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I'm well aware of what happened in 1968/69. My point is that I don't think you are looking very far for other possible factors. According to your own stated logic, if there is an increase in offense, it means its steroids.
It just seems that you are flippant in your observations.
Its funny that you did not even mention that 1993 and 1998 were expansion years. Expansion years are known to have an effect over the course of a few years due to the influx of lesser talent into the league.
No one is saying steroids has no net effect on the game, but I think its given top billing in the discussion when it is getting more than its due.
I'm well aware of what happened in 1968/69. My point is that I don't think you are looking very far for other possible factors. According to your own stated logic, if there is an increase in offense, it means its steroids.
It just seems that you are flippant in your observations.
Its funny that you did not even mention that 1993 and 1998 were expansion years. Expansion years are known to have an effect over the course of a few years due to the influx of lesser talent into the league.
No one is saying steroids has no net effect on the game, but I think its given top billing in the discussion when it is getting more than its due.
Please find where I wrote that "if there is an increase in offense, it means steroids."
And when you cannot, will you apologize for your error?
Steroids are obviously the major element responsible for the increases in offense in one specific time period, which I listed, 1990-2005. You have translated that into the false generalization above. Is that your idea of fair and reasonable debate?
Further, if indeed you had known the specific cause for the increase in offense in 1969, then it is inexplicable that you would have included it as an example of how offense just goes up and down on its own, which is what you were using the example to try and establish. So, either you did not know, or you made an error by trying to use it the way you did. In neither case do you come out looking good.
Actually we have an excellent notion of what steroids can do. More than half of all the single season performances of 50 or more home runs in a single season took place between 1990 and 2004. You are unable to extract any conclusions from that?
I saw what your conclusion was and summed it up tidily. You are splitting hairs otherwise.
Since you have an abundance of knowledge on exactly what steroids do, care to offer an explanation on why steroids only enhances the performance of batters and not pitchers? One would think that having pitchers like Roger Clemens pitching every 4th/5th day and going deep into innings because he is healing faster... throwing harder... would have stymied this HR rush.
Take into account pitchers like the "scrubs" in the Mitchell Report. Even they were doping. Chances are, more were doping. How come they had little to no impact? Maybe its because... steroids doesn't exactly enhance performance as much as one would like to believe.
When I think about... the number of HRs per team in 1961: 152 isn't all that far off from the what teams hit in 1998: 169. Factor in the DH in the AL, and that alone could make up the difference. I guess the players in 1961 were also using steroids, no? Supposedly, hitting was more difficult back then before they lowered the mound in 1969... So what a second, that makes 1961 even more impressive than a year like 1998.
Toss in the little fact I put out earlier... there was a 30% increase in HRs when they lowered the mound. A 30% increase to 1961's HR average brings it to nearly 200, greater than even years like 2001.
Look, you can't use apply your logic to one era of baseball and then discount it in another.
Look...you appear to me to be the sort who begins with a conclusion and then shops for whatever evidence supports that conclusion while ignoring anything which tends to descredit it.
That is not how I work, and it isn't how you should work. You have displayed a limited knowledge of the history of the game and the reasons for variations on offensive output over the years. The gaps in your knowledge are causing you to make unsupportable assertions and draw incorrect conclusions.
When offensive levels change in a manner beyond normal year to year variance, there has always been a reason it has happened. I can account for every major change. In 1911 the ball was replaced by a a more lively version. In 1921 they outlawed spitters and scuffballs, and changed the rules so that new, clean balls were introduced throughout the game. That change caused offensive levels to skyrocket.
In 1930 they introduced a new ball with the stiches raised. This caused the great offensive explosion of 1930 and threw the traditional balance between runs and run prevention so out of whack that they changed the ball again the next year to one with flatter stitching.
In the 1940's when the majority of the stars were in the armed forces, offensive levels dropped once more. When the war ended, they rose once more.
In 1961, there was the first expansion, with rules in place which guarnteed that the new clubs would have lousy players for their first several years. Adding two teams with what amounted to triple A pitching was responsible for the rise in offense then.
The Maris/Mantle assault on Ruth's record generated a panic in the owners and they reacted in 1963 by redefining the strike zone, enlarging it so that strikes became much more common. Along with the openings of Dodger Stadium, Anaheim Stadium, Shea Stadium, the Oakland Coliseum and Candlestick Park, all of which were poor hitting environments, offense tumbled and continued to tumble through 1968 when the owners realized that they had gone too far. That is when the old strike zone was reestablished and the mound lowered. Ofense rose again.
Offense dipped once more as the '70's progressed and several new stadiums, all favoring the pitcher more than the bandboxes that they replaced, opened in St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and Philadelphia. It began to rise again slowly in the '80's through 1987 when the owners once more decided that pitchers needed some help. Between '87 and '88 the strikezone was once more redefined, enlarged in favor of pitchers. Offense immediately dropped and stayed relatively low until '93 when it took off on its most prolonged and massive rise...the steroid era.
When MLB finally got serious about testing the players in 2005, offense instantly began to shrink once more, and has continued to do so since.
Before it became widely known that steroid were in such popular use, there was great speculation regarding the cause of the massive rise in offense. Some suggested the ball had been juiced again...it wasn't. Some claimed that the new stadiums were causing it, but exhaustive studies established that new stadiums could at best, account for 1 % of the change. Others insisted that it was the new thin handled bats, but they had been in use in the '80's without causing an immense change in scoring levels. Another popular theory, taken seriously by MLB, was that it was the umpires refusing to call high strikes any longer which was the cause. But MLB cracked down on the umps and offense continued to rise.
And then Canseco's book ratted everyone out, and we began find out the actual cause.
I suggest that you go study the history of the game, the history of the changes in scoring levels, and then start trying to draw some conclusions.
Last edited by Grandstander; 03-07-2012 at 02:22 PM..
So far the 'roids free Braun has been having a brutal Spring. In eleven games he is two for twenty one (.095) with one of his hits being a homerun. He has been having trouble with a groin injury.
Look...you appear to me to be the sort who begins with a conclusion and then shops for whatever evidence supports that conclusion while ignoring anything which tends to descredit it.
Hello Pot. Called many kettles black lately?
I do believe you are the one looking to steroids as the answer to all of baseball's offensive problems without looking anywhere else for other possibilities and factors.
I do believe you are the one looking to steroids as the answer to all of baseball's offensive problems without looking anywhere else for other possibilities and factors.
Expressed yourself without cliches lately?
And you could not be more wrong with the above. One wonders if you bothered to actually read my post before responding. If you had, would you not have noticed the paragraph I devoted to the explorations of alternative explanations for the offensive explosion of the '90's? And if you had, why would you be thinking that I have not looked elsewhere?
What is your explanation for the fact that during the era when we know that steroids were being widely used, offensive levels took unprecedented leaps, and ever since MLB finally began cracking down, offensive levels have gone into decline?
If as you want us to believe, that this was the product of factors other than steroids, then please explain what it was that caused offense to decline. If it was other causes which are responsible for the rise, then something must have happened to those reasons, they must have been overturned in some manner.
So...what was that? It was smaller stadiums and now they are bigger stadiums? It was a juiced ball and they removed the juice again? At the same time that MLB cracked down on steroid use, all the athletes decided to quit training and working out as hard as they used to?
What? If steroids aren't responsible for the rise in offensive levels, and the removal of steroids is not responsible for the decline over the past six seasons, then what is? What was added which apparently must have been removed?
Something more than a cliche will be required this time.
The MLB fired Shyam Das. Das has served the MLB for over a decade as an arbitrator. During that period he has overseen multiple steroid cases. In each case, except one, he has ruled in favor of the MLB.
I'm not a conspiacy theorist, and there are a number of reasons that Das could have been fired, but it does peak my curiosity that he was fired shortly after deciding a case in favor of a player.
The MLB fired Shyam Das. Das has served the MLB for over a decade as an arbitrator. During that period he has overseen multiple steroid cases. In each case, except one, he has ruled in favor of the MLB.
I'm not a conspiacy theorist, and there are a number of reasons that Das could have been fired, but it does peak my curiosity that he was fired shortly after deciding a case in favor of a player.
MLB has a history of being a sore loser about these sorts of decisions. They canned Peter Seitz after his free agency establishing ruling on McNally and Messersmith. After Thomas Roberts ruled that the owners had colluded to drive down salaries in '86, he was given the gate.
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