The "Steroid Myth" and it's Impact on Home Runs and Stolen Bases

In March of 2004, with baseball implementing it's drug policy, sports talk shows were dominated with talk of who was going to get caught?  What were the impacts going to see?  Would there be a decrease in HRs?  Would there be an increase in SBs as managers would resort to playing "small ball" as a way to manufacture runs?  Would players switch from one performance enhancing drug to another to stay a step ahead of the testing?  Would there be any change at all?

Should fantasy owners adjust their draft strategies in order to combat the new drug testing era?  What impact would this have on the value of players?

In order to take a look at these questions and some others, I have reviewed sets of data from different time periods.  These first set of time periods I reviewed stats was for was 2001 through 2004 and 2005 though 2008.  I included 2004 into the first set of data, as the testing was announced in March and any players who may have been using performing enhancers would have most likely still impacted the current season's performance.  This is open to debate, but the numbers remained in line with the previous three years average.  Also to note, the 2008 season is underway as I write this.  Most teams have completed an average of 119 games.  At roughly 75% into the season, projecting the stats for the remainder of the season seems reasonable.

Here is a summary of the stats for the last eight years.

4 Year Breakdowns

Looking at the total HRs hit, during '01-'04, there was a total of 21,175 HRs vs. 20,248 which were hit from '05-'08.  The difference of 927 long balls represents a drop off of 4.6%.  

The number of stolen bases increased 0.9%, going from 11,015 up 99 to 11,114.  This small increase, less than 1%, would indicate no significance.  The total number of stolen base attemps dropped 3.9%, down from 15,937 to 15,339 - a difference of 598.

The other stat which I broke down was Slugging Percentage.  Surely, this would drop off, right?  Afterall, if balls aren't going over the fences, the player would be limited to a double in most cases, assuming the ball wasn't caught for an out.  During the '01-'04 season, the Slg was .4233.  In '05-'08, the Slg dropped to .4220, a decrease of 0.3%  LESS THAN HALF A PERCENTAGE???  

After reviewing HR, SB and Slg for the two four year time periods, there would seem to be a small drop off in HR's (down 4.6%) and basically flat SB and Slg totals.

Does this mean after all the talk of game-changing, performance enhancing drugs, there has been no difference?  If you look at the numbers from these time periods, it would seem so...

...however, a futher breakdown of the 2001-2008 seasons into 2 year segments might suggest otherwise.

Taking a look at the two year segments, you will see a much different look at HR's, as well as SB's and SBA's.

As you can see from the table above, the HR totals remained fairly constant in each of the first three subsets, followed by a drop off in 2007-2008, as the summary below shows.  There were 813 more HR's hit in 03-04 than in 07-08.  Can the 8.3% droppoff in HR's be attributed to the impact of the MLB drug policy?  It is something that is worth considering, HR totals drop.

Perhaps, more interesting than the drop off in HR's is the increase in SB's.  An interesting occurrence seems to happen when looking at the SB totals.  In 01-02, MLB recorded more SB's than any of the other 2 year segments.  This seems to run opposite of the "sit back and wait for the 3 Run HR" philosophy of the PED ERA.  This was followed by a dropoff of 13.3% during 03-04.  When looking at 03-04 SB totals, and comparing to 07-08, you will see an increase of 10.8% - a figure of significance, as it indicates a return to SB's.  Additionally, the success rate has increased each year up from 68.5% in 01-02 to 74% in 07-08. How does this impact fantasy teams?

With the dropoff in HR's and the increase in SB's, it changes the overall value of every HR and every SB.  It depends on each league, how much, but the bottom line is, if you have more of something, it instantly becomes less rare and the impact of each is decreased.  For example, say in 2004, it took 300 HR and 200 RBI to lead you league in each category.  Based on the  HR decrease from the end of 2004 until the end of 2008 of 8.3%, it can be reasonably expected that it would take roughly 276 HR's to lead your league in HR's.  The decrease, obviously leaves less on the board to add to your team total. meaning the impact of a player's total is now larger than it previously was.  If you have Player A and he hits 40 HR's in 2004, that would equate to 13.3% of your league leading 300 HR's, leaving you with 260 of the 300 left to get from the remainder of your team.  Fast forward to 2008.  Now if Player A hits 40 HR's, that would be 14.5% of your league leading 276 HR's, leaving your team with 236 of the 276 HR's left to get from the remainder of your team.

Conversley, if you have 200 SB's lead the league in 2004, an increase in 10.7% of SB's, would theoretically mean you would need 221 SB's to lead your league.  So, if Player B steals 40 bases of the league leading 200, in 2004, Player B would account for 20% of the total.  If the same player steals 40 bases again in 2008, he would account for 18.1% of the 221 SB's needed to lead the league.  This means the player would have LESS impact on the overall SB point total for his team.

The player who hits 40 HR's has an increase in value, while the player who steals 40 bases, now has less of an impact on the overall points won in the SB category.

It may mean it's time to reconsider some of those early round choices!