[RchW]

Originally Posted by Déjà Bru

Let's see. We have "idjits," "yokels," and "numbskulls." Did I miss anything? What should we call him in return, do you think?

Usually, people who pile on the insults are either not smart enough to argue intelligently and convincingly or are insecure about themselves and their argument. Or both.

Incidentally, that article did nothing to change my mind that the taking of performance enhancing drugs, if not sanctioned and available to all players in a league, is cheating.

Nobody disputes that but declaring guilt because you don't like a guy or he's not a real 'merican or some anonymous trainer saw acne, is idiotic yokel like and the height of numbskullery IMO. Too many people think that smearing people without evidence is ok. They must never be right.

Prove it!

Edit this poster nails it big time

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Yeah, I’d be glad to, as someone whose familiar with this argument from reading BP for over 10 years.

The point isn’t that various PED’s don’t help players. They do. It’s that the sentiment against them is rooted in a fundamentally misleading argument that has little to do with them.

The primary benefit of PEDs from that era are better recovery times and stamina. You get stronger because you can work out more often for longer and recover more quickly to do it again. This leads to faster gains, but you have to work pretty hard.

The most visible scapegoats for the PED era were players who were already VERY unpopular and VERY good before they were ever suspected of taking PEDs. Bonds was a Hall of Famer before he bulked up in the late 90s. Alex Rodriguez was one of the least popular players in baseball from the day he signed his 10 year contract.

The benefits of PED drugs don’t just extend to getting stronger. Better recovery time from working out is a much larger advantage for pitchers than it is for hitters! Look how long one of the few pitchers to really be proven to have done something – Clemens – was able to go.

The testing didn’t exist and use was from all accounts widespread. There’s no evidence that PED drugs only helped hitters – there’s a lot of explaination for the rise in offensive levels that Joe explains here. What’s more likely is that both players and hitters were using and that overall they benefited equally. The main rise in offensive levels was due to a lot of AAA-quality pitchers getting innings due to the double expansion. The players who shone most were either already generational or all-time talents (Bonds/Rodriguez) or sluggers in environments VERY favorable to their skills. Bonds played 38 games a year AT Colorado and AT Phoenix, huge HR environments, before the humidor. Sosa and McGwire played in the NL central, a division at that time full of HR-friendly parks (Miller, Great American, Minute Maid, summertime Wrigley). You didn’t see anyone in the AL West hit 60+ HR, regardless of talent, because they didn’t have the confluence of events (strength+bad pitching+offensive friendly parks).

But it is the home run records – first the season record, but ESPECIALLY the career record, assaulted by baseball players hated by the media and consequently by many fans – Bonds, and with the anticipation of Rodriguez (who was for most of his career on pace to hit 850 or 900 HRs) that drove the outrage that lead Congress to investigate and testing to be implemented.

It isn’t that PEDs aren’t bad for a lot of reasons listed here – bad social influences on minor league players who feel they have to do it to compete, long-term health effects, etc.

It’s that the reasons cited for PEDs being so bad likely had nothing to do with said PEDs, and had everything to do with assault on ‘sacred’ records by players who were rude to the media and covered like villians by the national press.

Witness the fact that most suspensions you see now are from pitchers. Starling Marte isn’t a power hitter. PED benefits aren’t about power and really have never been unless you were already about power. It just became a thing because of the incredible sanctity of the numbers 61 and 755, and the universal unpopularity of the players who challenged those numbers or were expected to do so.

No PEDs made Barry Bonds able to have the incredible plate discipline, batting eye and contact skills he kept late into his life. They don’t do that. They probably got him a lot more home runs instead of doubles, but they didn’t give him the ability to do what he did. He already had it because he was one of the 5 best players ever. And unlike most great players (and most baseball players), he was a flaming asshole to the media and fans most of the time, so people hated seeing him eclipse as popular a player as Hank Aaron.

The point isn’t that PEDs should be excused. It’s that the outrage stems from things that have little to do with them and largely forgives the whole demographic of players who probably benefitted the most – PITCHERS, especially ones who magically remained great until they were 40 years old or more.