Something to munch on for the new year
GLS
In a recent op-ed for The New York Times [
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/22/opinion/22cole.html?_r=1&th=&emc=th&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin
], sociology professor Jonathan R. Cole at Columbia University and
statistics professor Stephen M. Stigler at the University of Chicago
analyze the Mitchell Report’s findings and conclude that while
performance enhancing drugs may have "pronounced effects in individual
sports like cycling, swimming, skiing and track, where the difference
between a gold medalist and an also-ran is sometimes measured in
hundredths or thousandths of a second" such drugs have "little or a
negative effect" in baseball and other team sports:
For pitchers there was no net gain in performance and, indeed, some
loss. Of the 23 [pitchers studied], seven showed improvement after
they supposedly began taking drugs (lower E.R.A.’s), but 16 showed
deterioration (higher E.R.A.’s). Over all, the E.R.A.’s rose by 0.5
earned runs per game. Roger Clemens is a case in point: a great
pitcher before 1998, a great (if increasingly fragile) pitcher after
he is supposed to have received treatment. But when we compared
Clemens’s E.R.A. through 1997 with his E.R.A. from 1998 on, it was
worse by 0.32 in the later period.
Hitters didn’t fare much better. For the 48 batters we studied, the
average change in home runs per year “before” and “after” was a
decrease of 0.246. The average batting average decreased by 0.004. The
average slugging percentage increased by 0.019 - only a marginal
difference. So while some batters increased their totals, an equal
number had falloffs. Most showed no consistent improvement, several
showed variable performance and some may have extended the years they
played at a high level, although that is a difficult question to
answer.
Some players improved and some declined. But the pattern for the
individuals’ averages was consistent, and the variability of players
(with the exception of home run counts) was low. There is no example
of a mediocre player breaking away from the middle of the pack and
achieving stardom with the aid of drugs.
Whither Barry Bonds? Well, the two professors note that "Bonds’s
profile is strikingly like Babe Ruth’s high performance level until
near the end of his career, with one standout home run year - a year
in which other players on other teams also exceeded their previous
levels." There is no convincing way to demonstrate that Bonds’s
performance owed more to drugs than Ruth’s did to his prodigious use
of alcohol and tobacco.”
Mitch Edelman
there are two difficulties that I have with the methodology described here:
first, there is no apparent consideration given to deterioration of
skills as a player ages. Example: this thing states that average BA
decreased by 0.004 - and we dont know what is being comared to what
to come up with that number - is it lifetime ba before drug ingestion
to after? the stats are meaningless as presented here.
second, and more important, there is no control group: we cannot compare
the 1996-2007 performance of Bonds without drugs to Bonds with drugs over
the same period. The best we can do is to compare Bonds' performance
profile to profiles of other pre-drug-use players; we discover that his HR
totals are different from EVERY other player as they age. Conclusion: either
Bonds is Superman incarnate, or his drug ingestion affected his performance.
As no one has reported seeing him in blue tights and a red cape (how gay can
you get, Kal-El??), we must conclude it was the drugs.
Ditto for Clemens - it is very difficult to argue that drug use did not extend
his career. Ditto for McGwire.
OTOH, consider jay Gibbons' big year (what was it, 2004 or 2005?). here was
a marginal player who, out of nowhere, had a single exceptional year, not
since duplicated. Anyone care to speculate whether that was his juice season?
Cheers, and HNY
Mitch Edelman
David M. Nieporent
ede...@umbc.edu (Mitch Edelman) wrote:
> OTOH, consider jay Gibbons' big year (what was it, 2004 or 2005?). here was
> a marginal player who, out of nowhere, had a single exceptional year, not
> since duplicated. Anyone care to speculate whether that was his juice season?
Putting aside the question of whether it's fair to compare a player injured
to a player healthy, Gibbons had no big season which stood out from his
career. (He had two terrible seasons that stood out in a negative way,
though.)
Here are his OPS+s, in order by highest to lowest: 118, 111, 106, 106, 106,
78, 62.