That’s the thing though: most people don’t understand the difference. They assume that steroids can turn
anybody into power-hitting monsters that can check-swing home runs and that the accomplishments of Bonds, A-Rod, et al. are by virtue of steroids, not enhanced (by however much) by it. That’s not the case. Certain players are going to derive more of a
power benefit from such usage; these are the players that are generally flawless hitters to begin with. Which I guess raises the question as to
why they needed them in the first place, which I further guess assumes that there is a much greater benefit elsewhere.*
On a similar tangent Keith Law,
in his latest chat makes the claim that PEDs are nothing more than placebo-effect nonsense:
Bill (Chicago): If steroid/HGH provides, as you claim, "negligible" benefits, then why do athletes continue to take chances by using them? And do you feel that Barry Bonds hitting 73 HRs compared to what he would have hit sans 'roids is "negligible"...
Keith Law: This is easily one of the stupidest arguments made in favor of steroid usage. Athletes use steroids because they BELIEVE they will help. People take echinacea because they think it will cure colds, despite copious evidence that it does nothing. That "immune system booster" Airborne is useless, yet it's sold in every drugstore in the country and has to be racking up millions in sales ... even though it's a vitamin C megadose which can actually reduce your immune system's ability to fight off an infection. Athletes who take steroids are just as dumb as people who take Airborne or echinacea or who buy into Ponzi schemes, and the fact that there are people who do these things doesn't make doing those things smart.
I don’t necessarily buy that (there have been numerous studies outside the realm of baseball, and sports for that matter, that have shown these PEDs promote recovery time and increase power) but he does bring up a good point: there has been no test (that I know of, at least) that addresses placebo effects. One of the most important research criteria for a drug’s effectiveness is weighing it against placebos.
While we know what steroids do – increase muscle mass, speed up recovery time – there has yet to be any kind of definitive study on
how they affect performance in baseball. We can approximate: for hitters steroids increase fast-twitch muscle mass, which theoretically increases power, which then theoretically increase swing momentum; for pitchers it promotes faster muscle recovery and sustained peaks, which would theoretically improve endurance over the course of the season and prevent fatigue. Steroids can also be compared to tests from other substances that create similar effects but, in the end, most are just approximations based on what we know outside the sport.
That’s what made the Bat Speed (the training group, not the action itself) study so important; it was one of the first studies that actually set out to determine the tangible benefits for baseball players; it studied the effects of increased muscle mass on the kinesiology of hitters. (They came to the conclusion that swing mechanics are the driving factor in successful hitting, not swing momentum.)
* Not to go all Joe Pos parenthetical on you, but it doesn’t make sense if power were the primary benefit of taking a banned PED; there are many legal (or, better, undetectable illegal) supplements that can achieve the same results, with anabolic ratings within +/- 5 of the banned substances being tested for. It doesn’t make much sense for players to willing put themselves in a position to be easily caught if for something they could achieve through other, less impugning means.
