[sumo] [spoilers]Takanohana and steroid abuse

[Scott M. Kahn]

Josh,

Your latest reply was a very well composed and researched piece. 
There was no reason to preceed that reply with others containing
the tone that you used.  This mailing list can, and I hope will be
civil where debates are allowed and factual corrections made
without presuming others are deliberately misinforming the mailing
list.

As for home runs being a marker of steroid use, you must be familiar
with the research of Tufts University physicist, Roger Tobin.  He
published a paper, "On the Potential of a Chemical Bonds: Possible
Effects of Steroids on Home Run Production in Baseball," in the
American Journal of Physics.  I don't have the article in front of
me, but if I remember its summary, the increased muscle mass allows
a batter to swing with more speed or force, equating to hittling the
ball farther.

And, I would submit that the overall baseball statistics you relate
are not appropriately controled.  One would have to look, not at
the entire population, but specifically at individual batters
before and after being juiced, going up against the same pitchers. 
Perhaps the numbers should be crunched to measure the number of
power hitters, and the relative number of home runs of those power
hitters before and after the juicing started.

Sukubidubidu





Quoting Joshua Maciel <joshua.maciel at gmail.com>:

> No, I've chosen to actually speak with facts rather than idle
> speculation
> with no statistical/factual grounding.
>
> Up until 2002 by the source I earlier posted, steroids were a
> minor topic in
> regards to baseball, if at all. Only in recent years has it
> really exploded
> to the degree it was. There was very little concern/interest in
> the 'steroid
> era' until 2002.
>
> Furthermore, the correlation between the amount of home runs in
> the past
> year, and the home runs in the current year has an r-squared of
> 0.3 -- not
> so lofty correlation. Since 1996 the greatest amount of home runs
> was in
> 2000, with approximately 3% of all plate appearances resulting in
> a home
> run. 1999, 2001, 2004, and 2006 -- after steroid testing mind you
> -- were
> very close at over 2.9% of all plate appearances.
>
> In fact, the biggest correlation with run scoring is base on
> balls, with a
> correlation over 80% over the time period, while home runs only
> have a 52%
> correlation. For counting stats at least. When you get deeper
> into it, OBP
> shows a 95% (!!!) correlation with run scoring.
>
> The point here is that home runs -- while visible -- were not the
> source of
> the increase in baseball skill, or what's perceived as the high
> run-scoring
> 'juiced' era. To suggest that the home runs were the sole change,
> or even
> the primary vector for change wouldn't match the numbers.
>
> Armchair critics like you say "Hey, here's this study, it says
> the ball's
> the same -- it must be the players" because the media parrots it
> constantly.
> Yet the study compares two high scoring/high homerun years (1999
> and 2000),
> and doesn't mention anything about how those balls were stored
> before games.
>
> As we all know, storing the balls in a humidor reduces offense as
> evidenced
> by Coors field. It is quite possible that the reverse was done
> during the
> post-strike era.
>
> But even more simple would be that expansion diluted the talent
> pool for
> pitchers, allowing greater variation in the performance of the
> best and
> worst players, which would be expected.
>
> Perhaps you should stop being condescending, and actually look at
> the wealth
> of facts available before accusing athletes of steroids on the
> basis of
> hearsay, assumption and misinformation.
>
> - Josh
>
>