Joe Sheehan is making sense on PEDs:
“The Amphetamine Era”
There have been 23 seasons since 1901 in which one player has stolen at least 80 bases. Eighteen of those (78%) occurred from 1962 through 1988 ... Using the same “logic” that underpins the idea that steroids caused a bunch of home runs and caused a bunch of 60-homer seasons leads to the conclusion that amphetamines caused a bunch of stolen bases and a bunch of 80-steal seasons.
[snip]
There were 40 300-inning [pitcher] seasons from 1931-1960. There were 37 from 1971-1980. There has not been one since then ... The amphetamine era featured just as many statistical anomalies as did the steroid era, but there was no connection between the two reported. No one cared. Why that is the case is a topic for a book, I’d imagine, but you cannot defend the idea that steroids alone fundamentally changed the game’s statistics in a way that the previous generation’s drug of choice didn’t.
That’s from Joe Sheehan’s newsletter, and there’s a lot more. If you subscribe to just one baseball-themed email newsletter in 2013, make it Joe’s.
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