Biogenesis Arbitrage: What’s Braun Without the Juice?
We can now say, with confidence and the backing of legal proceedings and pronouncements, that Ryan Braun did steroids. Those in yearly leagues have all said their curses dropped him — a good percentage of them won’t dip back into that well again, choosing to hold a grudge, or to just avoid the insecurity. But in keeper and dynasty leagues, the opportunity for arbitrage is here. Ryan Braun is available, and in a particularly desperate way in some of those leagues. But what will he look like without the juice?
Assuming he does quit the juice — not a safe assumption, as the arms race will continue, and the doctors on shady payrolls make good money searching for the next undetectable miracle drug — there have to be consequences. Some studies — like our friend Dan Wade’s piece at Sports Illustrated in 2011 — have had a hard time finding the steroid effect in the numbers. But any analysis like this that focuses on named players in the Mitchell Report, or players that have failed tests, this type of analysis has sample issues.
There’s the nigh-indisputable fact that many players have put up great numbers using steroids and have gotten away with it. So there are players on steroids on both sides. Also, using results allows luck to skew the results, especially with a sample of that size. Some of those steroid users just had bad years, and some of the non-steroid users had fluky great years. Third, there’s an issue of aging curves and selection bias in comparing year-to-year results ‘before’ and ‘after’ a player has been caught for steroids. Not only do we not know when they stopped or started, but we also have the normal aging process to account for, and then the fact that many players just didn’t have much of an ‘after’ sample once they were outed. Plus, steroids, at the very least, have to do some damage to the playing time component of aging curves — even if they do nothing for your production, they must allow you to recover faster and get back on the field.
I remain skeptical that steroids have no influence at all. Those sample issues — and Wade was well aware of them and did a great job trying to correct for some of them — just make me think that trying to find the users and use them as the data points in a study might be folly. I think I prefer a bio-mechanical approach, one that focuses more on the physics of the swing and what additional muscle mass might do.
Baseball Physicist Alan Nathan (okay, he might not put that first word on the title, but he loves baseball and applies his knowledge to the sport frequently, so I think it holds) has done some work on this. Let me spot-light some findings from this piece for the Baseball Research Journal in 2009:
With the additional assumption that half of the batter’s pre-steroid weight is muscle, [Physicist Robert] Tobin and I both agree that a 10% increase in muscle mass can lead to about a 3.8% increase in bat speed.
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By inspecting the distance of the landing point from the nearest fence, one can estimate that each additional foot of fly ball distance increases the home run probability by 4%. Combining that with the aerodynamics “rule of thumb” that each additional mph of batted ball speed increases the fly ball distance by 5.5 ft, along with the previously estimated mean increase of 3 mph in batted ball speed, and one arrives at a 66% increase in home run probability, a number even larger than Tobin’s estimate. Adair has carried out a similar analysis. Based on his detailed study of home run statistics, he estimates that each addition percent of fly ball distance increases home run probability by about 7%. Using 380 ft as the baseline home run distance, a 3 mph increase in batted ball speed leads to a 4.3% increase in batted ball distance and therefore a 30% increase in home run probability. Putting together all these independent analyses, I find that an increase in HRBiP in the range 30-70% is completely plausible
Let’s try this with the numbers at the extreme. Here are Ryan Braun’s home runs per ball in play numbers over his career:
| Year | HR/BiP |
|---|---|
| 2007 | 9.9% |
| 2008 | 7.6% |
| 2009 | 6.2% |
| 2010 | 4.8% |
| 2011 | 7.0% |
| 2012 | 8.6% |
| 2013 | 5.3% |
| sum | 7.1% |
Ryan Braun has hit seven percent of his balls in play over the fence for his career. He can expect that to decline anywhere from 30-70%. Yes, that’s a big range, but let’s describe the two extremes:
| Condition | PA | BiP | xHR/BiP |
|---|---|---|---|
| 30% decline | 700 | 511 | 28 |
| 600 | 438 | 24 | |
| 70% decline | 700 | 511 | 21 |
| 600 | 438 | 18 |
I put the 600 PA condition in because steroids might have helped him stay on the field longer, too. I’ll have to say that the 70% condition doesn’t pass my sniff test. That seems extreme. But the 30% decline? That fits my preconceived notions — I’ve been pencil-projecting him for a .280/25/10 season myself. Maybe that’s a little optimistic considering the 70% decline numbers, plus the fact that we haven’t added in aging and used his current-year stats to create a ‘real’ post-steroid projection.
Doesn’t matter what we think, though: the numbers suggest the downside for Braun without the juice is fairly immense. Even if we don’t think it could really be that bad.
With a phone full of pictures of pitchers' fingers, strange beers, and his two toddler sons, Eno Sarris can be found at the ballpark or a brewery most days. Read him here, writing about the A's or Giants at The Athletic, or about beer at October. Follow him on Twitter @enosarris if you can handle the sandwiches and inanity.
So trade him for Ellsbury in keeper?
Yes.
In my keeper league he was traded for Adrian Gonzalez pre suspension (but knowing it was coming) and then for Anthony Rizzo once the suspension was announced.
Someone in our dynasty league was able to trade Braun for Hanley Ramirez, Jay Bruce AND Ian Kinsler right before the suspension. Worst deal I’ve ever seen.
some problems with this analysis:
First off, %increase, which is what the phycicyst was calculating, is different than %decrease, which is what you calculated. increasing a 20 hr hitters HR/bip wont net as big a change as decreasing a 30 HR hitters hr/bip will, so the actual numbers in this article need to be fixed.
Next, this only considers one factor of making a hitter better. It ignores that the extra muscle could potentially affect your timing either negatively or positively, if it will make you hit more fly balls in the first place, or even any mental differences. just isolating one potential affect doesn’t give us the whole story.
Finally, to say this you need to be prepared to say that steroid users have experienced a wide range of luck. predicting such steep declines from people who stopped using steroids should in theory at least lead to some differences in results, like you mentioned, but when it didn’t you just chose to ignore the results entirely. Unless you want to say that many were still on steroids, then so far the results don’t agree with the theory.
Despite my criticism, I liked the article. I just don’t think it is at all possible to determine exactly how steroids affects baseball players. We may as well try though!
You’re right about the increase/decrease thing, recalculated.
As for the rest of it… I ignored it because I have no research in front of me that I want to rely on.
In the time it had taken me to find my password and sign in, you had it fixed. SimonSays well done!
fair point, just wanted to point out why this isn’t at all conclusive. As I said, it’s pretty much the best we can do with what we have
Interesting stuff. My impression was that it’s very difficult to isolate the impact of steroids, once you tally all the people who took them and didn’t improve. Interesting to hear the counterargument.
It’s difficult to isolate because MLB players aren’t taking part in a systematically administered and measured doping program. The East Germans did a ton of research on the effects of steroids and HGH on athletic performance and found that steroids definitely work. Since MLB players aren’t using an East German style comprehensive doping regimen, you would expect the performance improvements to be less extreme and less consistent.
http://sports.espn.go.com/extra/mma/news/story?id=5140483
Interesting.
My first thought is that this research was done in the late 60s and 70s. Perhaps since then, drugs have gotten more powerful and more consistent. I mean, medicine, fitness, biology and physiology have all advanced quite a bit since then.
so basically you can throw out most of these PED/Roid users’ stats?
I wouldn’t. The 30% decline category suggests you can throw a handful of homers out per year.
I was kinda being facetious on that one, but thanks for answering, Eno. <–feels special!
that said, I wonder how this changes things, even if that "30% decline" is accurate.
Using a few players as examples who have used steroids , how so we explain the current production of aging players like Big Papi, Bartolo Colon, Johnny Peralta and good seasons from everth cabrera and nelson cruz? They don’t appear to need steroids to have great seasons.
For all we know, they could all still be on a form of steroids.
We don’t know whether or not they are juicing, and no amount of drug testing (except maybe a hair analysis…maybe) will change that fact.
That being said, Big Papi’s resurgence is probably not the result of increased power. He tested positive for PED’s in 2003, and his peak years had a HR/FB over 20%. HIs HR/FB rate this year is 18%. His peak years had an ISO over 300; his ISO this year is 264 (right around his career average).
What has changed is his approach. Big Papi takes more swings outside of the zone and makes contact on those swings. He hits more ground balls and fewer fly balls as a result. By eye, he’s taking advantage of the shift and hitting more balls into the opposite field, resulting in a greater batting average and fewer strikeouts. This increase in batting average offsets the loss in power, resulting in a comparable wOBA to his peak years.
I certainly agree with the comment you made that an under-discussed part of PED use is the boost in ability to stay healthy and on the field that it gives players. There is too much focus on homeruns and not enough on games played.
I also think that there might not be the muscle mass relationship you talk about for many of the guys suspended today. When Bonds, Sosa, et al used PEDs they were using steroids to grow a ton of muscle (ie the increase in muscle mass was easy to see). The guys on this list, for the most part, aren’t all that muscular even following the PED use, so I dont know that expecting a 10% decrease in muscle and the drop in bat speed that goes with it is the best way to consider the impacts of the new wave of PEDs.
When Braun was busted the first time there was talk that what he was using was post-game testosterone that would disappear from the system by the morning (because the players know drug testing always happens in the afternoon). If true (and that is a big if) this suggests that the new wave of drug use is for healing and recovery rather than to build bulk. It might be that we should expect a 5-10% decrease in health/games played with little to no decrease in batted ball distances.
Yeah, to me, that’s an interesting question about this- what it is used for vs. what it actually DOES.
This. In my opinion, anyone who doubts that steroids improves athletic performance belongs in a padded room. But aren’t we talking about HGH here? My understanding there is that the consensus is much less certain. That it’s reasonable to expect recovery effects, but even there not as dramatically as with steroids. Anyone know what the reigning scholarly consensus is re HGH?
My understanding of HGH is that it builds immature muscle mass rather than increasing strength. From wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HGH_controversies),
“Some scientific articles have demonstrated that HGH supplementation does not significantly increase muscle strength or aerobic exercise capacity in healthy individuals”
The citation is relevant — “^ H Liu, DM Bravata, I Olkin et al. (May 2008). “Systematic review: the effects of growth hormone on athletic performance”. Annals of Internal Medicine 148 (10): 747–58. PMID 18347346.”
http://www.annals.org/cgi/pmidlookup?view=long&pmid=18347346
HGH is like others mentioned more important in recovery. It isn’t quite as directly anabolic as steroids. If you can heal and recover faster, your workouts can be more intense and less rest is needed and less break down/wear and tear occurs. It has a wide range of effects in the body that tend to favor lean muscle development as well. So it’s really an ideal drug because not only does it lead to increased strength gains but it also reduces the need for rest and the occurrence of injuries. And what is often overlooked is that every player at any given time has some nagging injury even if he is not on the DL and these affect performance as well.
Also it probably causes cancer. There is a family of dwarves in south america with a rare mutation where they don’t produce HGH and they never get cancer. There is another family of dwarves who make HGH but have a mutation in the receptor for HGH which makes them insensitive to it. Again they don’t get cancer. So we’ll see in 30 years or so if players pay more dearly than with suspensions.
Thank you very, very much, SC.
Eno,
Did you see Joe Sheehans Newsletter from yesterday? He looks at HR/FB rates going back to the 1980s, and can find nothing in them that would suggest a HR/steroid connection.
If steroids increased HR likelihood by 30-70%, it would show up in the data. How do you address that issue — that big of an effect would be clearly visible in the data (especially during the periods when 20-50% of players juiced, depending on how much you believe Canseco and other whistleblowers).
No I did not. How did he look at fly ball rates historically when we don’t really have those?
I mis-spoke (typed?).
He looked at HR/BiP, SLG/BiP, and ISO/BiP going back to 1993. I’ll quote from him here:
“There is no difference in what happens when a bat meets a baseball in a post-steroid-testing world than there was for most of the “steroid era”. 1995-98 and 2008-11 are indistinguishable from each other in terms of home runs on contact and slugging on contact and isolated power on contact. There’s no break in the record between 2003 and 2004, when testing with penalties began. There’s no break in the record between 2005 and 2006, when penalties were ramped up. (In fact, in both seasons when the Joint Drug Agreement changed, power on contact rose.) Last season, 2012, had the highest rate of home runs on contact since 2006, and the highest slugging on contact since 2009. The big lie of steroids — that they caused players to hit for more power in a way that distorted the statistical record — is put to rest by these numbers.”
— Joe Sheehan Newsletter, Aug 4, 2013
I don’t have the whole piece, but there was a big jump in HR/BIP in 1992-1993. I can’t get my mind around the problem that a non-zero change in muscle above the norm gives you a non-zero change in bat speed and therefore batted ball distance. I bet league-wide results are confounded by the fact that pitchers used too.
Eno,
There was a big jump in 1986-1987 as well. And a jump between 2011-2012, when testing was fully implemented.
Joe’s argument, which I think is really well laid out, is that there is no statistical argument that the steroid era was coincident with increase in HR,ISO, or SLG rates.
I agree that it’s possible pitching was helped by steroids, and could have countered some of the effects. However, what I reject is the notion that steroids caused the big homer years, which is a tired trope repeated by many sportswriters.
I’m trying to avoid the inductive fallacy of “Steroids make you stronger” -> “Steroids increase homers”. It’s a complicated issue, but starting from a preconceived belief that Steroids = Muscles = Stronger = Taters isn’t how I try to think.
I don’t want to think that way either, but to me baseball is a fascinating interplay of athleticism and learned skills. Tools and skills if you will. I’ve found evidence that your power peaks at 25, and we’ve seen that fastball velocity peaks that early or earlier. These things seem like athletic tools. Then there are the learned skills — plate discipline, pitching sequencing and mix — that help us stave off the athletic decline. All of this is theory, but my point is this: athleticism is still part of the game, and athleticism is improved by steroid use. Baseball manages to avoid having obvious markers (like, say, the times in the 40-yard dash since steroids became a thing) because of this interplay between tools and and skills, but I cannot just wipe it away and say “no effect.”
Eno,
I think we’re pretty much on the same page. Appreciate you taking the time to respond.
I’ll sum up my feelings by saying this: “If steroids have an effect on baseball performance, we don’t know what it is or how to quantify it.”
Of course we know what the effects are. They build strength in hitters, pitchers, fielders and runners, and they help all the aforementioned in muscle recovery. Using ballplayers are stronger and have less muscle fatigue than equally gifted and equally hardworking ballplayers who aren’t using. Oh, and they have smaller testicles, too.
The jump from 1992 to 1993 could be explained by expansion, right?
Richie – how much strength do steroids add? Does it vary by player or body type, or conditioning level? Is it fast twitch, or slow twitch? Do different types of steroids have different effects, or trade offs?
Then there is the issue of translating increased strength to performance. There is a big list of JDA violating hitters who don’t look or hit like McGwire.
Is it strength, or fatigue? Does the rumored increased long term injury rate of steroids outweigh short term performance gains?
I know that steroids are supposed to increase muscle growth, but beyond that, I am not sure things are clear at all.
(For the record, I don’t know the answer to any of these questions. I just think those answers will shape how I think of the steroid issue; until I know more, I’m reserving judgement.)
“Richie – how much strength do steroids add? Does it vary by player or body type, or conditioning level? Is it fast twitch, or slow twitch? Do different types of steroids have different effects, or trade offs?”
Steroids will add strength according to how much work you follow them up with. That’s primarily what they enable. Given the illegality of their non-medicinal use, we have no way of knowing how they vary by body type. I’m guessing the East Germans only used them on their top athletes, and I don’t know how accessible their research findings are anyway. Ben Johnson is the (most) famous example of it helping a ‘speed’ athlete, but even sprinters are helped by power, too. So I don’t know that it has ‘fast twitch’ effects, nor that that’s all that germane an issue anyway. Since all steroids are non-medicinally illegal, I think the only sporting application of different kinds is to design them so they’re (temporarily) nondetectable.
“Then there is the issue of translating increased strength to performance. There is a big list of JDA violating hitters who don’t look or hit like McGwire.”
Every high school baseball team hits the weight room, hard. Stength helps, a lot. Not like football a lot, but still a lot. I think Canseco nailed this one. They’ll turn good performers like him and McGwire and Gagne into great performers, they’ll turn already-great performers like Bonds and Clemens into uber-performers, they’ll turn average major leaguers like Bret Boone into good ones, they’ll turn Triple A guys into fringe major leaguers, and so on. They’d make me better at softball.
“Is it strength, or fatigue? Does the rumored increased long term injury rate of steroids outweigh short term performance gains?” Scholarly Consensus up above could answer this much surer, but sounds to me like more so it just wipes out fatigue. Which then enables you to really work your heinie off and so build up muscle. With some anabolic aid, of course. As to long-term/short-term, maybe ask McGwire for his opinion? Given how he just injury flamed-out at the end? Maybe this is something the East German research could really shed light on.
Regarding “fast twitch” muscles, those are what we lose as we age, including athletes. Given that steroids really, really helped older ballplayers stave off Father Time, that anecdotally suggests they likely must’ve helped with those fast twitch ones.
Im not doubting it improves athletic performance but how does it differ from creatine and protein shakes used to increase stamina at the gym?
Well, those don’t shrink your testicles, for one thing. Nor will a doctor wean you off those like he will so do very, very quickly in the medical event that he prescribes a steroid. But then, I imagine you knew all that and are asking the question anyway.
You’re pretty obsessed with the testicle thing. Very odd that you bring it up over and over while it has absolutely nothing to do with the issue at hand. You may want to talk to some kind of doctor about that.
Nah, it just happened to come up in two nearby answers. About how it affects ballplayers first one, then how it’s different from substances that we have no particular reason to suspect are harmful, and thus are legal.
It’s part of Will Carroll’s credo on illegal PEDs, that a greater willingness to shrink your testicles should not serve as a competitive advantage for professional athletes. Nor, as Scholarly Consensus mentions up above, should a greater willingness to risk cancer serve so. JMO
Perhaps the strongest case fot the enhancement of power stats by drugs is the latter part of Barry Bonds’ career . At an age when players are declining or have already declined to the point where they are not even acceptable major leaguers anymore ,Bonds’ power numbers were massively better than anything he had done during what would normally be considered his peak years . I wonder what a normal age adjusted and drug free adjusted analysis of Bonds’ 73 HR season at age 37 would be ? The most HR Bonds hit in a season during his prime was 46 in his age 29 season . He did not come close to that before or after until his age 36 season when he hit 49 ,then 46 at 38,45 at 39,and 45 at 40 .
If that’s the strongest case for enhancement of power stats, I’d say there isn’t much of a case. The flaws that I see:
1) one data point does not prove the hypothesis
2) your “analysis” neglects to adjust for context
3) it’s a leap to say, “well, aging curves look like this, and since his didn’t look like this, he was enhanced by steroids.” Aging curves are a very crude tool to roughly estimate declines, they aren’t very good at proving steroids were the cause.
Travis ,it is a fact that Bonds used steroids . I am not just looking at an extreme outlier to the aging curve of baseball players ,in fact such an extreme outlier that he is unique ,and saying that he must have been using steroids . Since we know that Bonds did use steroids ,does it make more sense to assume that steroids must have enhanced his performance ,or to ignore the fact that he used steroids and assume that Barry Bonds alone of every human being who ever played in MLB possed abnormal genetics that made his physical performance in his age 36 through 40 seasons far exceed anything he had ever done before ?
You realize there isn’t a space before punctuation marks, right?
Of course he’s a unique, extreme outlier, he’s Barry Bonds.
dirck,
I appreciate your response. I’m just unwilling to jump the gap between “Bonds used steroids” and “steroids increased his performance to superhuman levels during a period when most players are getting worse”.
It’s the “assume” that I have issue with more than anything else. I prefer real evidence, and in the absence of that, I reserve judgement.
possessed abnormal genetics ,that should read
My understanding is that your body doesn’t really lose muscle if you continue using the muscle, let’s say I can lift 100 lbs, and I gain muscle and can lift 200 lbs. Even if steroids helped me increase my lifting ability by 100% in this absurd easy numbers example, I still HAVE the muscle I picked up. My understanding is that I shouldn’t LOSE any of that ability if I continue on the same workout routine, steroids helped me get to a certain level, I shouldn’t lose that ability when I go off of the drug. So if (and I think this is sketchy) Braun gained home runs by being on steroids, my understanding is that going off of them shouldn’t make him LOSE home runs, because he still maintains the muscle mass he built up by using them. Steroids would increase muscle mass and lifting ability, but if you use the new muscle mass the same way you shouldn’t return to the way you were before when you go off them.
People I’ve known who used steroids said upon stopping they lost their ability to maintain that same workout routine. The ‘roids helped them lift and lift and lift.
Surprising to me, but ok. I’d like to actually see a summary of the academic work on this, but I suspect there might not be any due to ethical constraints in actually studying steroid use.
Cool story, bro.
How many dongs did those guys hit in MLB before and after?
Nobody knows. We don’t know for any player when steroid use started, when it stopped, or how that time frame relates precisely to their individual aging curve. Obviously you ask the methodologically right question, but when our data set doesn’t even know when “before” or “after” is then we can’t really do that study.
This site http://steroids-and-baseball.com/actual-effects.shtml (see bear hunter #2) points out some of the flaws in the assumptions related to the assumed increased muscle mass of 10% = 30-70% increase in HrBip.
A big issue they say is that steroids impact upper body muscles than lower/core muscles, which are actually the ones providing power.
Why would you use steroids only to improve your upper body muscles?
Well, to answer your actual question, for the same reason most users actually use: aesthetics.
Athletically, Andy is somewhat right and a bit misleading. Yes, ‘roids do accomplish more for the upper body, but also help some from the waist down, too. Yes, the core and lower muscles provide more of your power, but the upper ones still help some, too.
Reading that page, I didn’t understand why either (my question was it a function of people tending to focus on upper body muscles when taking steroids or that steroids didn’t help lower body muscles as much). The website points to the latter.
Didn’t try to be misleading but site says power is generated primarily by your core/lower body muscles.
The considerable energy . . . transferred to the bat . . . is generated largely by the large muscles of the thighs and torso. The arms and hands serve mainly to transfer the energy of the body’s rotational and transverse motions to the bat and add little extra energy to the bat. [Footnoted with:] In particular, the contribution of the hands and wrists to the energy of the bat is almost negligible.
http://steroids-and-baseball.com/medical-effects.shtml#DISTRIBUTION
Kochakian discovered early in his experiments that not all skeletal muscle responds to anabolic steroids equally. When he administered anabolic steroids to androgen-deficient guinea pigs, he found the predominant effect to be on upper-body muscles in the region of the shoulder girdle. . . . what Kochakian observed is consistent with the stereotypical body shape of normally virilized men . . . . In a study with a small number of men receiving testosterone or nandrolone injections for six weeks, we also found the main increases in body circumference in the shoulders and chest (Friedl, Dettori, Hannan, Patience, & Plymate, 1991).
Androgen receptors are present in skeletal muscle of every mammalian species (Sar et al., 1990; Takeda et al., 1990). Levels of expression differ from muscle bed to muscle bed in a manner consistent with reported AAS effects on muscle strength in different tasks. For example, human muscle beds differ from each other, with expression higher in the muscles of the neck and chest girdle, in comparison to the limbs (Kadi et al., 2000).
That Walker guy doesn’t argue that steroids do nothing, just that there is no effect on hitting baseballs well.
I think one thing people are really missing in the Braun story is that he failed his test before the 2011 playoffs. His 2012 numbers? A career year at .319/.391/.595 with 30 steals and a career high 41 HR.
One would think if he could get through 2012 either without juicing or without getting caught, that somebody finding some paper with his name on it and actually suspending him isn’t going to change that much.
I’d just take his ZiPS ROS line and go with that. He’s still going to be top 10 or even top 5 next year, depending on how much he steals.
If PEDs can allow for that large of an increase in bat speed, then we should be applying the impact to all of Braun’s numbers (not just HRs). His contact skills will likely suffer greatly from such a large drop in bat speed and its conceivable that his BABIP will settle in at a rate much lower than his career average without the juice.
I wish there were a way to do a double-blind study using placebos and PEDs, with the top sluggers in the MLB as subjects. I’m pretty sure a lot of the enhanced performance is mental — not all, of course, but a fair amount. MLB players, like anyone, want to feel like they have an ace up their sleeve — or, as Tehol Beddict might say, a shaved knuckle in the hole. Point being, where we perceive an advantage, an advantage is more likely to manifest. Of course, hitting the ball an extra 50 feet never hurt one’s homerun chances.