Baseball: A New Age is Beginning

I have to give props to this months espn the magazine. if you haven't picked up a copy you really should, especially if you are a stats geek like me. The magazine has several impressive stats in it including a number of new stats they are using to analyze fantasy statistics in football for the year. very interesting stuff.







Through all the stats that I have seen so far I find the one most impressive is the MLB players over 30 stat output for the past twenty years. It is some interesting stuff and may show a correlation between how steroids has helped older players the most. extending their careers well into their 30s. As the ESPN the Magazine says.....30 just may be the new 40 in baseball.

Now let's talk about steroid use in baseball. No one outside of the game will ever know the true extent of how deep into the fabric of the game steroids had become. If I had to throw out a number I would say more than 70 percent of pro baseball players were juicing. once again this is just a random number I'm throwing out. I think about it like this, if you were a baseball player and you were told you could take something to make you better and keep you in the game longer would you take it? Yeah you may start with products sold down at your local GNC but even stuff sold there is now illegal and not allowed. Where would you cut it off at? Would you stop with creatine? Why not go a little further, especially when the pay-off is so great...

For people not into sports the biggest myth about steroids is the drugs make you stronger. Yes they allow you to have more lean muscle mass but overall steroids work by allowing your muscle to repair and heal faster. They also give you that umph to get going on the rough days. Steroids was custom made for the over 30 baseball player, and now at the end of the steroids era we are also looking at the end of the 30s player being relevant when it comes to playing at your highest level for the longest amount of time possible.

To check my theory I just checked the yahoo fantasy baseball season rankings. Not one of the top 10 guys statistically this year in a standard five by five league are 30 years old yet. If this holds up for any amount of time this is going to completely change the game of baseball. We've already seen a fundamental change in how teams are handling their prospects. I personally think this is great for the game of baseball. Players reaching their peak at 26 and then slowly seeing their stats diminish will take the punch out of teams overpaying free agents. It is also going to make teams think twice before giving up several prospects for a solid 28 year old player. We could be entering into a new age of baseball...

To wrap things up I just want to add while steroids allowed players to keep up their high level of play, the athletes still had to work harder than 99 percent of the people out there. I don't know if taking steroids by itself should keep players out of the Hall of Fame, especially when looking at the fact some of their stats came off of opposing pitchers and hitters who very well were juicing themselves.