Braun, Cano, ARod, Granderson rumored to have failed PED test

[brettac1]

At least some humor happening. Much love to the guy who used the capital i.

[brewmann04]

Yes I would agree but these hackers pay no penalty either.

[TooLiveBrew]

I just about had a heart attack when I read that.

 

Before you retweet something as newsworthy as that, don't you think, at the very least, Tom would check to see if Ken Rosenthal had more than 110 followers?

Wow. It's even more astounding to me that Tom wasn't already following a high-profile peer in his own industry.

[Raw Biz]

I just about had a heart attack when I read that.

 

Before you retweet something as newsworthy as that, don't you think, at the very least, Tom would check to see if Ken Rosenthal had more than 110 followers?

 

Not to mention that twitter uses check marks to verify high-profile users. The first thing I do when following or reading someone's tweets is see if that check mark is there.

[The stache]

Wow! Congrats Stache...I assume all of BF is invited?

 

I will do my best to get some extra seating at the ceremony for BF members. I'm sure she'll have all of her hot super model friends coming. That's good, though, as the catering bill won't be that much.

[Ennder]

Steroids played a part in the offensive explosion but it was a really minor part.

 

Barry Bonds goes from hitting a career high of 46 homeruns at age 28 where one would figure a hitter to be at his peak Then from age 35-39 never hit less than 45 with a peak of 73. When players are producing significantly above their peak physical years in what should be their declining years I'd call that more than a really minor part.

 

But again you just ignored everything else I said. The balls were without a doubt different and probably the major driving force in all of this. The pitching was just awful during those years as well.

 

When baseball expanded in the 60s there was a 6 year spike in HR. It expanded again in 67 and we saw another spike in HR for about 6 years. It expanded again in 77 and we again saw a spike in HR. 93 expansion had a spike as well. Why would we not expect a chunk of this being because of the 1998 expansion? From 1998 to 2001 they used new balls and then the balls were changed in 2002. Those huge years were right in the peak of the expansion spike and the new balls. Steroid testing didn't start until 2006 yet HR were already going down before that and didn't see a sharp reduction or anything once testing began. Only after the expected expansion spike was over did they start to go down just like every other expansion in baseball history.

 

There is no doubt that anabolic steroid use helped players hit more HR. There is also absolutely no doubt that it is overblown when people say something like what you just said. If Bonds had never used steroids he still would have seen a HR spike in his age 35-39 years that would have looked odd because of other factors.

[JohnBriggs12]

Baseball didn't expand in 67, it expanded in 1969. Pitching absolutely dominated in 67 and 68. Very mediocre pitchers were posting ERA's in the 2's. That was also the year Drysdale had his 58 inning shutout streak and Gibson was nearly unhittable. It also resulted in dwindling attendance. So they lowered the mound to help hitters. The spike in 1969 had more to do with the mound be lowered than it did expansion though that was a factor as well.

 

I don't think baseballs had any impact in the 90's. That was all steroids, bigger players in general, two separate expansions, and new more hitter friendly parks coming on line replacing less HR friendly places.

[Patrick425]

The pitching was just awful during those years as well.

 

What's your measuring point for this? Stats? Well of course pitching was awful if they were facing a bunch of roided up batters! While you may argue that the pitchers were on PEDs as well, I don't believe that those substances help pitchers nearly as much as they help hitters. Pitching is mainly about mechanics and location. PEDs do not help you with either of these.

 

When baseball expanded in the 60s there was a 6 year spike in HR. It expanded again in 67 and we saw another spike in HR for about 6 years. It expanded again in 77 and we again saw a spike in HR. 93 expansion had a spike as well. Why would we not expect a chunk of this being because of the 1998 expansion? From 1998 to 2001 they used new balls and then the balls were changed in 2002. Those huge years were right in the peak of the expansion spike and the new balls. Steroid testing didn't start until 2006 yet HR were already going down before that and didn't see a sharp reduction or anything once testing began. Only after the expected expansion spike was over did they start to go down just like every other expansion in baseball history.

 

Of course when there is expansion, pitching is going to be thinned out and offense is going to see a boost. I don't know that anyone would argue that. However, in 1976 there were 24 teams and and average of 0.58 HRs per game and in 2000 there were 30 teams and an average of 1.17 HRs per game. There is no way that you can convince me that adding 6 teams would cause the HR rate to more than double. That's an eye popping increase and all you have to do is look at the size and condition of players in the 70s vs the "comic hero" size biceps of the players in the 90's and 00's to get some clue as to what was going on.

 

Also, the HR rate went down one year before steroid testing began in 2006. The news and shame of steroid usage broke well before this. Many players were beginning to realize, before 2006, that the gig was up and the days of just doing whatever you wanted was coming to an end. While they may have not been tested in 2005, they were being watched and scrutinized a lot more closely by the media and the fans.

 

There is no doubt that anabolic steroid use helped players hit more HR. There is also absolutely no doubt that it is overblown when people say something like what you just said. If Bonds had never used steroids he still would have seen a HR spike in his age 35-39 years that would have looked odd because of other factors.

 

Just as you think some of us are "overblowing" the effect of steroids on baseball, I think you are really overblowing the effect of expansion and the "juiced ball" (especially the juiced ball). While you should expect some increase in offense from expansion, it should not be anywhere near what actually happened.

[RobDeer 45]

Very well said Patrick. Exactly what I was going to respond to all those points. Especially that steroids were on their way out well before testing started. They were already on to the next thing, that was less obvious.

 

Ennder I do think we are both saying the other side of the argument is valid, just not agreeing on how much credit to give to those situations. I would love to see some stats on average distance of LF/RF, power alleys, and CF wall distances, maybe by decade. I do think smaller parks did have a very sizable impact on HRs. I just argue that steroids had the most impact of all the changes that were going on.

[logan82]

There is no doubt that anabolic steroid use helped players hit more HR. There is also absolutely no doubt that it is overblown when people say something like what you just said. If Bonds had never used steroids he still would have seen a HR spike in his age 35-39 years that would have looked odd because of other factors.

I think the argument is that without roids Bonds would not have been playing anywhere near as much.

[TheCrew07]

The most simple and basic physics rule that everyone should know:

 

Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

-Sir Issac Netwon's 3rd Law of Physics

 

Again, to claim anything related to the ball itself when MLB has denied the allegations one has to be able to isolate all of the other variables involved. That's the problem with so many of these statistical "studies"... applying scientific method or sound statistical thoery doesn't make a conclusion "true" when data is simply ignored... the statistical noise is just as important as the rest of the factors being measured because it has an effect on the outcome.

 

From a physics standpoint the most important part of the HR equation is determining the relative speed of the bat and the ball when they strike, then the angle and other considerations will factor in.

 

Since bat speed data isn't available for anyone and average pitching velocity data isn't avaible going back that far how can one definitively make any claims about the baseball? I remember thinking in the 80s that someone who threw around 90 MPH had a cannon for an arm, now in modern baseball that pitcher is just average.

 

What about park effects? I think we'd all agree that Miller park plays different depending on how the stadium is configured for the game... roof open, roof closed but panels open, roof and panels closed. Were the old parks compared to the new and an adjusted HR rate taken into consideration for those studies?

 

Finally how do you possibly account for the fact that on average athletes continue to get bigger and stronger as time goes on and normalize the data across all generations? Historically baseball hasn't been big on athletic development but in modern times you have all different levels... some organizations have been begun to push it, some are doing what they've always done, some are in the middle. As the athletes become stronger they will swing the bats with greater speed applying greater force to the baseball when it's hit.

 

Until all of those variables can be isolated and accounted for it's simply improper to claim that HR rates were primarily affected by a different baseball.

 

Wouldn't the easiest way to study it be by individual player who was a known user like a Giambi and see how his HR rates changed over the course of their career? Granted that would take much more work than abitrarily grabbing HR numbers from a given season and trying to make conclusions about anything, but the method would be more sound. Wouldn't that be the true measure, benchmarking the production increase of known users? You know players like Sosa and Bonds who's bodies changed dramatically and HR totals went up as they continued to age when their stats should have started falling off. That's how pretty everyone knew Bonds was cheating, players don't get more power past their peak.

 

When I first found bf.net and sabermetrics I was fascinated because as an engineering major I had spent my time with Calculus, Physics, and Chemistry, I never actually had a stats class at any level of school. I took many sabermetric principles and applied them to my work evaluating the play of the football players I coached. However, it doesn't take much to see all of the potential holes in work like this. Once again applying scientific method doesn't make a result scieantific in nature or a fact. In truth all we have with any metric thrown around on these forums is a mathematicl or statistical hypothesis, but in some cases like with this HR study or PAP, if the initial assumptions aren't necessarily true that casts the entire work into doubt.

 

The baseball itself may have changed, I won't say that it didn't, but the baseball isn't the primary reason Bonds broke the HR record, and that's the problem the purists have with PEDs in baseball. More so than any other sport the records are revered and venerated, as such tainted players who break the records of supposedly clean players are going to draw tremendous scrutiny.

 

Everyone on this forum can tell anyone else what the HR record is, what 300 wins means as a pitcher, who the last player to hit .400 was and so on. Can anyone off the top of their head name the all time passing yardage or rushing yardage numbers from football? All time interceptions, receptions, or tackles? From a baseball perspective PEDs are viewed as a direct assualt on the legacy of the game by many people, that's the difference in the various sports. That's on us, the fans, the writers, the people who care about the game and how we choose to frame it. I don't know why I care so much about the numbers in baseball that I have them ingrained in my pschyce, I'd guess because I was raised that way by a father who loved the game. I would think that my experience would similar to others on this forum in that regard. For whatever reason the numbers in baseball have been and continue to be treated differently than the numbers from other sports, maybe because baseball has always been relatively easy to measure by comparison?

[Ennder]

The balls have been studied at length. Here are some examples.

 

http://deadspin.com/5937432/was-mlbs-juiced-era-actually-a-juiced+ball-era

 

The biggest spike in HR were exactly the years they pointed to for juiced balls. All of the big HR seasons by Bonds, Sosa etc were within those years etc. The steroid era was much longer than just that short peak. There simply was more to it than steroids.

[Nottso]

I remember during the "juiced ball era" seeing on TV (perhaps on "Sports Science") where they showed how the balls were made and the testing criteria for them. The balls were launched at a wall of wood at a certain speed and trajectory and the criteria was that they had to bounce back and travel "x" distance but no more than "y" distance. The balls at that time were travelling at the very high end of the limit and this was reported as being further than they had ever bounced before.

 

So... "juiced", I would have to say no, as they were within the official guidelines but "livelier than ever before" I saw with my own two eyes. Make of that what you will.

 

As for park factor, when MP was under construction, the original plan didn't have the "jutted out" part of CF where it's 400'. It was to be about 380'. When the change was made, the rumor on the job was that Yount (who was working for the team in some consulting capacity) demanded it. I have no idea if Yount brought about the change or not, but the change was indeed made.

[owbc]

Mark McGwire hit 245 home runs in only FOUR years, 1997-2000. Sammy Sosa hit 243 home runs from 1998-2001. Bonds probably would have beaten that if he wasn't walked so much. With those insane numbers, it's definitely multiple factors coming together around that time and it's hard to say what the relative weight of each is.

 

When you look at the league totals, they spiked sharpest in 1993 and again in 1996. The spike in 1993 is from expansion. The other expansion was in 1998, but there were only 102 more HR in 1998 compared with 1996. No new stadiums opened in 1996. Obviously weather and other random factors can affect the year to year totals. Even just the fact that some of these guys were trying to hit a home run with every single swing...nobody is really doing that anymore except maybe Adam Dunn.

 

I think there are also several factors for the early decline. I agree with Patrick that use likely declined ahead of testing. Also, I suspect that more pitchers began using PEDs in the early 2000s after Clemens started having so much success. Finally, the biggest reason is the growth of advance scouting and technology. I believe Curt Schilling was one of the first to keep extremely detailed logs of hitters that he faced. Now, everyone has access to the scouting. If some of the recent positive tests/rumors are to be believed, PED use is still ongoing, but the playing field between pitchers and hitters has evened out. I like the current balance since there is still a decent amount of scoring, but stolen bases and bunting have made managing strategy more interesting (and maybe one day they will be used properly...).

[logan82]

As for park factor, when MP was under construction, the original plan didn't have the "jutted out" part of CF where it's 400'. It was to be about 380'. When the change was made, the rumor on the job was that Yount (who was working for the team in some consulting capacity) demanded it. I have no idea if Yount brought about the change or not, but the change was indeed made.

I remember that being brought up during a game sometime. They talked about how Yount thought it would produce more triples.

[jerichoholicninja]

As for park factor, when MP was under construction, the original plan didn't have the "jutted out" part of CF where it's 400'. It was to be about 380'. When the change was made, the rumor on the job was that Yount (who was working for the team in some consulting capacity) demanded it. I have no idea if Yount brought about the change or not, but the change was indeed made.

I remember that being brought up during a game sometime. They talked about how Yount thought it would produce more triples.

 

Major League rules state that center field can be no shorter than 400 feet. That probably had more to do with it than anything Robin said.

[Nottso]

As for park factor, when MP was under construction, the original plan didn't have the "jutted out" part of CF where it's 400'. It was to be about 380'. When the change was made, the rumor on the job was that Yount (who was working for the team in some consulting capacity) demanded it. I have no idea if Yount brought about the change or not, but the change was indeed made.

I remember that being brought up during a game sometime. They talked about how Yount thought it would produce more triples.

 

Major League rules state that center field can be no shorter than 400 feet. That probably had more to do with it than anything Robin said.

 

Do you happen to know when that rule came to be? I'm just wondering if it were in place when MP was built, or if maybe MP was the catalyst for the rule. If it was already in place, perhaps Yount is the one that brought it to the attention of the team and/or the general contractor. However it went down, I know there was a change.

[jerichoholicninja]

It's rule 1.04 and note 'a' says it applies to fields built after June 1, 1958.

[trwi7]

I don't think it applies for CF. Maybe somewhere in the park has to be 400 or more but PNC is like 396, Petco is 399.

[nate82]

 

 

From a physics standpoint the most important part of the HR equation is determining the relative speed of the bat and the ball when they strike, then the angle and other considerations will factor in.

 

Since bat speed data isn't available for anyone and average pitching velocity data isn't avaible going back that far how can one definitively make any claims about the baseball? I remember thinking in the 80s that someone who threw around 90 MPH had a cannon for an arm, now in modern baseball that pitcher is just average.

 

 

Kind of off topic but I believe you could figure out a players bat speed. ESPN has some stats for home runs with the speed off of the bat. You would just have to plug that into a formula and get the bat speed for that player off of that hit. Once you have collected enough data you will then have that players bat speed within a margin of error.

 

http://www.hittrackeronline.com/top_sob.php

[Patrick425]

 

 

From a physics standpoint the most important part of the HR equation is determining the relative speed of the bat and the ball when they strike, then the angle and other considerations will factor in.

 

Since bat speed data isn't available for anyone and average pitching velocity data isn't avaible going back that far how can one definitively make any claims about the baseball? I remember thinking in the 80s that someone who threw around 90 MPH had a cannon for an arm, now in modern baseball that pitcher is just average.

 

 

Kind of off topic but I believe you could figure out a players bat speed. ESPN has some stats for home runs with the speed off of the bat. You would just have to plug that into a formula and get the bat speed for that player off of that hit. Once you have collected enough data you will then have that players bat speed within a margin of error.

 

http://www.hittrackeronline.com/top_sob.php

 

Yeah..but is any of this data available from the 90's and early 00's?

[jerichoholicninja]

I don't think it applies for CF. Maybe somewhere in the park has to be 400 or more but PNC is like 396, Petco is 399.

 

My 2006 copy of the rulebook defines foul territory as 320 feet or more down the foul line and 400 feet or more to center field. I checked and you actually have them reversed but they are shorter than 400 feet so there must be some leeway in the rule. I think we can agree though that there is a big difference between 380 and 396.

[owbc]

Miller Park was designed for triples, both in center field and especially with the deep corners. The right field foul pole was originally 355 ft, which was the deepest in MLB before it was moved in to 345 ft in 2006. Wrigley is now the deepest at 353 ft. Yount was brought in specifically to help with the field dimensions. I don't think they expected the ball to carry so well at Miller Park or they would have moved the power alleys back a few feet. The two-tired right field bleachers were designed after Tiger Stadium, I can't remember if Yount had a say in that or not.

 

The specific example that I know of where MLB intervened is when Cinergy Field/Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati lost its outfield seating in 2001 to make way for the new stadium. The CF dimension was originally going to be 393 ft with about an 8 ft wall, but MLB made the Reds add an extra 10 ft to the wall height in center. They would never have allowed 380 ft or even 390 ft at Miller Park.

 

It's hard to isolate the park factor in the steroid debate since the ball trajectory system is new and there were other factors besides outfield walls such as the loss of foul territory. Park factor only considers runs scored, so the product on the field affects the calculation. Miller Park has ranged anywhere from #7 to #27 depending on the year (averaging about neutral), although it usually ranks high for both triples and home runs.

[brwrsfan]

Not sure what thread to put this in, but this doesn't sound good. I still don't see what they could possibly find to suspend him, especially with the Times not helping, but as we suspected, MLB hates Braun.

 

http://www.cbssports.com/mlb/blog/eye-on-baseball/21891936/report-mlb-targeting-alex-rodriguez-ryan-braun-for-biogenesis-links

[Invader3K]

It really is just a glorified witch hunt at this point.