Can anyone calculate how much PED's add to a palyer's stats?

[cjclong]

Like a great many fans I have been disappointed at how many players are using steroids. How much of a benefit do these drugs give you? I think most of us believe ARod , Manny, Clemens and others would be stars without the use of drugs. For instance, I don't think ARod would be hitting 25 home runs instead of 50 without steroids. I've always said without his hand eye coordination and other athletic skills Bonds would have the same number of home runs as Arnold Schwarzenegger (none) These guys wouldn't take the drugs if they didn't think it helped them, but who much does it help? 5 home runs, 10 home runs a year? And what do steroids do for pitchers where weight lifting strength has little or nothing to do with speed on a pitch? (And what does HGH do?)

[kingjammy24]

steroids aren't only about strength. they're also about recovery time. baseball is a 162 game grind. players get tired, sore, fatigued. steroids reduce the recovery time needed by the body to recuperate. imagine going out onto the field midway through the season and physically feeling like it's still the start of the season while all of the other players are sore and tired. it's a tremendous advantage for any position. as for pitchers, there's recuperation time between starts. imagine feeling like you could pitch 9 innings only 2 days after you already pitched 9. you take the mound feeling good while the other non-juiced pitcher is still aching from his previous start.

bonds once said that he didn't believe steroids did anything because they don't affect hand/eye coordination. true but they do affect strength and muscle recovery and to that end they're more likely to turn warning track shots into homers and it's a hell of a lot easier to belt a home run when you don't feel fatigued and sore. barry could keep up his homerun pace thoughout an entire season while non-steroid using players felt worn down by the end.

HGH = increased muscle mass, increased energy levels, improved immune system, improved resistance to some injuries.

"I don't think ARod would be hitting 25 home runs instead of 50 without steroids"

you might be surprised. how many warning track shots did arod hit in his early mariners years that would've been homers if he would've been juiced? how many hits did Arod have in his early years where he was fatigued and if he'd had full-strength they might've been homers?

at some point, it seems 50 became the new 30. i remember when fielder hit 51 in 1990 and at the time it was considered a gargantuan achievement. when he hit 51, he was the first AL player to 50 in 29 yrs! he never hit 50 again. in 2007, 25 players hit 50 HRs or more. here's the 60 HR club. note the gaps in between the years:

Ruth - 60 HRs - 1927
Maris - 61 HRs - 1961
Sosa - 66 HRs - 1998
McGwire - 70 HRs - 1998
Sosa - 63 HRs - 1999
McGwire - 65 HRs - 1999
Sosa - 64 HRs - 2001
Bonds - 73 HRs - 2001

i remember when being a 35/100 man labelled you as a big slugger. now you've got pipsqueaks hitting 35 regularly and to be considered a big slugger you've got to hit upper 40s/50s. mcgwire was a slugger from the start but if you look at his first few years, he seemed to average mid-upper 30 HRs a season. then the twilight of his career comes and what's he do? 52, 70, 65. in 1988, he had 550 ABs and hit 32 HR. 10 yrs later, he had 509 ABs and he hit 70. you figure out how much juice can affect HR totals.

in "juiced", canseco said that he would likely not have even made the major leagues without steroids. with steroids what did he do? ROY, AL MVP, 40/40, 462 HRs, 7x All-Star, etc.

rudy.

[joelsabi]

steroids aren't only about strength. they're also about recovery time. baseball is a 162 game grind. players get tired, sore, fatigued. .

I think one of the commentator on the mlb network mentioned Robyn Venture would lose steam with 2 month left in the season while others were still poring it on.

i would have to do some research when i have time.

[cjclong]

I'm certainly not going to argue that PED's don't inflate statistics. But let's look at ARod's home run statistics from 96 to 03.
Seattle 96 36 home runs
Seattle 97 23 home runs
Seattle 98 42 home runs
Seattle 99 42 home runs
Seattle 00 41 home runs

Texas 01 52 home runs
Texas 02 57 home runs
Texas 03 47 home runs

ARod acknowledges using steroids in Texas. If this is accurate he was hitting an average of 42 home runs a year in Seattle from 98 through 2000 without steroids. The three years with Texas he averaged 52 home runs, 10 more a season. However Texas is without question a better home run hitters park than the one in Seattle. So a hitter going from Seatlle to Texas should hit more home runs. So how much was his home run increase due to Steroids and how much the ballpark? Is there any way you can calculate what it did for him? When you factor in the difference in the ballparks I don't see how.

[Nathan]

I don't believe such a calculation could be done. For one thing, the ballparks started getting smaller (thus boosting home run and offensive totals even in the absence of steroids). For another, regular deviations from expected are normal; notable one-year wonders like Brady Anderson and Zoilo Versalles come to mind.

Besides, it wasn't a case of just hitters juicing up in a vacuum. They were going against pitchers who were loading up as well; essentially the entire game was stained.

As far as what each type of enhancer does:
Steroids (synthetic testosterone) -- decreases recovery time exponentially based on dosage, outward physical characteristics are similar to those of a teenage male
GH (growth hormone; I find "HGH" to be as redundant as "yellow jaundice") -- increased bone mass and density and (most important) addition of new muscle fibers. All the lifting in the world won't increase the number of muscle fibers; when the growth hormone valve gets shut off around age 18-20, the fibers can get larger (hypertrophy) but they can't increase in number. Growth hormone changes that by adding more fibers. If you have more fibers and enlarge them, overall strength can increase quite dramatically. The most outward sign of excessive growth hormone is that the user begins to take on a Neanderthal-type appearance (lantern jaw, very pronounced brow ridge, etc)

[cjclong]

Thanks for telling me about the increase in Fibers from growth harmone, I hadn't known about that. I've hear players with injuries have taken it. Does it have any special curative value for injoriesl

[kingjammy24]

..The most outward sign of excessive growth hormone is that the user begins to take on a Neanderthal-type appearance (lantern jaw, very pronounced brow ridge, etc)

rudy.

[kingjammy24]

rudy.

[Canseco44]

If anyone has read Canseco's 2nd book 'Vindicated' He has a very good section at the end of the book that does side by side comparisons of players when they were rookies and now. It is very much like you have done with their faces, but he did it with their whole bodies. Some of them were pretty interesting!

Todd

[KrAzY3]

I think this is a tough subject because a lot of information is not being released. If we had a fairly comprehensive list of players that took performance enhancers (and perhaps what enhancers) we could sit down and start to figure this out.

For my comparison I'm going to go with two guys I personally thought were using steroids, pretty much since the first news about rampant use set in.

#1: Roger Clemens
I had lengthy arguments about Roger using and my argument was a abnormal curve. He appears to fizzle out a bit as he nears his mid 30s (makes sense for a power pitcher) and then he finds new life in his mid 30s. Then, uncharacteristically he is able to carry his dominant pitching well into his 40s. With Roger, it didn't strike me that he did things he couldn't do otherwise. It was that he was able to do things he hadn't been able to do in years. I compare him to a pitcher like Greg Maddux and Greg appears to slow down in his mid 30s and then by his early 40s he is a run of the mill pitcher.

#2 Luis Gonzalez
I don't hear his name very often, ironically I have heard him as someone that should have won a MVP over a steroid user, but to me he's a perfect example of what a user would look like. Up until his 30s, Luis was a soft hitter. He never hit more than 15 home runs. Then, he puts on muscle and has a string of 20+ home run seasons that extend into his mid 30s. Including a 57 home run season. He was able to kind of fly under the radar doing this because everyone was hitting so many home runs, but why did no one stop to ask why a soft hitting skinny kid suddenly hits 57 home runs? Compared to a hitter like McGriff (it's almost a joke now to say he was one of baseball's greatest sluggers but up until people started hitting 50 left and right he was) Luis shows a highly abnormal career arch. McGriff's peak power years were prior to his 30s and while he showed power into his late 30s it was not out of line with any of his previous production.

I'm a bit biased as I am a Braves fan so my examples are former Braves players. I watched them the most so I feel I'm more aware of their players. The point is that guys like Roger (and in my opinion Luis) obviously gained significant advantages through the use of performance enhancers. On the other hand, imagine if Greg and Fred were not using (and I have seen nothing to indicate they have). Greg's performance is that much more awe inspiring since he was facing bulked up hitters. Likewise, was Fred a slugger on par with guys like Barry Bonds? If numbers prior to 30 were any indication Fred was pretty darn close to Barry. So, if those examples give you anything to work off of the performance spikes can be incredible. Compare Barry to Fred and see the differences later in their careers for yourself (remember Fred's power didn't go away, he just didn't start hitting everything out).

The impact might end up being something like a (few years back) Coors field effect. Put a hitter there and you saw his average and power numbers spike. A average guy might become a All-Star hitter. Likewise, put a good pitcher there and you might see his ERA jump a point, or if he reaches a crucial threshold he might fall apart altogether. I think that's a potential inverse image of what it might do for a pitcher. A guy who might be at the end of his career could return to form on steroids. It might take a guy back from the brink. Coors field production was always taken with a grain of salt. We knew they weren't that good and I think the same standard should be applied to steroid users.