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Old 02-22-2005, 11:09 AM   #6 (permalink)
kutulu
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I just think we need to look a lot deeper than guys who had one fluke year. It doesn't make sense that a player would use them for one season, get amazing results and then go back to mediocre performance. More HR=more money and if there was no accountibility (and they weren't banned by the CBA till 2002) for it then why go off the juice? If we are going to look for users we need to focus more on sudden weight gains/losses.

We also have to look into the possibility that the balls were juiced. Look at this:

http://longgandhi.com/042301.html
Quote:
So all I was left with was that batters were using faster bats - that is, they were shaving down the handles to make them lighter and more aerodynamic for increased bat speed - and that the influx of pitching from the expansion had not yet caught up to the demand for good pitching.

Well, as it turns out, the ball might be "juiced". A recent article in Discover highlighted a study by Dennis Hilliard, director of the crime lab at the University of Rhode Island. Hilliard and 5 colleagues gathered balls from 1963, 1970, 1989, 1995, and 2000. They cut through the outer layers of the balls and tested the cork-and-rubber centers for elasticity.

For those who've never opened as baseball, it is made up of a compressed ball of cork, surrounded by two layers of rubber - one black, one red. Around this center are three layers of wool winding and one of cotton. This is then sprayed with a coating of rubber cement to prevent it from unraveling. The final part is the leather covering we are so familiar with, stitched together with exactly 108 stitches of red waxed string. (BTW, there are exactly the same number of stitches in a baseball as there are beads in a Catholic rosary and a Buddhist mala. Neat, huh?)

Anyway, Hilliard and crew dropped each of the compressed cork-and-rubber centers from about 15 feet. The three oldest centers bounced an average of 62 inches. The 1995 and 2000 balls bounced an average of 82 inches— about 30 percent higher. However, that's not necessarily conclusive, as cork begins to lose elasticity after about 10 years. Anyone who's ever had a fishing rod with a cork handle can attest to that.

So they tested the yarn windings. And here is where they hit the jackpot. The older balls' yarn was made almost entirely of pure wool. As the balls got younger, the amount of synthetic fibers increased. Major League rules state that the yarn can not be more than 15% synthetic. (yes, MLB has rules for something as tertiary as the yarn... and enforces them about as well as they do the strikezone). The 2000 ball was more than 20% synthetic. Why is this significant? Well, wool absorbs moisture very easily, and the humidity can deaden a ball by relaxing the tension in the winding and reducing the elasticity of its fibers. Polyester and nylon, two of the most common synthetic materials used in yarns, are entirely resistant to moisture. So balls made with more synthetic materials are more elastic and would travel farther from the same bat impact as ones with more wool.

So between the possibility of a more elastic center and the evidence of more elastic winding, it's almost certain that the ball is playing a role in the home run explosion. Early indications are that the dates this research offers places the balls coming into the league at roughly the same time as the home runs started to pick up. Obviously more testing needs to be done, especially with regard to exactly when more synthetic materials were used and how much humidity affects the flight of a "wool ball" as opposed to a "synthetic ball". However, it's looking more and more like those old timers were right: the ball IS juiced.
The idea of expansion effecting HR rates due to lower quality pitching and the changes in bats may also play a significant role. Today's bats have thinner handles, allowing the bat to have a larger head (and sweet spot) at a similar weight.

It's not as if steroids weren't used exclusively in the 90's and early 00's when HR rates jumped significantly. If steroids play such an important role in HR production, why weren't we seeing it before the mid 90's? Furthermore, if pitchers were on steroids, they are going to have a negative effect on HR rates.
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