Reese Kaplan -- A Fresh Look at Steroid Enhanced Careers

We always try to write original copy here, but no one is above getting inspired by stories provided elsewhere so long as proper credit is given.  ESPN did a recent article on the Hall of Fame campaigns in their final traditional year for both Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens.  

What caught my eye was not the usual harangue about PEDs and the way in which they artificially inflated these two players' results.  No one will dispute that and they have both gone to court as a result of their unethical and impermissible behavior.  

No, the real thing that caught my eye was the fact that they cited Major League Baseball's endorsed system for creating projections of performance based upon past history.  The future results are an extrapolation of what has been done and does not contain provisions for syringe-based enhancements to the final numbers produced.  

For those of you not fully familiar, the Zymborski Projection Systems (better known as ZiPs) was created by the similarly spelled Dan Szymborski when he was working almost 20 years ago at the Baseball Think Factory.  It is rooted in formal mathematics and has been surprisingly accurate in the prediction of where the players will finish at the end of future years.  It also accounts for aging and diminished production.  It is there that the numbers became really eye opening.

Right now if you look at the back of Bonds' baseball card you are stunned by the magnitude of his offensive output.  By his own admission he began getting the PEDs from the Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative (BALCO) in the late 90s.  Take a look at his career output and you will see he was a highly skilled and effective player hitting 30-40 HRs per season and driving in 90+ RBIs.  

Then came the careful and regular application of his chosen PEDs and the annual 162 game average jumped to 52 HRs with RBIs jumping welll into the triple digits.  However, the equally surprising uptick in batting average was enormous.  He went from .288 to .322 as he hit up to age 42.  Obviously these results were not due to what he was solely doing in the gymnasium.  

Roger Clemens was just as stunning.  No one will dispute his ability as a top notch starting pitcher who had already won five Cy Young Awards based upon his natural talents.  It was when he went from the Toronto Blue Jays to his first year in Yankee Stadium that he stumbled for the first time in his career.  

His Yankee debut season was not what they'd expected from Clemens.  He finished that 1999 season with a 14-10 record and a 4.60 ERA.  At age 36 it certainly appeared as if he was hitting the twilight of his illustrious career.

Like fellow Hall of Fame candidate Bonds, Clemens also started on the syringe in the late 1990s and the results were pretty remarkable.  In 2000 he improved to a winning record of 13-8 with a reduced 3.70 ERA.  Everyone surely remembers what the steroids did to his temper during the infamous bat throwing incident with Mike Piazza in the World Series.  

The following season at age 38 he went 20-3 with a 3.51 ERA and won his six Cy Young Award.  That stellar improvement at an age when many pitchers have already hung up their gloves was pretty surprising, but the recipients of that phony prowess were simply grateful for the results.  

The next two seasons he seemed more competent than all-world in capability, but in 2004 with the Astros he went 18-4 with a 2.98 ERA to earn his seventh Cy Young Award.  He played two more partial seasons at ages 43 and 44 during which he didn't eclipse the 20-start mark, but he still took home nearly $30 million in total salary.

The ZiPs analysis of both of these players was stunning and suggested that while they were likely still on a solid Cooperstown path the numbers were greatly reduced.  During the period of 2001 to 2004 when Bonds hit 209 HRs was projected by ZiPs to have been just 66 given his career history and the effect of aging.  His career total of dingers was slated to be 551 which would place him just under Manny Ramirez (and his PEDs) and legit power hitter Mike Schmidt.  

It wasn't any better for Clemens who finished with 354 wins for his long career.  ZiPS had him at a much more reasonable total of 298 if you applied their projections after the period when Brian McNamee confirmed when Clemens' steroid enhancements began.  That number is highly respectable and would have had Clemens falling below the key metric of 300 wins and at 24th on the all-time list ahead of Tommy John who had 288.

While Giants, Yankees and other fans likely will be disappointed when both Bonds and Clemens fall off the regular ballot, the fact is that ethics should have some weight in evaluating players' abilities.  They can revisit the issue with the newly divided versions of the old Veterans Committee that reconsidered players who did not get the 75% of votes needed in the traditional ballots.  Gil Hodges was just voted in by this group.  

At some point in the future there may be a special tarnished wing of the Hall of Fame for the outstanding ballplayers who posted magical numbers but were found guilty of using PEDs.  Or maybe time heals all wounds and the Veterans Committee will forgive and forget what they did off the field.  For now, however, it appears justice will be served by making Bonds and Clemens entrance into the Hall of Fame requiring the purchase of a ticket like anyone else.