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Numbers On Steroids: Juan Gonzalez

Numbers on Steroids is a look at baseball players during the 90s to see if anything screams out at you.

He was caught with a bag full of steroids, but did he actually take them?

Averages Say:Why All the Spikes at the end of the career?

At Bats Per Home Run Says: Only One Dip During the Strike Shortened Year

Explaining It Away

The numbers show someone with a pretty normal track record. It took him a few years to get ramped up to peak output and then he kept it going consistently for 6 of 7 years until he hit 30. Then as would normally be expected he statrted to become erratic in his 30s and his performances started to decrease until he was eventually out of the game. There really aren't many oddities in those numbers.

The Verdict

The problem with looking at averages and ab/hr is that you aren't actually getting their total season performances and that's where much of the red flags pop up for Gonzalez. Starting at age 32 Juan Gone started to break down rapidly. In 2002 he played just 70 games. In 03 he slightly increased that to 82. In 04 he played just 33 games and finally he played a whopping 1 game in 05.

A Bag Full of Steroids Doesn't Go Unused

Comments

Anonymous said…
its such a shame, juan was my favorite player. i collected nothing but juan gonzalez baseball cards. never went to bed until i could see highlights of the texas rangers on espn to see what juan had done. it didnt matter how late. many times i had to wait til the 2am eastern time baseball tonight on espn.
i really hope gonzalez never used steroids.
he was at one point a sure hall of famer. i still miss him.

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