Inflated numbers disputed, By: MICHAEL A. HILTZIK
Study uncertain if steroids have had big impact on game
May 27, 2006, Los Angeles Times
With Barry Bonds, the sports world's most famous suspected substance abuser, tied with Babe Ruth in career home runs, only 41 shy of Hank Aaron's all-time record, many observers are fretting that baseball's ledgers have been permanently compromised.
But those who study the numbers most closely aren't so sure.
Steroids and other performance-enhancing substances "ought to upset baseball researchers as much as anybody, since we make our bread and butter out of the integrity of baseball's numbers," statistician Nate Silver wrote in the recent book Baseball Between the Numbers, an anthology of analytical studies published by the Web site Baseballprospectus.com.
The statisticians who pore over baseball's numbers with a devotion unmatched in any other sport — the study is known as "sabermetrics," after the Society for American Baseball Research, or SABR — have been looking for signs of a "steroid effect" for several years.
They've come up largely empty-handed.
"The subject is as hotly debated in the statistical community as it is in the general community," said J.C. Bradbury, an economist who runs the statistics website Sabernomics.com. Players "are getting bigger, and they're hitting more home runs. Why? The very obvious answer before us is steroids, but it's very difficult to test their impact simply by looking at data within the game."
Some doubt the riddle will ever be solved, partially because there is no solid information about which players used the illegal substances, in what years, and how they might have performed without them.
Of course, there's no lack of evidence that numerous players turned to steroids and other so-called performance-enhancing drugs in the last decade, and that some improved their statistics in that time. Several, including New York Yankees first baseman Jason Giambi, reportedly confessed to steroid use before a Bay Area grand jury in 2003 and others have admitted in books to illegal drug use while implicating other players.
These disclosures and others have shined a spotlight on some of the sport's biggest stars with the gaudiest records, including Bonds. Questions also have been raised about lesser players experiencing isolated but unexpectedly productive years.
Nor is there any question that baseball has experienced a surge in offensive power since the mid-1990s, a period that coincides with reports of increased steroid usein the game. In the National League, home runs per game increased to 1.01 from .87 between 1993 and 2005; in the American League, the jump was to 1.09 from .92. Strikeouts per game also increased, but runs and hits per game remained nearly static in both leagues, suggesting that more hitters may have been swinging for the fences and, perhaps, pitchers' steroid use had increased as well.
None of that identifies steroids as the culprit. "It's well nigh impossible to ascribe any particular effect to any particular cause," said Neal D. Traven, co-chairman of the statistical analysis committee at SABR.
For one thing, steroids have not been invariably a magic bullet for the kind of physical improvement that translates into success on the diamond. Some say that steroids, used haphazardly, can work against the kind of physical development needed for baseball or lead to physical breakdown.
According to Game of Shadows, a book by two San Francisco Chronicle reporters based on secret grand jury testimony and other material, Bonds' steroid use initially produced upper-body bulk that damaged his elbow, requiring surgery in 1999 and a nearly two-month layoff. When he returned, he felt "muscle-bound and inflexible." Only after he added human growth hormone (another banned substance) to his chemical intake did his muscle quickness and flexibility improve to the point where his home run output might have been affected, the book says.
Some players have improved after quitting steroids, according to Silver, who studied the records of 76 major and minor leaguers suspended during 2005 for use of illegal performance-enhancing substances. Silver observed that most did decline after being suspended and presumably giving up drugs, but the difference was "just on the verge of being statistically significant." On the whole there was no "systematic, large-scale change."
"I always point to the difference between Jason Giambi and Jeremy Giambi," Silver said. "That tells part of the story."
Jason Giambi reportedly admitted to the 2003 grand jury that he took steroids as early as 2001, after which he hit an average 40 homers a year for three years for the Oakland Athletics and New York Yankees before a run of injuries in 2004. Now presumably steroid-free, the Yankees' starting first baseman has 12 home runs, second to Alex Rodriguez's 13. His younger brother Jeremy, who admitted 2003 steroid use to the grand jury, according to the Chronicle, failed to match his peak home run season of the year before and was driven out of the major leagues by injuries and poor performance after 2003.
Steroids haven't been used only by hitters. Nearly half the major and minor league players snared by baseball's steroids testing program in 2005 were pitchers. "If both pitchers and batters are doing them, the effect would wash out," Traven said.
At least one analyst even doubts that the rise in home runs is sufficiently remarkable to require any explanation beyond sheer chance. The cluster of six 61-plus home run seasons by Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa and Bonds from 1998 through 2001 is entirely consistent with the randomness of home run records, according to a 2006 paper by Arthur De Vany, an emeritus professor of economics at UC Irvine who runs a consulting firm.
