The Mitchell Report & Baseball Sims

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The Mitchell Report & Baseball Sims - 12/13/2007 10:33:40 PM

PadresFan104

Posts: 1223
Joined: 8/8/2005
Status: offline

So I'm sure most of you have already read the news about the Mitchell Report. Nothing terribly surprising, although it does give credibility to the term "Steroid Era" which we can all tell our grandchildren about.

I'm not posting to talk about the politics of the issue. Instead, I'm wondering aloud if computer simulations like PureSim will ever be able to "re-model" the past 20 years and show us what might have happened had steroids and HGH never appeared on the scene?

On the one hand, it's easy to simply reduce the HR modifier, but then that penalizes the players who were clean. And what about the other factors such as greater durability, the ability to recover from injuries quicker, and longer careers? It's possible that we don't even fully understand all of the ways that the individual player stats of the past 20 years have been affected, but when we do, and we feel that we have a list of the players that benefited (cheated) the most, then maybe we'll see how the record books should look, rather than the tainted numbers we have today.

It will also be interesting to see if any experts will use baseball simulations to determine if certain teams benefited from the Steriod Era more than others. I'm thinking of something like an updated Pythagorean projecting that takes into account how many players were using steroids at the time.

In the end, I guess we just have to accept the numbers as they are, and move on. However, I know that there are a lot of people that like to play "what-if" with their baseball sims, and this seems like a natural question to ask...

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Post #: 1

RE: The Mitchell Report & Baseball Sims - 12/14/2007 1:38:01 AM

KG Erwin

Posts: 8981
Joined: 7/25/2000
From: Cross Lanes WV USA
Status: offline

Haven't read it, Al, but heard a report about it on Public Radio. The distinguished Senator is suggesting that past sins not be punished, but on a going-forward basis, MLB is really gonna have to police-up the players. This in itself might be controversial, but I'd agree with it.

As for "normalizing" PS, fuhgeddabboudit. The records are what they are. Let's not forget that many players in the 60s and 70s indulged in recreational drugs, which is a different animal entirely.

It'd be easy to adopt a hardcore attitude, but it plainly won't work. It will involve a baseball-cultural rethink, which will take time. The Players' Union, no doubt, will fight it every step of the way, as it will result in salaries being adjusted to reflect actual natural talent. The owners must also accept responsibility for their part in ignoring the problems.

What it's gonna take is a really tough system-flushing. Let's not go overboard, though, and ban vitamins and herbal remedies and such. It's gotta be a specific policy, which already exists, does it not?

(in reply to PadresFan104)

Post #: 2

RE: The Mitchell Report & Baseball Sims - 12/14/2007 5:17:03 AM

Beach23BoyP

Posts: 288
Joined: 8/20/2005
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: KG Erwin

Haven't read it, Al, but heard a report about it on Public Radio. The distinguished Senator is suggesting that past sins not be punished, but on a going-forward basis, MLB is really gonna have to police-up the players. This in itself might be controversial, but I'd agree with it.

As for "normalizing" PS, fuhgeddabboudit. The records are what they are. Let's not forget that many players in the 60s and 70s indulged in recreational drugs, which is a different animal entirely.

It'd be easy to adopt a hardcore attitude, but it plainly won't work. It will involve a baseball-cultural rethink, which will take time. The Players' Union, no doubt, will fight it every step of the way, as it will result in salaries being adjusted to reflect actual natural talent. The owners must also accept responsibility for their part in ignoring the problems.

What it's gonna take is a really tough system-flushing. Let's not go overboard, though, and ban vitamins and herbal remedies and such. It's gotta be a specific policy, which already exists, does it not?

We need to "Flush Washington DC" first.

Who really cares about some guys running around playing in their PJ's on a few drugs.

(in reply to KG Erwin)

Post #: 3

RE: The Mitchell Report & Baseball Sims - 12/14/2007 8:33:47 PM

HangingSlider

Posts: 7
Joined: 7/19/2006
Status: offline

I beleive PS will survive the steroid era just fine.

It is impossible to compare one era of baseball with another. The game as played in the 1910's was vastly different from the game played in the in 1930's, which was much different from the game played in the 1960's, which was different from the game played in the last 10 years. I've found that PS is able to assimilate all these differences and produce credible results when playing games across era. The key may be the competitive balance within each era.

For many of us, we didn't need the Mitchell report to confirm that steroid use was widespread. It named some 80 players but various reports in the past have pegged the actual number to as high as one third of the players. When a nondescript and juiced Matt Herges is hitting 90 on his fastballs to a juiced Barry Bonds, there is a competitive balance.

This morning on local radio, someone asked how many of those named in the report hit 70 homeruns. Of course, only one did. Bond's superiority over his comtemporay was intact despite the inflated league averages. I believe it is this measure of a players performance relative to his peers that will keep PS humming along just fine for us.

Perhaps I'll put Bond's 2001 team into a 1906 association and see what shakes out. I suspect the results will be more than satisfactory for some of us.

(in reply to Beach23BoyP)

Post #: 4