from Amazon
Monday, March 09, 2009
Eric Walker and his high (boskage) horse…
...and the danger of being “absolutely certain” of something that is by no means definitive (in my opinion - not Eric’s - of course).
Let me start by saying that I have no idea whether Eric’s thesis in his Steroids Article is correct or not. It is just that after reading it, I am thoroughly unconvinced of his conclusions and unimpressed by his logic and arguments.
Eric has a very good reputation and pedigree as far as I am aware (I have never has any contact with him), however, it seems to me that the very things he rails against in terms of other people’s distortion of facts and sloppy analysis, he does himself.
Two things jumped out at me right away:
To search for possible effects from PED use, we first need to understand what PEDs might or might not do for players. No one has ever claimed that any PED improves visual acuity or reflex response speed; all that PEDs can possibly do is increase muscularity. In baseball terms, that means power--the distance balls are hit. If PEDs have a discernible effect in baseball, then that effect must be on power, and only on power.
He is so adamant about this assertion, yet it seems preposterous to me. Is it unreasonable to think that PED use might affect something other than pure “power?” Is it not possible that it decreases healing time from injury or allows players to play while injured, thus affecting other stats other than just power? Maybe it only affects counting stats and not rate stats? Is it not possible that they (PED’s) have a general effect, psychological (placebo effect) or otherwise, on feelings of health and well-being (remember that Canseco said in his first book that they make you feel “invincible” and “like Superman"), such that all or some aspects other than, or in addition to, power are affected? Shouldn’t an increase in strength allow you to hit ground balls harder such that you get more singles (remember he said “power ONLY")? Granted, it is likely that if PED’s have any effect at all, it would show up in the power numbers, but, to me, to emphatically state that its effect MUST BE on “power and power ONLY,” is preposterous.
Here is the worst part of his argument and where I stopped reading the article in order to write this (maybe I’ll finish the article):
(You have to look at the graph in the article yourself.) In summary, he shows an historical graph of “power factor” (total bases per hit, I think) from the early 1900’s to the 2000’s. Putting aside the fact that, again, I think it is possible that PED’s could have an effect on performance and not necessarily show up in this statistic (granted it likely would)…
(He also “splices” the graph in order to delete the year or years that he thinks the ball was juiced. I am not crazy about this technique and I do not agree that it is absolutely certain that the ball was juiced in those years or eras, but I’ll even grant him this as well.)
The graph shows a marked and continuous decline from the early 60’s to around 1980. From 1980 to the present time, the curve is relatively flat (although it does make an upward turn in the mid 1990’s which may be significant with respect to PED’s). About these two “trend lines” Eric says this:
The rate of decline from 1962 on through 1981 was dramatic; we don’t need here to speculate on causes, because that’s not relevant to our investigation. From 1982 on through the present, power has been nearly flat (it looks like a slight downtrend only because the bizarre 1986/1987 spike “front-loads” the average, but I didn’t want to arbitrarily smooth out those years).
First of all, I think that it IS important to speculate on or understand the reason for the decline from the 1960’s to 1980. The reason that is important is that we want to know what caused this decline to abruptly halt in 1980 or so, or even start to drift upward in the mid 1990’s! Could it have been steroids?
Eric goes on to say:
It thus becomes quite impossible to believe in any theory that speaks of “boosting” power in modern times, simply because there has been no such boost. Below is a blow-up graph of the so-called “steroid era”, starting at 1982 (because 1981 was strike-shortened and thus not a good data point).
I am absolutely blown away by such poor, one-sided, logic and analysis. Now, I am not saying that PED’s have any effect at all, and if they do, what kind of effect and what we are likely to see in a graph like this. I really have no idea. But Eric shows us steadily declining PF (power factor) rates from 1961 (or so) to 1980 and an abrupt leveling off of that “trend” and then claims that “there is no evidence of a PED effect?”
WTF! Isn’t it just as plausible that PED use had a profound effect on PF causing that declining trend to abruptly cease? Also, as I said, if you look at the graph, you can clearly see a slight rise from the mid 1990’s to the present time. Isn’t that some (small) evidence of a PED effect as we might hypothesize that at some point in the 1990’s, PED use increased fairly dramatically? Wouldn’t we REALLY want to know what caused the marked decline from the 60’s to the 80’s and whether that decline would have continued if not for PED use in the 80’s and beyond (remember that Eric said, “...we don’t need here to speculate on causes, because that’s not relevant to our investigation.")? Isn’t that critical to determining whether the flat curve from the 80’s to the present time is evidence for or against PED use?
Eric, again, on the “flat” curve from the 1980’s to the present:
Remember, nothing is alleged to--or can have--happened to all of MLB over some one or two seasons: the claim is that PEDs were being used at a slowly but steadily increasing rate (and thus “distorting records") from very roughly 1980 through the present. Were that so, or anything like it, we would expect to see a clear long-term uptrend during this period. But we don’t: we see a nearly flat line that, if anything, slopes slightly down. The “boost” just isn’t there. But that doesn’t seem to stop anyone from talking about it.
Again, that bolded part would only be true if there were not some other factor or factors that would cause a declining trend. From 1960 to 1980, there is enormous evidence that there WAS some other factor or factors that caused PF to decline at a steady rate. If those factor(s) were still prevalent from 1980 onward (and we would need to speculate on or investigate what those factors might have been), then we see strong evidence for some other factor that came along in 1980 or so to counteract or neutralize the factor(s) that contributed to the declining trend, and that “some other factor” could be PED use.
Am I missing something or have I lost my mind?
I like this part:
Adair says “...(power)is generated largely by (lower body)...” and Walker paraphrases Adair as having said that “...(power) is all about (lower body)...”. Later, you get “biceps, triceps and deltoids… mean essentially nothing to long ball hitting”, and shortly thereafter, we are told those muscles have nothing to do with batting. Not just power, but batting.
If every step of your piece-by-piece wall of evidence is allowed to be exaggerated slightly (or not so slightly), the only thing between you and your predetermined outcome is the necessary number of logical steps.