The Futility Infielder

In a very favorable review of The Juice in the Denver Post, Will Carroll dropped my name in an interview with columnist Mike Klis, showering me with hyperbole:

Although Carroll's readers will be far more educated on steroids, the book's sale receipts will probably show America would rather be entertained. While [Jose] Canseco made the sensational claim that Jason Giambi is "the most obvious juicer in the game," Carroll wonders how anyone can look at the substance-abusing brothers of those two players - Ozzie Canseco and Jeremy Giambi - and believe steroids have a significant impact on baseball performance.

After connecting his research of steroids with the home run boom from 1996-2001, Carroll returns to the theory espoused before the BALCO scandal broke in 2003 - the No. 1 factor was a juiced baseball, followed by hitter-favorable ballparks, bat composition, nutritional/strength training enhancement and then, steroids.

"Jay Jaffee [sic], who I think is the premier statistician in the game, the one thing he keeps pointing to is the ball," Carroll said. "Every time somebody wants to look at the ball, they clam up. They won't let you test it, they won't let you look at the factory. I'm not saying steroids don't help, but there are so many other things."

While I certainly appreciate the mention and the kind words from Will (and the misspelling recalls all the elementary school-era snappy answers to stupid questions of whether I'm related to MAD magazine's Al Jaffee), I will be the first to say that any claim of "premier statistician" is more than a tad overblown. For what it's worth, Will recalls "one of" being part of the original quote.

Lest anyone require clarification, the stat-crunchers who form the backbone of Baseball Prospectus -- Clay Davenport, Keith Woolner, Nate Silver and James Click -- are far more adroit and creative than I am, to say nothing of folks outside of BP from Bill James to Voros McCracken to Tangotiger to Mitchel Lichtman, many of whom get paid by actual teams for their statistical acumen. If I am anything in this conversation, it is an adept user of the fine tools created by those people and others, one who tries very hard to translate complex concepts like DIPS, WARP and PECOTA to a broader audience. Those men are the A-Rods, Derek Jeters, Miguel Tejadas and Vlad Guerreros of the field (we'll avoid tainting anybody with a Barry Bonds comparison), while on a good day I'm closer to Melvin Mora or Chone Figgins -- a versatile contributor of increasing profile if not a heavy hitter. Still, there are worse things to be called, and to shift the focus back onto the book, it's nice to see it generating positive press already.

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Speaking of Davenport, he draws a mention in Sunday's New York Times Magazine piece by Moneyball author Michael Lewis about the influence of power hitting on evaluating a prospect's chances, and the way that steroids has clouded analysts ability to do so:

Of course, there's now some sketchy evidence that steroids have contributed mightily to the power surge. Clay Davenport, who studies minor-league players for the Web site Baseball Prospectus, has found that three of the four players with the most remarkable midcareer power surges in the last two decades are now famously linked to steroid use: Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire and Jason Giambi. (Giambi has gone from hitting 10 home runs in his entire college career to hitting 43 home runs off major-league pitching in a single season.) Ron Shandler, who has worked as a statistical analyst for the St. Louis Cardinals and publishes Baseball Forecaster, an annual survey of major- and minor-league players for fantasy leaguers, expresses his suspicions another way: he flags players who acquire power the same season that they've come back from vacation 20 pounds or more heavier. For instance, Shandler has noted that last season Adrian Beltre, in his final year with the Dodgers before becoming a free agent, reportedly showed up 20 pounds heavier than the year before. Beltre, whose career up to that point had been a story of unfulfilled promise, blasted 48 home runs, 25 more than he had ever hit in a single season -- for which he was rewarded, by the Seattle Mariners, with a new five-year, $64 million contract. (When a Tacoma, Wash., reporter asked if he had used steroids, Beltre laughed in denial.)

...But the ambiguity of steroids' effects may have, in an odd way, increased their grip on the game. Unable to parse the statistics and separate natural power from steroid power, the people who evaluate baseball players for a living have no choice but to ignore the distinction. They've come to view the increase in the number of young players without power who become older players with power as a new eternal truth about the game. "Good hitters become power hitters, power hitters don't become good hitters" has become a kind of cliche for baseball's more statistically minded general managers. Power is now understood as less an innate gift than a gettable skill -- more like speaking French than being 6-foot-3. Which is to say that steroids may have changed not only the way the game is played but also the way the game is understood. They have given birth to a big, beefy idea from whose side-effects no player is immune.

Now here is where a premier statistician, one with a full command of the history of major league baseball at his fingertips in the form of a database, could weigh in with a discussion of power development in prospects. Perhaps it would be something as simple as a graph plotting isolated power (SLG - AVG) against age to show that there is indeed a natural developmental curve with regards to how power develops. I'll eagerly await Davenport, Silver, or another heavy hitter doing so.

Suffice it to say that since Lewis' last two Times mag pieces turned into books (Moneyball and the forthcoming Coach) it's a safe assumption that this piece, which catches up with a pair of players taken in Oakland's now-infamous 2002 draft, is part of the forthcoming Moneyball sequel, and an even safer one to say that it's essential reading. Go!