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Numbers On Steroids: Reggie Jackson

Numbers on Steroids is a look at baseball players during the 90s to see if anything screams out at you. This week it's throwing a curve ball and looking at All Time Great Yankees. Players that we know did not take steroids to see if this gives a defense to any of the players 'convicted' by Numbers on Steroids.

Mr. October was a pure power hitter who never hit over .300. Kind of sounds like Mark McGwire, let's take a look.

Averages Say: Very Inconsistent down the stretch of his career.

At Bats Per Home Run Says: Hmm... what's with the spike at 39?

Explaining It In 90s Steroid Terms

If you took a look at Reggie's career and wanted to figure out where the oddity is, its in his improvements from age 37 to 39. At age 37 he was pretty much done and by done I mean really done. He hit below .200 and only had 14 home runs. The next two seasons he improved both his home run totals and his averages to the point at 39 when he hit .252 and 27 home runs. The issue with linking it to steroids would be that the numbers still aren't off the charts, and they are still significantly lower than during his prime.

The other oddity is the fact that his career best season happened at age 34. He hit 41 home runs, hit exactly .300 for the only time of his career and finished 2nd in the MVP voting. If that happened during a time of steroids eyeballs would be raised.

The Verdict

Reggie's numbers are very very very inconsistent over the tail end of his career so it would be tough to declare a prolonged usage. With that being said blowing up in one season at the age of 34 would definitely get people to question in todays world.

Career Year at 34? Hmm....

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