2003 Revisited- Did Steroids have an Effect?

Recently, as I’m sure everyone out there is aware, David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez were leaked as testing positive for PEDs during the 2003 season. First of all, this post is not speculating about whether or not what they did was illegal, or talking about what drugs they took; there is no way to answer either question at this point. What I’m trying to do is to compare that “tainted” 2003 season to the current one, and see if there is any statistical difference between the two seasons. Then, I can take a fairly objective view over whether or not the PEDs had any relative effect on their performance.

Manny Ramirez	2003	2009
OBA	0.427	0.437
OPS	1.014	1.029
wOBA	0.421	0.427
ISO	0.262	0.282

For Manny, his numbers are only better in this PED-less season, and in fact, he’s hitting for more power, as his ISO has jumped from .262 to .282. Take what you will from a fairly small sample size this year, but he did not seem to achieve any sort of large spike in performance from taking whatever PED he took.

David Ortiz	2003	2009	Jun-09
OBA	0.369	0.316	0.409
OPS	0.961	0.748	1.062
wOBA	0.400	0.320
ISO	0.304	0.202	0.333

David Ortiz is a much more interesting case. Overall, he has definitely seen a precipitous drop in his performance. But, if he truly had lost all his ability since stopping taking steroids before this year, how would he have produced a month such as June? His overall decline could easily be attributed to the aging slugger factor (not a scientific term), and his hot streak would not be out of place if he is simply aging in a more typical way than say, Manny Ramirez. For Ortiz, PED use is more plausible, but still is not the only explanation. Two months of poor play is, in my opinion, not enough to prove that steroids are the reason why Ortiz, Ramirez, and countless others played awesome baseball starting in the late 90s.

Alex Rodriguez	2003	2009
OBA	0.396	0.393
OPS	0.995	0.912
wOBA	0.420	0.395
ISO	0.301	0.258
BABIP	0.309	0.263
Career BABIP		0.325

The other big name recently nailed to the 2003 list is Alex Rodriguez, who has had a very interesting year this year. His power has been slightly down, but that is most likely due to his taking more walks, and hitting slightly more ground balls than in years past (16.7% walks to career avg of 11.3%, 44.2% GB to career avg 41.8% GB). The reason why his OPS and BA are so down is because of his quite unlucky BABIP (batting avg on balls in play), which is about 60 points below his career average, and is not something that Alex Rodriguez can control. He is very much the same hitter he was in 2003, even though in 2003, he was 28, and in his supposed prime. Once again, as in the Manny case, I see no evidence to suggest that steroids taint his accomplishments.

Obviously, this is only three players, two of whom are indisputably among the best hitters of this generation, and one who is hanging out on the level below. And, as my analysis shows, Manny and A-Rod are no different on steroids than off them, which leads to my point: there should not be an asterisk placed next to any record that anyone from the “Steroid” Era achieves. There certainly may be outliers that make you scratch your head, such as Brady Anderson’s 50 HR season, but, in my opinion, steroids have had a much smaller effect on the game than those from ESPN and the like would have you believe.