14% jump in his record-breaking 1998 season.”
143: Name (required) said at 8:50 pm on January 20th, 2010:
Just saw your page 18 article in Sports Illustrated. The NCAA doesn’t like to advertise it, but it can and at times does basically what you proposed about football transfers. A couple of years ago, for example, a Rice player successfully petitioned the NCAA after a coach left and didn’t have to sit out a year. I also recall seeing articles on a few players at other colleges doing the same thing. When Lloyd Carr left Michigan, quarterback Ryan Mallett tried unsuccessfully to transfer to Arkansas without sitting out (I think because Carr technically retired and wasn’t fired). I started writing the NCAA proposing what you did back in the 1980s when the old Southwest Conference actually had a rule that made any player who transferred from one SWC school to another sit out two years. About 15 years or so ago Division I-AA decided to let Division I-A players transfer to Division I-AA schools without sitting out. Division I-A retaliated by allowing Division I-AA players to transfer to Division I-A schools without sitting out. After that, the head of the NCAA told me that he was going to push for what you proposed but it would be hard to achieve beause transfer rules back then were controlled by conferences. I think the NCAA is misleading you a little about the actual current policy.
144: melprophet said at 8:51 pm on January 20th, 2010:
Outstanding post! Here’s my favorite inaccurate statement on the steroid era:

I hear a lot of people say stuff like oh, that guy (insert whoever you want) had a huge home run surge that year, so he was definitely on steroids…..But guess what. There was a player whose season best HR total jumped up by 22 home runs in one year….From 39 to 61. His name? Roger Maris.
145: Mike said at 8:51 pm on January 20th, 2010:
Joe, too often humans deal with issues in only a black and white sense. A little gray was much needed. Thank you.
Fisk and Clark and all the other ballplayers who just scream about the abomination of players taking steroids are a little like anyone who looks at al-Queda, the Taliban and the issue of terrorism in general and simply say, “They hate us for their freedom.”
146: Read of the Day: Iron Fisk — Bob Lalasz said at 9:12 pm on January 20th, 2010:
[...] If you're not a baseball fan, or a former baseball fan, such as myself, you will be lost in this close analysis of the steroid era by Joe Posnanski, a writer for Sports Illustrated and one of the best sports bloggers [...]
147: Jon Morse said at 9:25 pm on January 20th, 2010:
@138: Uh… no, steroids are not why professional wrestling is an entertainment and not a sport.

Choreographed matches are why professional wrestling is an entertainment and not a sport.
148: Harmonica Mark said at 9:35 pm on January 20th, 2010:
Someone May have already said this but as a Yankee fan I feel obligated to say Jorge Posada hit exactly 20 HR’s at the age of 37 and 22 this year at the age of 29
149: Carlton Fisk blasts Mark McGwire - OOTP Developments Forums said at 10:22 pm on January 20th, 2010:
[...] [...]
150: a damn fog said at 10:28 pm on January 20th, 2010:
#117 (John Q): Your analysis is awful, particularly with regard to Finley.

“Steve Finley hit 77HR by his age 30 season. From ages-31-40 Finley hit 227HR???”

1) Steve Finley did not start playing Major League Baseball until he was 24, and in his 24- and 29-year-old seasons he played in fewer than 100 games. To put it to exact numbers, from 24-30 (the first time period you define) he had 3728 plate appearances. From 31-40 (again, your own) he had 6149.

2) Players typically reach their physical peaks in their late 20s, accounting for some increase in power at the very least. From 26-29 when his power probably should have been developing, he played in the cavernous Astrodome, and from 24-25 with Baltimore he played in Memorial Stadium – not Camden, which is more prone to HR.

3) Then, in 1999, Finley arrived in Arizona to play for several years in what is – as Joe pointed out in this very post, no less – a launching pad. Five of Finley’s top seven seasons in HR% came in Arizona, and the other two came when he was a younger man.
151: John Q said at 11:45 pm on January 20th, 2010:
A Damn Fog,

You make some good points, but you leave out 1995-1998 and Jack Murphy stadium for some reason. Yes, he did play less than 100 games in ‘89 & ‘94 but he did have 658 Plate appearances during those two seasons.

I made a mistake in my numbers, I was looking at the Jeff Kent numbers. Finley only had 47HR after his age30 season not 77.

Let’s look at it this way:

From ages 24-30, Finley had 3728 Plate Appearances and 47 Home Runs which comes out to 1.26 HR per 100 Plate Appearances.

From ages 31-42, Finley had 6732 Plate Appearances and 257 Home Runs which comes out to 3.81 HR per 100 Plate Appearances. He nearly tripled his home run rate as he aged.

Now you brought up park factors. O.K. now the Astrodome was not a good hitter’s park but Finley was traded to Jack Murphy stadium (Something you conveniently left out) which was just as bad if not worse than the Astrodome.

Park Factors can’t account for a 31 year old man suddenly hitting 30 Home runs in 1996 when the park factor was (98).

The Park Factor in 1997 at Jack Murphy was (92) and Finley hit 28 Home Runs.

He hit more home runs in two years (1996-1997) at Jack Murphy at ages 31-32 then he did From ages 24-30, basically 6 full seasons??

Finley HR rate went from 1.26 per 100P.A from ages:24-30 to 4.34 per 100 from ages 31-32.

That’s insane, players just don’t triple their home run rates playing in pitcher’s parks at age 31-32.

He goes to Arizona in 1999 where the park factor was (100). It played as a neutral park in ‘99. Finley hits 34 Home Runs.

Now, You’re right about Arizona from 2000-2003, it was a great hitters park, so that spiked his Home run total. But you’re also talking about a man who was age 35-38 during this time period.

But in 2004 his last 30+HR season, Arizona played basically neutral at (101) and then he was traded to the Dodgers in season which had a (95) park factor. So it’s not like park factors helped him in 2004 have the third highest home run total for a 39 year old.
152: a damn fog said at 11:59 pm on January 20th, 2010:
I think you’re looking at runs factor, not HR factor. Home runs don’t necessarily mean runs, and runs don’t necessarily mean home runs. You are also using park factors from individual years, which are borderline meaningless due to player fluctuations. Why would Chase Field be a good home run environment in 2003 but not in 2004? It’s the same park.

Three year samples are much more reliable. From 2006-2008, Chase Field had a HR factor of 116. That’s pretty high, and good enough for eighth in the majors over that period of time. I’m no Diamondbacks expert, but I’m not aware of any renovations or changes to the park which would have change the way it plays since its inception in ‘98.

But much more importantly than the park factor argument, as significant as that is, is the greater point you’re missing here. Again, going back to Joe’s post itself, the main theme here is people needing to simplify and narrow everything down to a single source. I am not saying park factors are the only reason Steve Finley had an increase in home run rate (although they might be), nor am I saying it’s impossible he was on steroids.

The reason I brought up park factors and physical maturation is to provide a better picture of how many different factors in a player’s environment can contribute to his trends and performance. Maybe Finley realized at age 30 that he wasn’t getting any younger and that to stay competitive he would have to hit the weight room and work on his mechanics. Maybe the Diamondbacks had a good hitting coach. Maybe he was in a happy relationship for those years and it affected his state of mind and general approach to the game. And maybe he was on steroids. Maybe all of those things and maybe none of them, but the reason you default to steroids is because they’re an easy explanation. Not a rational one, not even the most likely one; an easy one, plain and simple – which I believe is what Joe was trying to get at from the beginning.
153: John Q said at 12:57 am on January 21st, 2010:
Fog,

First off let me say I have nothing against Finley. His name came up as the third most HR by a 39 year old player which I found odd and a red flag, which is kind of the point I think Fisk was trying to make if he took the time to actually get his numbers/names correct.

He admitted to using creatine, his name came up in rumors when the Mitchell report came out, especially when he set a career high for HR when he was 39 years old.

His career has some odd spikes to it. Who the hell goes from 5-11 home runs a season to hitting 28-30 at Jack Murphy stadium at 31-32 years old?

The 30 HR he hit in ‘96 were 2/3 of his career total prior to that season.

He had 47Hr by age 30 and finished with over 300 for his career.

He was team-mates with Caminiti who also had odd spikes to his career and was an admitted steroid user.

As far as park factor, those are the park factors listed at baseball reference. sometimes parks do fluctuate from year to year especially retractable roof stadiums in the desert where the weather can play a big part.

You keep bringing up the D-Backs. But how do you explain the 30 home runs he hit in 1996 on the Padres in a pitcher’s park when his previous high had been 11. or the 28 Home runs he hit in ‘97???

Player don’t suddenly go from hitting 5-10 home runs a year after 7 years in the big leagues to suddenly hitting 30HR at age 31.

He sets his career high for home runs at age 39 playing 1/3 of his season in a pitcher’s park at hitting the third most in a season by a 39 year old in baseball history.

If he could do all of that at and have a sudden and rapid transformation at age 30 from a fast-light hitting center-fielder to a power hitting center-fielder all without the use of steroids while his team-mates and many players in baseball are using them…then he should write a book because that’s an amazing story.
154: I Suddenly Like Carlton Fisk: Smacks Down Big Mac, The Rocket said at 1:18 am on January 21st, 2010:
[...] [...]
155: Jimmy Marlin said at 6:14 am on January 21st, 2010:
It’s funny, people spend an inordinate amount of time making excuses for baseball players. There are no excuses, the game is rigged. The cheaters win and they have you as willing accomplices.

Now, if you want to continue to be a willing accomplice, by all means do so. I, for one, have decided to find other ways to spend my valuable time and money.

Folks, you can have everything in the world at your leisure. However, there’s one thing you can’t get back once it’s used. Time.

Don’t waste your time with a corrupt, boring game full of liars and cheaters.
156: Hank Ortiz said at 7:05 am on January 21st, 2010:
Joe (and anyone else who defends his position),

I am an avid reader of your columns and I estimate that I agree with your opinions 99 percent of the time. But I find your position on this issue (McGwire and steroid inflated numbers) completely inexplicable and indefensible. I still don’t understand how you can lead your column off with Pudge’s quote and completely ignore his primary point. So please answer me this, even if one were to assume that all of the factors that made hitting home runs “easier” in the modern age of baseball were in place when Mays and Aaron were 39, would they even have approached Bonds’ 73 homers without using PED’s? Would they have even hit 3o home runs? I’m confident the answer is no to both questions because (and I didn’t have to go to med school to answer this one) they’re bodies broke down as they got older. Don’t mean to channel Ron Burgandy here but “It’s science.” How about you go back in time and give Jack Clark and Pudge the option of using PED’s and what you’d probably find is that there numbers would be McGwire and Piazza-esque respectively. Additionally your insistence that McGwire was and is, in your opinon, a Hall of Famer before and after his roid admission is equally inexplicable. I came of age as a baseball fan in the early 1980’s so I have a pretty vivid recollection of McGwire’s career and I am pretty sure that for a time he wasn’t even considered the best all around 1st baseman in the bay area let alone one of the elite 1st basemen in the game. It was not until the steroid years that he started putting up the Paul Bunyan home run numbers which, if naturally accumulated, would be the only reason to put him in the Hall of Fame. Assuming for the decade (and I really believe he used roids earlier in his career than he admitted) that he was on roids that he hit 9 more homers a year than he should have naturally (which in my opinion is a conservative estimate) he doesn’t get to 500 home runs. Assuming that he did not reach that milestone, how could you possibly argue that he is a Hall of Famer? His glove was nowhere near as good as Wil Clark, Mark Grace, Don Mattingly and his batting average was crap. I know OBP is the rage these days in assessing a player’s historical relevance but I am not on that bandwagon when it comes to assessing players that were paid to drive in runs, which McGwire was. Sorry, I love your work but your opinions on these matters are utterly ridiculous. I do want to end this reply on a positive and so I will commend you on your assessment of Tim Raines’ Hall of Fame credentials and Robbie Alomar’s snub.
157: Pat said at 7:29 am on January 21st, 2010:
Hey Dave, seriously, it’s not that hard to use google. Why don’t you do some research on AAS busts and see who is going to jail. I’ll give you a hint, it’s not guys like McGwire, whom the FBI knew was using through one of its investigations, it’s much more often Joe Blow down at the gym who wants to be a bodybuilder.
158: Richard said at 9:16 am on January 21st, 2010:
Hank Ortiz @ 156:

“So please answer me this, even if one were to assume that all of the factors that made hitting home runs “easier” in the modern age of baseball were in place when Mays and Aaron were 39, would they even have approached Bonds’ 73 homers without using PED’s? Would they have even hit 3o home runs? I’m confident the answer is no to both questions because (and I didn’t have to go to med school to answer this one) they’re bodies broke down as they got older.”

I wasn’t aware confidence = knowledge on a topic. That’s a new one on me. I GUARANTEE you (if confidence = knowledge on a topic, than my guarantee is like a Ph.D. on sports medicine. That’s how it works right?) that the medical advances made other than steroids would benefit Mays and Aaron much more than steroids would. You can trust me because “It’s science.”

I don’t know how anyone can claim to know the extent to which steroids help you play baseball. Do they help? I think they do, but I have no data to argue with. Let alone, how much they help.
159: Doyle said at 9:21 am on January 21st, 2010:
@156 Hank Ortiz

“when Mays and Aaron were 39, would they even have approached Bonds’ 73 homers without using PED’s? Would they have even hit 3o home runs? I’m confident the answer is no to both questions because (and I didn’t have to go to med school to answer this one) they’re bodies broke down as they got older.”

They did. Mays hit 28, Aaron hit 40 and Bonds hit 45. So even Bonds didn’t come close to the 73. Did you even read Pos’s post or did you just read the first paragraph and start typing your un-researched diatribe? You don’t need to go to med school to look up stats on http://www.baseball-reference.com.
160: John Q said at 9:37 am on January 21st, 2010:
Jimmy Marlin,

Unfortunately I have to agree with a lot of what you wrote. Unfortunately the last 20-25 years has to be looked upon skeptically. Also, it’s really ruined my enjoyment of the game.

It’s also the fault of the players who didn’t use steroids for not speaking up because any kind of odd spike or odd aging pattern will look like steroid use.

I think Joe P. is in a difficult position because he ’s a journalist for a major publication and can be sued for liable if he writes something that defames a player.

There are some mitigated factors involved, but how do you explain players tripling their previous single season HR marks overnight? Setting career highs in HR when they’re in their late 30’s? Hitting 60-70% of their career home run totals past the age of 30? Body Armour? Thin Handled bats?

The big problem is that Baseball knew about this back in the early 80’s when Brian Downing suddenly became a home run slugger and did nothing about it.

Brian Downing had 56 career home runs/3080 plate appearances by the time he was 30 years old after the 1981 season. A rate of 1.8 HR per 100-P.A.

In 1982 he suddenly hit 28 HR, 50% of his 1981 career total. From the time he was ages 31-42 he hit 219HR in 6229 plate appearances, a rate of 3.51 HR per 100-P.A.

There were just too many players not aging normally. Actually getting better into their late 30’s.

Even a guy like Moises Alou raises questions. 5/7 top ops+ season came after he was 30 years old. He hit 38HR in the Astrodome at age 31 when his previous high was 23HR. He set his single season career high at age 37 with 39HR. He hit 22Hr/378 P.A. a rate of 5.8HR per 100-P.A. when he was 39 years old for the Giants.

I guess we like to buy into this notion that players don’t have to age normally and can actually get better as they age. It makes us feel young I guess.
161: Greg Gerke said at 9:47 am on January 21st, 2010:
Joe,

To talk about the ’steroid era ‘ Yankees HR’s at home is a little ridiculous. If you or anyone else here thinks the steroid era is over, I think you are sadly mistaken. They know when the tests are coming. They won’t stop taking it.
162: JT11505 said at 10:53 am on January 21st, 2010:
To anyone who doesn’t believe that steroids have a huge impact on numbers I give you Kevin Elster prior to joining the Texas Steroid Rangers:
G PA 2B HR
580 1870 80 35

And once he entered that petri dish of a clubhouse?
G PA 2B HR
157 596 32 24

So, at age 31, he just started working out more?
163: Richard said at 11:04 am on January 21st, 2010:
JT11505:

Keven Elsters OPS+ that season: 90
His OPS+ in the previous seasons he played over 1oo games: 75, 87, 89

I think the move to Texas helped, but not for the same reasons you cite.
164: NMark W said at 11:47 am on January 21st, 2010:
Who is stupid enough to cork a bat in 2009/2010? The way these bats are exploding without any additional help from the player’s finish carpenter it would be pure suicide.

As an aside, we have yet to see a fan or player die of the shrapnel from one of these exploding wooden weapons, but it will happen….
165: Brian said at 11:54 am on January 21st, 2010:
I can’t believe there was a mention of corked bats without a pozterisk about Albert Belle and Jason Grimsley’s great bat caper of ‘94. Funny that Grimsley himself got busted for PEDs later.
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/baseball/mlb/news/1999/04/11/corked_bat/
166: Nico said at 1:41 pm on January 21st, 2010:
I’m a new fan of Joe’s and love the posts.

I have to ask, though, what is with all of the “Circle me… ” comments? I’m familiar with the “circle me bert” signs at Twins games (and have even been circled myself!) but was wondering whats behind the usage of the phrase in the comments (if anything).
167: John Q said at 1:48 pm on January 21st, 2010:
JT11505,

Elster’s 1996 was shocking when it happened. He was basically out of major league baseball for 4 years and then he hits 24HR in a season.

Before ‘96, Elster was 34HR/1870-P.A. for a rate of 1.81HR per 100 P.A. In 1996 Elster hit 24HR/596P.A. for a rate of 4.02H.R. per 100 P.A., that’s an insane jump, especially for someone who barely played four years previously.

Todd Hundley was another character who came out of nowhere. Before 1996, Hundley hit 50HR/1630 P.A. for a rate of 3.06HR per 100 P.A.

All of a sudden Todd Hunley turned into Roy Campanella in 1996 and set the single season HR mark for catchers with 41HR/624 P.A. with a rate of 6.57HR per 100 P.A. More than doubling his HRrate in one season.

He hit 82% of his pre-1996 career total in just one season

Then in 1997 he hit 30/508. So all together that’s two consecutive years: 71HR/1132 P.A., for a rate of 6.27HR per 100 P.A. Then he mysteriously broke down and was traded to the Dodgers.
168: Mark Daniel said at 4:01 pm on January 21st, 2010:
In an instance of pure coincidence, Todd Hundley was also named in the Mitchell report.
169: Alex said at 7:43 pm on January 21st, 2010:
From the NYTimes:

Seeing is Disbelieving
By DOUG GLANVILLE

Last week, after years of public curiosity about what was hidden behind Mark McGwire’s testimony to Congress in 2005, McGwire admitted he indeed had a secret. He conceded that his career was marked by intermittent steroid use, even during 1998, the year he broke Roger Maris’ single-season home run record. His historic run was unreal . . . literally.

My brother was and is a supporter of the unreal — a huge fan of science fiction’s Godzilla. Thanks to him, when I was growing up I would catch an occasional episode of the TV show where Godzilla would take on Rodan (or some other nemesis) and they would end up in these knock-down, drag-out fights, reaping collateral damage all along the way. Once Godzilla went on his rampage, our eyes fixed on the TV, waiting to see which landmark would end up a pile of rubble. We loved it. And when the May 1998 release date of a remake of “Godzilla” approached, even with the baseball season in high gear I anticipated seeing it in a Philadelphia theater as soon as I could find some down time in between games.

But then Mark McGwire strolled into town, carrying the Cardinals and the future of M.L.B. on his back, as the bitterness of the 1994-1995 strike finally dissipated. The excitement about McGwire dwarfed even my enthusiasm for “Godzilla,” which was relegated to my “to do in the off-season” list. McGwire was streaking toward a seemingly unbreakable record, not by merely hitting balls over the fence but by scraping tops of stadiums as the ball left the atmosphere. Major league baseball players were reduced to little boys, tasting our childhood once again as we craned our necks to figure out when he would launch another impossible shot. Never in my experience had so many players who should have been stretching stopped everything just to watch an opponent take batting practice.

At Busch Stadium in St. Louis, there was a section deep beyond left centerfield with the retired numbers from Cardinals history on waving flags. Now, I am not sure how far away from home plate those flags were, but they were nowhere near reachable off any bat I have ever seen swung. Yet McGwire would hit them like he was playing rocket golf, or some twisted form of croquet.

I knew that what I was seeing was impossible. When you play the game long enough, you develop a sixth sense for the realm of the possible. You learn your body’s limitations (and your opponents’ bodies) in short order, because knowing is integral to your longevity. Sure, limits are pushed, but it doesn’t happen overnight. I played centerfield and had to know that when Chad Kreuter or Todd Zeile hit a ball, there was a good chance it would come off their bats with no spin, making it dance unpredictably while I was trying to catch it in the outfield. I could tell from the angle of Vladimir Guerrero’s bat and the location of the pitch when the ball was going to slice away from me. From bat-ball contact I could tell to a fine degree where a ball would end up long before I got there. As the Phillies announcers always used to say to me, “I knew right away when you had the ball in your sights, and then you would just be there.”

That’s because it was my job to be there — to know the field, the wind, the conditions so well that I could take the ball out of the equation after contact, and get to where it was supposed to be. I had all the data I needed without relying on my eyes exclusively. I could run to the spot and wait for the ball while getting into position to throw to the next base (should a runner be on base).

The first time I questioned those instincts was during a game against the Kinston Indians and Manny Ramirez in 1992. It was my first full minor league season with the Winston-Salem Spirits of the famed Carolina League. I was in centerfield and Manny hit a line drive into the gap in right-center. No problem, I thought. I’ll run at an angle and cut the ball off near the warning track. Even if can’t quite get there to catch it, maybe I can hold him to a double.

Well, the ball hit part-way up the light tower, well over the fence for a home run. I could not believe my eyes. Up until that moment, I’d never seen anyone who could hit a home run to the opposite field, let alone a missile like that. It was stunning. As far as I knew, this was pure hitting ability. Ability that none of my college opponents had possessed.

Fast forward to my major league career, by which time I was a science student of the game. Ballistics, anticipation, planning — all were part of it.

Then I saw Mark McGwire and I had to adjust my eyes once again.

As before, I chalked it up at first to the evolution of baseball, even as I wondered about its legitimacy. But enhanced or not, it was happening, and I still had to figure out a way to compete. My sixth sense had tapped me on the shoulder and said, “This is not right.” But that was not evidence in a court of law. It is sort of like finding out a co-worker might be doing something shady, yet knowing that you still have to do your job. And, in the outfield, I had to do mine.

In McGwire’s admission, he explained how he was doing his job, and his torment and regret seemed genuine even as he spat out the usual clichéd excuses many players have used: injuries and recovery, desperation and peer pressure, ignorance and breadwinning, culture and society.

In fact, I understand all those reasons. I really do, because I was there too, just like everyone else in the major leagues then who was trying to stay there. I also felt all those pressures, one way or another. I tore a hamstring tendon in a contract year that put me on the shelf for two months. (A tendon that was at the root of my game — speed.) My father was chronically ill in the years just after McGwire broke the single-season home run record, a period during which I was stressed and saw my own statistics decline.

So I get it. But the problem is, too many players made a different choice than McGwire did in the face of similar situations. I can’t claim to know exactly what he was going through during the time he decided to take steroids, but I am confident that there were other players who dealt with the same challenges and played clean. There really isn’t any excuse.

Yet despite all that, I was part of the frenzied excitement in 1998, wanting to believe in magic, the same kind that gave me hope when as a 10-year-old I watched my Phillies win the 1980 World Series. I also remember Mark as a kind person who always was gracious and warm whenever we met at first base. Yet the “race for the record” was smoke and mirrors, and I probably knew that when it was happening. But like many others, I didn’t really know how to deal with it because it was ruinous to our game — to my profession — and I was in self-centered career-survival mode, looking after many other things in my own life.

That weekend in Philadelphia, a day before the “Godzilla” opening, Mark McGwire hit three home runs in one game against us, including a mammoth shot that landed in the unpopulated upper deck at Veterans Stadium. It was Godzilla in the flesh, instilling awe in other professionals who were themselves playing at the highest level of the same game. Too bad that McGwire’s achievement, as it turned out, wasn’t too far from the toy-cars-and-fake-explosions world of his on-screen equivalent. Entertaining, but contrived.
170: Alex said at 8:10 pm on January 21st, 2010:
This is REALLY excellent:

From cnnsi.com.

Grace emerged from Steroid Era with more than his integrity

By Will Wagner, Special to SI.com

Mark McGwire made his choice. So did Alex Rodriguez. And Barry Bonds. And Manny Ramirez. And David Ortiz. And Rafael Palmeiro. And Sammy Sosa. And so on and so on. The list of baseball players who have been linked to performance-enhancing substances seems to stretch on like a tape-measure blast into the summer night.

Mark Grace made his choice, too: He opted for a different kind of home run.

In a radio interview last week with Sports Illustrated’s Dan Patrick, the former Chicago Cubs and Arizona Diamondbacks first baseman said, “I am a single guy now and I was a single guy then [in the 1990s], and I like my sex life. I want to be able to perform. It’s kinda funny, but it’s not. That stuff [steroids] will tear you up as far as your manhood’s concerned.”

To be clear, Grace, who has been married twice, was never exactly a poster boy for clean living. He was the Pied Piper of Wrigleyville during his tenure with the Cubs from 1988 to 2000, fueled by booze, nicotine, his libido and his gregarious nature. But after years of half-truths and outright lies from multitudes of steroids-using players, his remarks to Patrick seem strangely refreshing. No, we’re not talking about St. Augustine of Hippo here, but we can at least applaud Grace’s strong sense of self. Finally, a man with his priorities in order.

There’s no question that Grace the ballplayer would have benefited immensely from steroids. Although he was a career .303 batter and had more hits in the 1990s than any other big-leaguer (1,754), the knock on him was his lack of power. As baseballs were being launched out of stadiums in record numbers, Grace never hit more than 17 homers in a season. He finished his 16-year career in 2003 with 173 home runs, a glaringly puny total for someone who played a power position.

The winter before making his major league debut with the Cubs in 1988, Grace tried the old-fashioned way to chart a more muscular course. The native Californian set up shop in Chicago for a strength-training regimen that was designed by the Cubs to put some pop into his swing. Grace figured it might add a few extra feet to fly balls that died on the warning track.

Conventional measures didn’t work; the homers never came in bunches. And it was clear to anyone who spent time in the Cubs’ clubhouse in the 1990s that the modestly built Grace didn’t resort to unconventional measures. His physique more resembled Joe from Accounting’s than that of his hulking teammate, Sosa. Grace was what he was: a fundamentally sound gap hitter who played great defense, then enjoyed a cold beer and a few laughs by his locker after the game.

Still, the pressure on Grace mounted as the 1990s rolled along. He was the constant — a flagship player — on a Cubs team that was synonymous with losing. And by the end of the decade, he was barely even that. Sosa dwarfed everyone else in Cubdom after captivating (and in retrospect, duping) the nation during his race with McGwire in 1998 to break Roger Maris’ single-season home run record. Win or lose, sunny or cloudy, the Wrigley Field faithful went home happy as long as the star of the show, Slammin’ Sammy, hit a dinger.

On an August day at Wrigley Field in 2000 — as the Cubs were bumbling their way to a 65–97 record, their fourth losing season in five years — it was all weighing heavily on Grace. After batting practice, Grace plopped down in the dugout next to retired Cubs outfielder Bobby Dernier, who was in town surveying the wreckage of another summer.

As the two men exchanged pleasantries, Grace fired up a cigarette and took a deep drag off it. He then exhaled and fixed his eyes on the cigarette, studied it morosely as smoke billowed through the dugout. At last, Grace sighed and said to Dernier: “You know, I never smoke these things in the off-season. That’s what 13 years of being on the Cubs has done to me.”

But this story has a happy ending. After that final stressful season in Chicago, Grace signed as a free agent with Arizona and bid adieu to his Wrigleyville stomping grounds. And finally, he became a winner. Grace was part of the Diamondbacks team that defeated the New York Yankees in the 2001 World Series. He even had a leadoff single in the bottom of the ninth inning of Game 7 to spark Arizona’s winning rally.

His conscience clear, he retired a couple years later to a life of more fun and games as an announcer for the Diamondbacks. Unlike so many of his peers, Grace came through the Steroid Era with his manhood intact.

William Wagner is a Chicago-based writer and editor who is the author of the book Wrigley Blues: The Year the Cubs Played Hardball With the Curse (but Lost Anyway).

Read More: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2010/baseball/mlb/01/20/wagner.grace/index.html#ixzz0dIqlJPLi
Get a free NFL Team Jacket and Tee with SI Subscription
171: John Q said at 9:18 pm on January 21st, 2010:
Alex,

Excellent posts.

I feel really sorry for guys like Grace, Will Clark, Olerud and Ventura. The had normal career progressions, no odd HR/Rate change after age 31, no HR peaks at age 36-39 years old, yet their careers were completely overshadowed by the steroid users.

Joe talks about Park factors and ballparks affecting HR totals post-1993. Then why Didn’t Grace’s HR totals go up dramatically when he was in his 30’s at Wrigley field??

Why didn’t Will Clark’s HR totals go up dramatically when he played in a great hitter’s park in Texas? Didn’t he have a thin bat? Kevin Elster out homered Will Clark on the ‘96 Rangers for God’s sake. Clark was hitting 30+ at Candlestick during low run-scoring environments in the late 80’s when he was in his 20’s.

Ventura peaked in HR when he was 28 years old.

Olerud peaked in HR when he was 24 years old.

Joe is too apologetic towards the steroid users.
172: John R said at 2:57 am on January 22nd, 2010:
Alex, just post the links next time.
173: Must-Reads on McGwire said at 8:22 am on January 22nd, 2010:
[...] finishing this up, check out Joe Posnanski’s take, which includes a search for authentic numbers. If you only read one thing from me this week, [...]
174: blahblah said at 8:43 am on January 22nd, 2010:
i hate it when people try to act all morally superior. come on, everyone should try to act morally inferior all the time.
175: John Q said at 10:19 am on January 22nd, 2010:
Another crazy spike is Jeff Bagwell’s MVP season in 1994.

From 1991-1993, Bagwell hit 53HR/1956 P.A. for a HR rate of 2.70 per 100 P.A.

In 1994 Bagwell hit 39HR/479 P.A. for a HR rate of 8.14HR per 100 P.A.

He set the single season HR record for the Houston Astros in only 479 P.A. No Astro player had ever hit more than 37HR and Bagwell was on pace to hit over 50!!

No Houston Astro player had ever hit more than 37HR in a season before 1994 and then Bagwell hit 39HR/479P.A. in 1994, 43HR in 1997, and 42 in 1999. And Moises Alou hit 38 in 1998. So the mark was broken 4 times in just 6 years?? And Bagwell came close in 1998 with 34HR.

Only 5 times had a Houston Astro player topped 30HR in a season before From 1965-1994, 29 Seasons. And from 1970-1985 no Astro player hit 30+HR.

In the last 6 seasons of the Astrodome, 1994-1999, An Astro player topped 30HR 5 Times 4 times just by Jeff Bagwell.
176: John Q said at 10:37 am on January 22nd, 2010:
What’s even more insane about Bagwell’s 1994 MVP season are his Home/Road splits.

From 1991-1993 Bagwell hit 23HR/973 P.A. in the Astrodome for a HR rate of 2.36 per 100 P.A.

In 1994 He EQUALED his previous 3 year total in just 233 P.A.. Bagwell hit 23HR/233 P.A. for an insane Astrodome HR Rate of 9.87 HR per 100.

He quadrupled his home HR/Rate in one season. He was on pace to hit 30HR just at HOME in the Astrodome in 1994.
177: Spencer Steel said at 12:05 pm on January 22nd, 2010:
I see that Ferguson Jenkins has weighed in on the McGwire matter. In addition to a slew of other nonsensical things, he states something to the effect of “in my day we’d have knocked a guy like that on his ass.” Maybe things were different back then, I don’t know. I only caught the end of Jenkins’ career. I did check though, and found that Fergie led the league in HR allowed SEVEN times in his career. Good thing he pitched inside so much or else he’d have allowed 100 HR a year.

Robin Yount gave the most reasonable, human answers I have ever heard an ex-ballplayer give when asked about Fisk’s remarks, stating that it’d have been a very tough choice. Fisk’s choice not to use was made easier by the fact that he . . . . didn’t have one.
178: Ryan said at 12:37 pm on January 22nd, 2010:
I agree completely with the Robin Yount point…if you haven’t read it, here is the link:

http://www.jsonline.com/sports/brewers/82325102.html
179: spitball1999 said at 1:24 pm on January 22nd, 2010:
@54 — Your analysis is the best I’ve seen in this long thread. No one has disputed your key insight that Ruth’s HR record was broken only once in 100 years, but six times in a span of three years by three hitters who used steroids. The clear inference is PEDs played a big role in the individual achievements.

Sure, there were other factors that contributed to the spike in home runs (e.g., better conditioning, smaller ballparks, smaller strike zones), but it’s clear that steroids was a huge factor.

Take a look at Bond’s, McGwire’s and Sosa’s stats — their HR production spikes up just as they reportedly started juicing. We can never prove causation because we’re not able to run a scientific experiment with one control set. But there is a very strong correlation between the spike in HRs and the time they started taking PEDs.

For example, Bonds started using steroids in the 1999 season (according to The Game of Shadows). He took too much too soon and injured himself in 1999. In 2000 — his first full season on ‘roids — Bonds at the age of 36 has his best HR season ever at the time with 49 homers in only 480 at bats. Then of course he hits 73 the next season, and then 46, 45, 45 in 403, 390, and 373 at-bats, respectively. Did the stadiums suddenly get smaller in 2000? Or did Bonds just start conditioning in 2000? Or the strike zone become smaller? We can reasonably infer that steroids gave him a huge power boost starting in 2000 (though obviously better conditioning, smaller ballparks and tighter strike zones helped).

Same thing with McGwire. He said he dabbled with steroids in 88-89, but started using it regularly in ‘93. He was on the DL most of ‘93 and ‘94. In 95, he played only 104 games and had only 317 at-bats, but stroked an amazing 39 dingers. In his first full season on steroids (1996), he banged out 52 HRs, a career best. Then of course he goes on to hit 58, 70, and 65 the next three season. Again, did the stadiums suddenly start shrinking in 1995? Or Big Mac became serious about training and conditioning in ‘95? The obvious inference is that steroids had a big role in his power boost. It wasn’t the sole reason, but a big reason.

We don’t know when Sosa started juicing, but he goes from a guy who hits about 30 HRs a season to slamming 60+ HRs three times in four seasons.

Yes, it’s simplistic to say that steroids are the only reason why HRs spiked up. Players are more fit, stadiums are smaller, and strike zones are tighter. That is indeed why the average HR rate has increased in baseball. So, yes, a guy who would have hit 20 HRs two decades ago are now capable of stroking 25 HRs.

But the _individual, superhuman_ feats of Bonds, McGwire, Sosa, et al. were clearly boosted by steroids.
180: Josh said at 2:47 pm on January 22nd, 2010:
@156 You mean the same Pudge who “mysteriously” lost 20 pounds in the offseason when MLB instituted drug testing? That Pudge? Yeah, no way he might have used steroids, but Piazza clearly did. I feel like I’m being trolled by your argument.
181: Don said at 4:04 pm on January 22nd, 2010:
Very good read. This sums up exactly how I feel about the “steroid” era; and why I just want to get back to enjoying the game of baseball and not worrying about things I don’t and can’t possibly know.
182: John Q said at 4:30 pm on January 22nd, 2010:
Josh,

Just to clarify, I think #156 meant “pudge” as in Carlton Fisk not Ivan Rodriguez.

#54,

Ruth set the “60″ mark in 1927 so it was broken once in 70 seasons not 100 before Mcgwire did it in 1998. Then like you said it was broken 6 times in 4 seasons by 3 men.

Actually Matt Williams was on pace to break it before the strike of 1994. He would have needed about 670 Plate appearances to break the record.
183: marc said at 10:50 pm on January 22nd, 2010:
Of course all these things are true. I find it so amusing that people are shocked that guys who are known for hitting home runs might be big and have lots of muscles. And that Ruth was a very big (meaning tall) man for his time. And that, maybe, training over the decades has moved from “hunting in the woods” to “every day so I can make $15M instead of $10M” – and so players can play older, and sigh…. old player skills, you know? Anybody here have skinnier shoulders at 30 than at 20? Anybody here better at their job at 30 than at 20? Anybody here who would eat right and exercise for 15 million dollars?

And, that people are completely ignorant as to the career path of Sammy Sosa. He was considered a future All Star, had no discipline, learned some discipline, hit all those home runs, then his bat slowed down do to age and he never developed enough plate discipline to compensate.

And, courtesy of Bill James, that pitchers shortened up their motions in the mid-80s – i.e. they are always pitching from what would be considered the stretch 40 years ago.

And all this talk about “spikes”… that’s not really true, you know. There are no more than there ever were. Intelligent people can act like they own the truth yet ignore all the factors that Joe mentions plus sample sizes, deviations….

So… 2009, 10th alltime in homers hit. The Yankees (The Yankees!) break the franchise record. I don’t think any of the litany of players mentioned played in 2009.

It boggles the mind – the argument comes down to, McGwire broke the record, he used steroids, therefore he didn’t break the record. There is no more there there.

Maybe, just maybe, Bonds and McGwire were that good? Don’t great players come along now and again, don’t records get broken? But yet, people easily accept a Koufax, a Gibson, and the whys, but their reputation isn’t being publicly tarnished – is it because it’s pitching and the common schlub doesn’t really pay attention to that?

I don’t get it.
184: Bill Bell said at 10:59 am on January 23rd, 2010:
I find it fascinating that Carlton Fisk has spoken out so
strongly on the subject of players who hit an unusually
high number of homers at an advanced baseball age. He tries
to use statistics to show that Bonds homer production in his
late 30’s was way out of line with what other great home run
hitters (Ruth, Aaron, Mays) had a similar age. The reason
that I find it so fascinating is because Fisk’s career is
the poster child for suspicious homer output late in a career.

I made a list of all players who hit at least 100 hrs in their
career. I then eliminated any who hit fewer than 50
homers in their age 31 to 35 seasons so as to exclude those who were not at least somewhat productive in their 30’s. I also eliminated any
players who were not at least 40 by June 1st 2009 so that I’d
only be comparing players who potentially could of played at
least 5 years after age 35. This left me with 304 batters.

I then compared the number of homers each player hit from age 31 to 35
with the number of homers they hit in their AFTER their age 35 season.

Carlton Fisk hit 75 homers from age 31 to 35.
Barry Bonds hit 202 homers from age 31 to 35.

Carlton Fisk hit 167 homers AFTER age 35, an increase of 92 homers.
Barry Bonds hit 268 homers after age 35, an increase of 66 homers.

So Carlton Fisk actually had a greater surge in homers late in his
career than Bonds did. And if you use percentage of increase it’s
even more staggering. Bonds hit 33% more homers after age 35 than
he did from ages 31 to 35. Fisk hit 123% more after age 35 than he
did from age 31 to 35. That is the largest percentage increase of
all of the 304 batters in the list. One batter (Darrell Evans) had
a larger numeric increase than Fisk, but his percentage increase was
lower. Evans hit 85 homers from age 31 to 35 and then hit 182 homers
after age 35, an increase of 114%.

To be fair, if teams had not walked Bonds so much after he his age 35
season he would of hit more late career homers so these numbers may
not reflect his true power increase. On the other hand, Fisk was
a catcher for most of his career which makes it all the more astounding
that his hr production increased so dramaticly after age 35.

I obviously have no evidence linking Fisk to any kind of PEDs and I’m not saying he used any. But from a strictly statistical standpoint that the most suspicious late career power numbers in baseball history are those belonging to Carlton Fisk.
185: Mark Daniel said at 12:11 pm on January 23rd, 2010:
Regarding Jeff Bagwell’s 1994, he may or may not have been on steroids, but there was a lot more going on that year than steroids. In 1990, 1991, and 1992, the Astros scored 3.54, 3.73, and 3.75 runs/game, respectively. Teams in the NL in those seasons averaged 4.2, 4.1 and 3.88 runs/game, resp.
In ‘93, the Astros bumped up to 4.4 runs/g and the NL to 4.5 runs/g. And in 1994, the Astros suddenly started scoring 5.23 runs/game, while the NL further increased to 4.62 runs/g.
So the Astros increased run production 1.5 runs or so per game, compared to 1991-1992, and the NL as a whole increased run production around 0.5-0.7 runs/g compared to 1991-1992. Maybe Bagwell was using steroids, but the increased run production across baseball (the same type of thing was observed in the AL) doesn’t support the hypothesis that a few guys here and there were juicing. To me it suggests pretty much was Joe was saying in his post. Steroids were also involved, of course. But they weren’t the whole story.
186: John Q said at 12:34 pm on January 23rd, 2010:
Bill Bell,

You’re logic is extremely flawed in regard to your Carlton Fisk Example.

You’re comparing a 5 year period when he had 2100 at bats to a 10 year period when he 3594 At Bats.

Carlton Fisk only had 2100 At Bats from the Ages of 31-35 because he was injured in 1979 and the Strike of 1981.

Also, he played until he was 45 years old and had 3594 At Bats from age 35-45 That’s nearly a 1500 At Bat advantage so it would be pretty easy for anyone to accomplish what he did.

You have to use something like HR/At Bat per 100 games if you want to see how a player changed over his career.

Also, using a 5 year window from the time a player was 31-35 including a year he was injured is too small a sample size and not really that accurate for what you’re trying to do.

Let’s look at Fisk From the start of his career in 1969 until he was 35 years old in 1983:

21-35: 5162-At Bats/209-HR, 4.04 HR per 100 AB

36-45: 3594-At Bats/167-HR, 4.64 HR per 100 AB

So that’s a slight increase of about .60 HR per 100 AB post age 35. That’s nothing, that’s about 2-3 extra home runs a season. You could attribute that to being smarter as he aged and playing more games at D.H. instead of catching.

Let’s look at his Slugging Percentage and his ops+ up until age 35:

21-35: Slg: .469, Ops+: 124
Final Career Numbers: Slg: .457, Ops+ 117.

His career slugging percentage went down after age 35 so did his ops+
187: John Q said at 1:19 pm on January 23rd, 2010:
Mark Daniel,

Well, don’t you think the reason the Astros runs/per game went up so dramatically in 1994 was because half of the starting line-up was on steroids??

Let’s look at some of the names:

Ken Caminiti
Jeff Bagwell
Luis Gonzalez
Steve Finley

The first guy died from taking steroids, the other three guys have bizarre spikes in their respective careers where they “Suddenly” Became great power hitters overnight. Finley and Gonzalez saw their HR number skyrocket after age 30.

As per your example, the Astros never surpassed the N.L. average for runs in a game which makes sense because they played in about the worst hitter’s park in baseball then “Suddenly” in 1994 the Astros are scoring more runs per game then the N.L. average???

The N.L. runs per game average went up 1/10th of a run from 1993-1994.

The Houston Astros runs per game average went up 8/10th of a run from 1993-1994!!

Let’s look at Jeff Bagwell’s splits:

Bagwell from 1991-1993 hit 23HR in 835 At Bats in the Astrodome for a HR rate of 2.75 per 100 AB. Roughly Jeff Leonard’s HR rate.

In 1994, Jeff Bagwell Equaled his Career Astrodome HR total with 23HR in “Only” 201 At Bats. That’s a HR Rate of 23/201 or 11.44 HR per 100 AB in the Astrodome. That’s INSANE!! in one of the worst hitter’s parks in major league history Bagwell quadrupled his HR rate in ONE Season.

Let’s put that into perspective. In 1927 Babe Ruth hit 60HR per 540 At Bats, that’s a HR rate of 11.11 HR per 100 At Bats.

So in one season, playing in the Astrodome, Jeff Bagwell went from being Jeff Leonard to Babe Ruth.
188: Vijfde Honk » Homeruns met pieken en dalen said at 1:53 pm on January 23rd, 2010:
[...] oud Boston Red Sox en Chicago White Sox catcher Carlton Fisk in ChicagoBreakingSports.com en het commentaar van columnist Joe Posnanski op een quote uit dat [...]
189: Adam said at 3:25 pm on January 23rd, 2010:
You’re right, Joe; there’s a lot we don’t know. For instance, I don’t know what the point of your post was. We can’t precisely estimate the impact of steroids on performance, so…
so, what, exactly? So ex-players, who actually have the standing to speak out on such topics, are supposed to shut up?

Seriously, I have no idea what point you even think you’re making.
190: Mark Daniel said at 6:27 pm on January 23rd, 2010:
John Q,
I believe you’re right. There were probably a bunch of guys on steroids. It’s just that the jump in runs/game in both leagues in 1994 was so big that it suggests something more than steroids. For example, in 1992 AL teams averaged 4.32 runs/game, 2 years later in 1994 it was 5.23 runs/g. That’s 0.9 runs per team per game, which is huge. It’s something on the order of 20-25% in a span of 2 years. This either means that a lot of guys were taking steroids, and they all started around the same time (1993-1994), or it means that steroids was part of a bunch of factors all coming together around 1994.

Looking back at my post, I think I was implying that Bagwell was clean. I didn’t mean to imply that. In fact, I’m certain steroids played a role in the scoring increase, perhaps a large role. But what Joe mentioned (smaller ballparks, juiced balls, etc) also played a role.
191: Lars said at 6:55 pm on January 23rd, 2010:
#48 “Although when it’s 100 deg with no humidity, balls fly (even with the roof closed).” Do you have proof of this? You can’t just make a statement like that without backing it up. I have no idea whether a ball travels farther in hot, dry air than it does in cool, humid air, or cool, dry air, or hot, humid air. And unless you’re a scientist with facts to back up your statement, I doubt if you do either.
192: John Q said at 8:33 pm on January 23rd, 2010:
Mark Daniel,

It’s kind of amazing now with the internet and all these sites like Baseball reference because you can actually get the stats and splits very easily.

I think steroids/weightlifting was the major factor why the runs/per game went up drastically from 1992-1994 and continued to stay high during the decade.

I used to give a lot of these guys the benefit of the doubt, but when you start to look at what their Hr/rate stats are it just doesn’t make sense.

I think steroids played a much bigger part than any of the writers would care to admit. They have to worry about liable laws but I don’t understand the need to make apologies for these guys.

Here’s a simple question: Steroids are dangerous and can cause impotence and can kill you. If that’s the case, why take them if they only give a player a slight boost? Players aren’t going to risk their health for 3-4 extra home runs a year???? This is the point Joe and a lot of the writers try to make.

Joe mentioned Park factors but park factors don’t really factor into the jump in runs per game in the National league from 1992-1994? The only thing that would increase scoring was Colorado but Florida was a pitcher’s park so that kind of cancels things out. You still had the Astrodome, Dodger Stadium, Jack Murphy, Candlestick, Shea, le Stade Olympique.

Expansion helped a little but how do you explain Bagwell’s 1994. A lot of those crazy HR numbers were forgotten about because of the strike but if we go back and look it really doesn’t make any sense.

Bagwell was on a Mark Grace career path had over 1500 P.A in the majors never was a home run hitter in the majors or minors and then turned into Jimmie Foxx in one season.

I was shocked by his HR rate at home in 1994, I never would have dreamed it was better than Ruth’s 1927 season.

The record for Home runs in one season in the Astrodome before 1994 was 18 by Lee May in 1974. Jeff Bagwell broke that mark on July 24, 1994 in the 97th game of the year!!

No Astro had ever hit more than 37 home runs from 1962-1993, then that mark was broken 4 times from 1994-1999, 3 times by Bagwell.

How do you explain Steve Finley’s career path, Luis Gonzalez? Plus they were all team-mates along with Caminiti.

Here’s another question that Joe and a lot of writers never bring up. If park factors and expansion and thin handled bats played such a large part in the offensive explosion, then why didn’t anyone hit .400 during that time period? The HR record was broken 6 times in 4 years from 1998-2001. Hornsby’s single season .424 was never touched.

It would stand to logic that if the reason like Joe says for the offensive explosion was park factors and expansion, that someone would have made a serious attempt at Hornsby
193: Carlton Fisk Online | Tech News said at 6:19 pm on January 24th, 2010:
[...] Joe Posnanski » Blog Archive » Iron FiskAnd that brings me to the Carlton Fisk quote at the top of the post. I am a very big fan of Fisk’s. I loved the way he played the game. I loved the toughness he brought to it. He was all ballplayer. But the quote really struck me, … Read more [...]
194: Weekend link dump for January 24 – Off the Kuff said at 7:33 pm on January 24th, 2010:
[...] Those who forget their own history are doomed to say stupid stuff about steroids. [...]
195: Tully M said at 1:42 pm on January 25th, 2010:
Um, unless cocaine is now classified as a steroid, I don’t think you can say that Ken Caminiti died of steroid abuse. He and Rod Beck (along with Steve Howe) couldn’t shake the little white powder habit, and sadly, that’s what killed them.
196: John Q said at 3:07 pm on January 25th, 2010:
Tully M,

Caminiti’s Steroid use was contributing factor in his death.

Caniniti died from a heart-attack from a cocaine/opiate overdose.

Steroid use raise blood pressure, raises cholesterol which damage the arteries, can alter sugar metabolism, and causes Hypertrophy (Heart Muscle Enlargement).

Two contributing factors in Caminiti’s death were Coronary Artery Disease and Hypertrophy.
197: Richard Aronson said at 3:02 pm on January 27th, 2010:
Couple of factual points. It’s the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, not Stadium. The Coliseum was built for football and track meets. It had an insanely short left field porch with a huge net designed to keep pop flies in play (and allow folks in the bleachers to still see the field). Wally Moon used an inside out left handed swing to hit Moon Shot home runs. It was the best right handed hitters park in baseball (right field and center field, not so much) and thus the worst left handed pitchers park in baseball, given the normal platoon proclivities of MLB. So it was to be expected that Koufax would suffer more than Drysdale in the Coliseum.

I recall a Bill James article from one of his abstracts on foul outs (or maybe I misremember) that indicated that Dodger Stadium had perhaps the biggest foul areas in baseball. Thus, strikes in other parks became outs in LA. Plus Dodger Stadium had extremely large outfield dimensions*. They didn’t need the mound to be high in order to be a great pitcher’s park.

*Since that time the Dodgers have extended the seats into foul territory, reducing the number of foul outs, and IIRC three times moved the fences in. So it’s no longer the pitcher’s haven it once was.

Finally, there’s a meteorological phenomenon in LA. In the hot summer day time, balls carry very well. In the cool evenings, when damper denser air usually flows in from the ocean with sunset, the ball doesn’t carry as well. Day games have a lot more offense than night games in LA, with more of a difference than most parks. The LA Coliseum was downtown, and even then it wasn’t the safest part of town. There also was not a lot of parking. So IIRC the Dodgers had more day games in the Coliseum, which also led to more offense. Dodger Stadium is surrounded by safe well lit parking, so walking to your car after a game is not an issue. Plus it’s hot in the sun in LA. Thus, more night games (pitcher’s games) at Dodger Stadium.

I’m not saying the mound wasn’t illegally high in LA. Nor am I saying the Giants didn’t water down the infield dirt to stop Maury Wills from stealing bases when the Dodgers visited Candlestick Park. But as Bill James wrote, it’s never just one thing. Weather, big outfields, huge foul territories, more night games, all helped make Dodger Stadium the best pitcher’s park of the 1960s if not all time. But you know, they also had Koufax, Drysdale, Podres, Osteen, Perranoski, Regan, and Brewer, and Wills at shortstop and Willie Davis in center field covered a lot of that open ground.
198: Richard Aronson said at 4:21 pm on January 27th, 2010:
Damon Rutherford @23, one of the classes I’m teaching depends heavily on web articles. Every time I teach it, I have to make sure each of those links is still intact.

As for the war against drugs, birds and elephants have been known to eat fermented fruit to excess and then get drunk. Drunken birds are easy prey for all kinds of predators. It’s part of us. Instead of fighting it, control it, regulate it, test it. I know that if somebody came up to me and said “here’s a drug that might make me a major league ball player, but if I’m not careful might do all kinds of other bad things,” and it was a legal drug not yet outlawed by baseball, I’d have used it. Steroids when prescribed are legal, and steroids in some less hypocritical countries are much more legal, and if steroids were the difference between major leagues and minor leagues, I just don’t fault a player. I mean, Brian Downing had a long and successful major league career wearing eyeglasses, IIRC. So where do you draw the line? Force every slugger to eat two hot dogs a game and drink a quart of scotch one night a week like Babe Ruth? Eliminate exercise and diet? What about terbanifine? It’s hard to hit homers with athlete’s foot affecting how well you can dig in at the plate.

Obviously, some of these notions are silly and extreme. But one man’s extreme is another man’s common sense. I’d trust Joe to be in charge of defining too much, but there are a lot of BBWAA members I wouldn’t trust to find their face with their hands if you gave them two ears as a head start.
199: EricJ said at 9:56 am on January 28th, 2010:
Thanks Joe
200: Bill Bell said at 7:09 pm on January 28th, 2010:
John Q, I used HR output for ages 31 to 35 as a baseline. I could of extended it to include seasons before
age 31 but I feel that using a 5 year sample is more than adequate. It’s longer than the average career!

You point out that Fisk had almost 1500 more At Bats after age 35 than he did during his age 31 to 35 years.
That in itself is remarkable and could
be considered a red flag for potential PED usage. Afterall, how many catchers in baseball history had more than
3500 PA after age 35?

You don’t consider an increase in HR rate from 4.0 HR per AB through age 36 to 4.6 per 100 AB AFTER age 35 to
be significant? Really? How many players in baseball history have accomplished that without the use of PEDs?
I bet you could count them on the fingers of 1 hand.

You made a valid point about Fisk losing part of the 1981 season to the strike, that may have cost him about 5
HRs based on the rate he hit them during those 5 seasons. That’s not nearly enough to make a difference though.

Your mistake is that you did not consider how the “normal” player’s production changes late in their career. Fisk
may have been a smarter hitter late in his career as you said, but most hitters are, so the point is meaningless.
The bottom line is, only 1 other player (Darrell Evans) hit more than twice as many HRs after age 35 than they
did during their age 31-35 seasons. You can say the stats are skewed by Fisks’ longevity, but my point is
that his longevity itself could well have been a direct result of PED usage.
201: lisa gray said at 9:48 pm on January 29th, 2010:
joe,

it’s like i keep saying –

the roid outrage is ONLY directed at 3 guys – the ones who broke The Sainted Babe’s 60/year record and the one who exceeded 715

nobody cares if every single player hits 25-30 a year and nobody would have cared about all the ex-players IF they hadn’t made the mistake of exceeding Babe

who talks about luis gonzalez hitting 57 at age 37?

nobody

who talks about any steroid user who DIDN’T hit home runs?

nobody

it’s all about the HR records, Babe-y
202: Steroids: It’s Time to Move On « Ball Your Base said at 3:35 pm on February 14th, 2010:
[...] So far, I have referred several times to the common belief that steroids cause players to hit more home runs. This belief is important due only to the influence it has on the behavior of players, writers, and fans. It is not rooted in actual scientific knowledge. In fact, we do not have direct evidence that steroids have any effect on baseball players’ skills. There is no scientific evidence that steroids cause batters to hit more home runs. There is no scientific evidence that steroids cause pitchers to throw harder or fielders to display better reflexes. And there is no way to do a methodical study of the actual effects, as such a study would require, at least, precise knowledge of who was using how much of which drugs. Thus, our knowledge of the link between steroids and performance is speculation, and speculation has a great ability to distort and exaggerate actual effects, especially when there is no hard evidence. As for the ironclad circumstantial factors—the mid-1990s home run spike coinciding with the generally accepted start of The Steroid Era and the muscular bulking up that we saw with our own eyes—correlation is not causation. In fact, there are several other factors that explain the increase in home run totals. Joe Posnanski listed and explored them in depth. [...]

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Iron Fisk

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