Numbers on Steroids is a look at baseball players during the 90s to see if anything screams out at you.
Remember when Eric Gagne came out of nowhere to become the best closer in baseball during the steroid era and then all of a sudden morphed into a mostly useless pitcher during the testing era. I wonder why?
Explaining It Away
Explaining away Gagne's stats is very very simple, they correlated exactly with his movement from the starting rotation to the bullpen. In the starting rotation he was pretty much a below average pitcher, but in the bullpen he was able to amp up his stuff for that one inning a night and be done. The fall off could be explained away with all the injuries that he experienced in the middle 00s.
The Verdict
Eric Gagne's case is an interesting one. His fall from grace correlated almost directly with the introduction of testing. But to me the evidence from the numbers just isn't quite all there. So...
Mr. Gagne You Might Not Get the Guilty Gavel Just Yet
Remember when Eric Gagne came out of nowhere to become the best closer in baseball during the steroid era and then all of a sudden morphed into a mostly useless pitcher during the testing era. I wonder why?
Averages Say: Poop -> God -> Poop
Strikeouts Say: All of a Sudden I Learned How to Get Ks
Strikeouts Say: All of a Sudden I Learned How to Get Ks
Explaining It Away
Explaining away Gagne's stats is very very simple, they correlated exactly with his movement from the starting rotation to the bullpen. In the starting rotation he was pretty much a below average pitcher, but in the bullpen he was able to amp up his stuff for that one inning a night and be done. The fall off could be explained away with all the injuries that he experienced in the middle 00s.
The Verdict
Eric Gagne's case is an interesting one. His fall from grace correlated almost directly with the introduction of testing. But to me the evidence from the numbers just isn't quite all there. So...
Mr. Gagne You Might Not Get the Guilty Gavel Just Yet
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