Mark McGwire Admits Steroid Use

I’m ok with inducting him after he’s dead. But there are plenty of very good reasons to maintain lifetime bans for guys who bet on the game — including that they all know that’s the rule even before they get caught. Once his lifetime is over, the ban can be too.

Not enough information for me to say much about your anonymous player. I’ve never claimed that XBH/H is everything one needed to know. It helps to know if the player has switched home parks, of course. Without knowing more, I’d say it doesn’t look like compelling evidence of PED use. That doesn’t mean your anonymous guy was clean – only that his graph doesn’t scream out any compelling signs. Most of his variations are short blips up or down – basically stochastic. But I’m sure you’ll share with us all.

Regarding the raw stats from Bond’s 1990 v 1992 years. You conveniently neglect to to mention the raw number of hits that produced those results (156 & 147). I.E. in 92 he produced the same results on significantly fewer contact swings. More importantly, he maintained that ratio from that point on at a level significantly over that of the prior 4 years.

The ratio is basically measuring the average power of the hits in each set. A smaller or larger set of hits will produce a smaller or larger set of raw HRs, 2Bs, etc., accordingly. So the raw results don’t tell us enough about how powerfully he was hitting the ball.

I’ve obviously not looked at every hitter in the history of MLB. But I have looked at graphs of this for quite a few star baseball sluggers with similarly long careers. Some I’ve looked at include Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, Frank Robinson, etc. So far, nobody I’ve looked at from well before the steroid era has a curve that looks anything like Bond’s. All of those guys show fairly steady decline in power (other than occasional short peaks and dips) from their early 20s onward to the ends of their careers.

Looking at more modern hitters, Bonds, McGwire, Sosa & Giambi follow a common pattern – all those guys start at ‘normal’ numbers (around 40%) in their early years and then leap upward and either stay up or keep climbing.

It is certainly possible that other PED users could end up with different profiles, depending on the exact pattern of there use.

Alex Rodriguez’ numbers start strong, take a somewhat noticeable step up at age 23 and stay their for about 5 years, then drop back down to prior levels. ‘Sort of correlates with his ’story’.

Griffey, Jr., interestingly enough, shows a curve that looks a lot like Babe Ruth’s. Like Ruth it starts out strong in his very young 20s and overall declines, with a couple of distinct, short dips and peaks along the way. Sort of implies he is following a more ‘natural’ curve for a star slugger? Doesn’t guarantee he is clean, of course.

I’m not going to claim this is conclusive. But to me it is pretty compelling that in Bond’s case, at least, his power ratio is probably tracking his PED usage – and it seems to indicate usage as far back as 1992. The sheer magnitude of the jumps in power ratio in his curve are unlike anybody else’s who wasn’t a PED user. And they are extreme even compared to the other PED users’ I’ve looked at – while still matching the same overall pattern of many of those guys.

Just my opinion, of course.