More websites are covering Eric Walker’s Steroids and Baseball website that we discussed last week, including the New York Times. Walker suggests there is “no evidence” that anabolic steroids have increased home run hitting. He points to the power factor statistics to support his claims. Most baseball fans have never heard of Eric Walker; fortunately the NY Times gives us some insight:
Walker was a National Public Radio correspondent in the early 1980s when he began filling the San Francisco airwaves with his theories regarding baseball — specifically, that on-base percentage was undervalued, fielding was misunderstood and power ruled all. One increasingly intrigued listener was Sandy Alderson, then a young Athletics executive, who soon hired Walker as a team consultant and with him devised the Oakland philosophy now called Moneyball.
As Walker’s website details, the increase in baseball’s power factor has occurred gradually over the past 100 years with only two significant jumps:
Walker found two substantial and essentially permanent jumps. First was the 1920s, because of the introduction of a livelier ball and the sport’s Babe Ruth-inspired embrace of slugging. The second was in 1993 and 1994, when P.F. suddenly leapt 7 percent to about 1.6, where it has since settled. Walker contends that such a jump is far more indicative of a change made to the ball — which Major League Baseball has long denied — than a steroid power boost, which would have produced an effect far more gradual as the decade progressed.
Thus continues the debate of the effects of steroids on baseball statistics.
Source: New York Times
About the author
Millard writes about anabolic steroids and performance enhancing drugs and their use and impact in sport and society. He discusses the medical and non-medical uses of anabolic-androgenic steroids while advocating a harm reduction approach to steroid education.
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