The media has been hounding Roger Clemens ever since the steroid scandal was unleashed by Jose Canseco. His book, “Juiced” shed light on the widespread abuse of steroids and other performance enhancing substances around Major League Baseball. Can you really blame the media for grilling Clemens relentlessly? He is the poster child of the most important franchise in major league baseball and a spokesperson against steroids. The worst part is that it seems like everyone knows Clemens was on something besides him. Never before has a major league pitcher peaked near the end of their career. So just how do performance enhancing substances help baseball players?
PEDs and Hitting
Many people around baseball like to make the argument that steroids didn’t help Barry Bonds make contact while batting so it wasn’t cheating. They are completely wrong and couldn’t be any further from the truth. First off, using steroids results in obvious muscle growth. Increased muscle naturally increases a hitter’s batspeed. When this happens a major league hitter can track the ball longer in the zone since his increased batspeed allows him to wait longer. Secondly, that same hitter can effectively own the inner half of the plate with increased batspeed. Of course his hand eye coordination hasn’t gotten any better, but everything else has. Flares turn into base-hits and warning track contact turns into homeruns – did I mention an increase in footspeed on the base paths. Performance enhancing drugs also allow baseball players to recover faster which is very important over a long season. The talent in baseball at the major league level is so tight that even the smallest of edges can make a huge difference.
PEDs and Pitching
We all probably know by now the harmful long term affects of performance enhancing drugs, but what about the positive short term effects for pitchers? Well for starters, pitchers will see an immediate jump in velocity and stamina over the course of a game and season. They will be able to carry an increased peak velocity deeper into games. Obviously, faster pitches are harder to hit and increased endurance means peak performance at later stages of a baseball game. Pitchers tend to give up most of their runs in late innings when their legs get tired. With performance enhancing drugs like HGH and steroids they can now peak in the later innings. This is a huge advantage since pitching depth can sometimes be limited.
The Overall Picture
Every level you move up in baseball obviously results in higher level talent. The entire minor league system is nothing but a large filtering process, seperating the talented players from the average and below average players. The gap between a superstar and an average player is not as big as you might think. A solid Triple AAA player and big league player have an even smaller gap. Players are constantly searching for that little edge to separate them from the next guy trying to take their spot. Banned substances gave most players that small edge they were looking for.
Widespread Use
Professional sports are obviously extremely competitive by nature. Players began turning to PEDs to seperate themselves from everyone else. When better performance resulted other players took notice and began using banned substances as well. A “tipping point” resulted when players realized they had to take something just to keep up with the playing field. Players who normally wouldn’t touch banned substances found themselves involved because they had to.
The next few years of baseball will be interesting to watch. There has already been a noticeable decline in power numbers like homeruns and slugging percentage. I suspect batting average and most other offensive statistics will catch up soon. As we recently have seen, Manny Ramierez tested positive for an illegal substance – a female fertility drug human chorionic gonadotropin. He was taking it to jump start his natural production of testosterone.
“It could be that a player used it because he used steroids and went cold turkey and needed hCG to get his levels (testosterone) back to normal. I had to use it when I quit steroids cold turkey. I had to go to a doctor to get it and get my levels back.” – Jose Canseco
Are people trying to get more clever about masking agents , designer steroids and HGH? It sure would appear that way. The future of baseball’s drug problem remains unclear, although I suspect Manny is just the tip of the iceberg of players still using performance enhancing drugs. Players are turning to HGH and other drugs that can escape the drug testing radar.
Unfortunately, the players named in the Mitchel report have ruined the game and probably don’t belong in the Hall of Fame. It is completely unfair to the players of older generations with honest careers. Lastly, I have that much more respect for Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and Pedro Martinez who had to pitch through some of the most difficult “juiced up” competition in the history of baseball.
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