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Ok. Then it's on people in your camp to a) quantify the impact of *specific* forms of cheating, b) ensuring that you're not painting with too fine nor too broad
by jghn 1y ago
Ok. Then it's on people in your camp to a) quantify the impact of *specific* forms of cheating, b) ensuring that you're not painting with too fine nor too broad a brush.
For instance, it was understood by those in the uhhh let's call it "sports nutrition" circles at the time that as a class pitchers were benefiting more overall than batters from the chemical enhancement options of that era. But yet the focus was on the home run hitter outliers. Why?
And let's also not forget that the poster children of the anti-steroid brigade are players who would have likely already been all time greats. Anyone who thinks that a Nobody became a HoFer is deluding themselves. Further: who had more to gain? The already great talent, or the marginal AAAA player who was just looking for an edge to make a team out of spring training?
My point here is that views like you're espousing are too black & white, and too narrowly applied. There's *way* too much noise to sort it all out. None of the household names of "the steroid era" were doing anything different than most of the other players. They were just already great.
- jgalt212 1y ago> Ok. Then it's on people in your camp to a) quantify the impact of specific forms of cheating, b) ensuring that you're not painting with too fine nor too broad a brush. That's exactly what I proposed above. I didn't say I was right. I proposed a methodology to say that I'm right (or wrong). > Statistical outlier analysis of different time periods would help settle this matter.
- jghn 1y agoSure, but it doesn't really. Or at least I don't see how it's possible to do it correctly. Such an analysis would need to: a) prove that such outliers are caused by cheating, b) prove *which* form of cheating led to those outliers, c) prove that each individual outlier *was* taking part in that form of cheating, etc. And even then all that manages to capture are outliers. It doesn't capture the hordes of players who weren't outliers, rather they were only in the league because they were using whatever form of cheating to help make the cut. In other words, the strong anti-cheating stances when applied to historical players is just as handwavey as the let it go philosophy I espoused earlier.
- jgalt212 1y agoGiven the bars you like to set, I'm sure you remain unconvinced the earth is round or cigarette smoking causes cancer.