As Roy O brings the Stros home from St. Louis in a 1-1 tie in the National League Championship Series, Art De Vany, Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of California, Irvine, provides this thought-provoking paper (pdf) in which he debunks the popular theory (of which I have never been comfortable) that MLB sluggers’ taking of muscle-enhancing steroids were the primary reason that several old home-run records were broken over the past decade. As Professor De Vany notes here and here:
The latest version of my paper, “Has Home Run Hitting Changed in Major League Baseball” is now up.
I take up the matter of steroids more directly and also such possible influences as “hotter” baseballs, altered ball parks, smaller strike zone and find them all to be lacking. They do not stand up to verifiable tests or statistics. And they shouldn’t because no explanation is required. There has been no increase in MLB home run hitting. Three home run hitting geniuses appeared in a brief time span and will soon be gone. Enjoy them and don’t look for explanations when none are required. The law of home runs and extreme human accomplishment that I develop tell us that we never know when this kind of genius will appear, only that it will be rare and intermittent.
The role of steroids may well be significant, but indirect, however. Is a body boosted by steroids less subject to being taken out of action by the usual bumps and dings that come along during the season? Are minor injuries less likely? Etc.
I don’t know the answers to those questions, but I’m always inherently distrustful of anyone who tells me they’ve definitively debunked (or proven) a complex social theory that involves many variables. As stats geeks among us know, the R-squared that social scientists come up is usually small, so small that I frequently wonder whether they’ve “proven” a damn thing! 🙂
Kevin, although I have not read all of De Vary’s article yet, my understanding is that his main point is that the still unproven benefit of taking steroids was such a small variable in the overall factors that converged to produce the recent uptick in home runs that it could not have been primarily responsible for that uptick, any more than the widespread use of amphetamines in MLB during earlier eras (including Ruth’s) could be primarily responsible for the upsurge in power numbers then.
Yet somehow, Brady Anderson managed to hit 50 homers in 1996. I’d hardly call that guy a “home run genius”.
Yeah, but George Foster hit 52 in 1977 and Johnny Mize at the age of 34 hit 51 in 1947, and no one ever accused those guys of taking steroids. Similarly, Shawn Green hit 49 in 2001 and he certainly is not one of the steroid wonders of the past few years. There will always be a few anomalies such as these in every era.