min0 lee

Good article.

Was it the PEDs or the park? A look inside A-Rod's Texas numbers
Was it the PEDs or the park? A look inside A-Rod's Texas numbers

Story Highlights
Rodriguez says he used performance-enhancing drugs from 2001 through 2003
Those three years are the best of his career in terms of raw home run production
He also played in 485 of the Rangers' 486 games during those three seasons
While others debate the sincerity and completeness of Alex Rodriguez's confession to Peter Gammons on Monday, let's push past the garment-rending over the impact of his drug use upon the history and integrity of the game, and past the love/hate relationship baseball fans have with Rodriguez, a superstar bizarrely burdened with intense insecurities. Instead, let's take a cold, hard look at the seasons during which Rodriguez admitted he had experimented with banned substances, to see what impact, if any, those substances had on his performance on the field.

If we take Rodriguez at his word, his three years as a Texas Ranger, from 2001 to 2003, were the only seasons during which he used performance-enhancing drugs. In those three seasons he hit 156 home runs. By comparison, in his last three seasons with the Mariners, from 1998 to 2000, he hit 125 and in his first three seasons with the Yankees, from 2004 to 2006, he hit 119. In those six bookend seasons he surpassed 42 homers just once, but in his three seasons in Texas he hit 47 or more every year.

So yes, Rodriguez hit more home runs when he says he was juicing, but was it because he got his power from PEDs, or were there other factors at work? Consider the fact that Rodriguez missed just one game in his three years with Texas, playing in 485 of the Rangers' 486 games over that span. In his first three seasons with the Yankees he played in 14 fewer. In his last three seasons with the Mariners he played in 47 fewer. Rodriguez told Gammons on Monday that a large part of his motivation for experimenting with banned substances was his desire to be able to play every day through the hot Texas summers. In helping him achieve that goal, the drugs clearly worked.

The question then becomes, to what degree did Rodriguez's ill-gotten ability to play every day contribute to the surge in his power numbers. Consider his home-run rates in each of the three-year spans mentioned above (expressed as plate appearances per home run):

• SEA '98-00: 15.94 PA/HR
• TEX '01-03: 13.92 PA/HR
• NY '04-'06: 17.54 PA/HR

Those figures tell us that not only did Rodriguez take the field more often during his three drug years than in the three-year periods immediately before and after, but he also went deep more often, homering once every 13.92 plate appearances during his time in Texas. Yet, while there's a strong correlation between Rodriguez's drug use and playing time, the source of Rodriguez's power surge lies elsewhere.

Safeco Park, which Rodriguez's Mariners moved into in mid-1999, is a pitcher's park, as was the remodeled Yankee Stadium, the latter of which was particularly hard on right-handed power hitters like Rodriguez. The Ballpark in Arlington (as it was known back then), on the other hand, is a launching pad. Factor in a year-and-a-half of play at the similarly homer-happy Kingdome in 1998 and 1999, and those home-run rates above would seem to correspond to park factors as much or more than to drug use.

To filter out of the effects of his home parks, let's take a second look at Rodriguez's home-run rates using only his performance on the road during each of those three-year spans:

• SEA '98-00: 13.61 PA/HR
• TEX '01-'03: 14.76 PA/HR
• NY '04-'06: 18.68 PA/HR

Here we see that Rodriguez was a better home-run hitter on the road during his last three "clean" seasons with the Mariners than he was during his three years with the Rangers. Those two periods offer a particularly strong comparison because Rodriguez spent all six years in the AL West. Thus, save for moving roughly 12 percent of his road games (10 of 81 annually) from Texas (as a visiting Mariner) to Seattle (as a visiting Ranger), his road games were played in essentially identical environments.

Rodriguez went deep on the road approximately 8 percent less often as a Ranger while playing 12 percent of his road games in a less friendly home-run environment. Given that his Ranger years coincided with his peak-age years (ages 25 to 27), during which an increase in power would have been expected even without the help of illegal substances or a friendlier home park, it's difficult to attribute any of his overall increase in power during those years to the drugs.

In fact, glancing back at those road rates above, there's a superficial appearance of a power decline beginning, not with his first "clean" season in New York in 2004, but with his arrival in Texas in 2001, which is when Rodriguez claimed he started using performance-enhancers. That decline may be superficial in the above numbers, but in reality it ran much deeper, as I first reported in an analysis I did of Rodriguez's career trends for Bronx Banter following the 2004 season. That piece centered on what I referred to as, "a minor, but still unsettling downward trend in Rodriguez's offensive numbers" that "began with Alex's first season in Texas in 2001, but was disguised by his move from the pitcher-friendly Safeco Park ... to the [hitter-friendly] Ballpark in Arlington."

min0 lee

I detected this trend -- which began with Rodriguez's age-24 season in 2000, his last with the Mariners, continued through his three seasons in Texas and concluded with his first season as a Yankee in 2004 -- in several park-adjusted, total-offense rate stats, including Baseball Prospectus's Equivalent Average (EqA), Baseball-Reference's adjusted OPS (OPS+), and Bill James' Offensive Winning Percentage (OWP). Consider the following progression from 2000 to 2004, with Rodriguez's three Texas seasons in bold:

I could have listed other stats that exhibit the same trend, both adjusted and non-adjusted (WARP, Runs Created, Runs Created Against Average, Runs Created Per Game, unadjusted OPS, Gross Production Average, etc.), but there was no need. The trend was real and four years running.

That analysis was untainted by any knowledge or suspicion of Rodriguez's drug use while with the Rangers. Just as I have now done four years hence, I wrote off the apparent surge in Rodriguez's numbers while in Texas as park-driven while digging beneath those gaudy counting stats to reveal a modest decline in his overall production during his three years in Texas.

Since joining the Yankees, Rodriguez has enjoyed the two best seasons of his career, both of which supposedly came without the aid of performance-enhancing drugs. Consider how his MVP seasons of 2005 and 2007 compare with the five seasons listed above:

Put this all together and it's clear that, if he is indeed telling the truth about his drug use being limited to his three years in Texas, the only noticeable benefit that Rodriguez derived from his experimentations with banned substances was his ability to play 485 of the Rangers' 486 games during his three years with the club. That's no small thing. There are some who believe that the most undervalued statistic in baseball is games played. It's irrefutable that Rodriguez's ability to take the field every day as a Ranger enabled him to put up the remarkable counting stats he compiled in a Texas uniform, chief among them his 57 home runs in 2002. Still, there's no evidence that the drugs made him any more powerful, and significant evidence that his rate of production actually declined during what he claims were his doping years.

Rather, it was the ballpark, not the drugs, that seems to have been the key to Rodriguez's statistical surge (34 of his 57 homers in 2002 came in Arlington, where he homered once every 10.6 PA vs. once every 15.7 PA on the road in '02). Whether or not that's enough to convince anyone, myself included, that his statistics remain "untainted" is, unfortunately, another matter entirely and one far less likely to be settled in Rodriguez's favor.

Cliff Corcoran is a frequent contributor to SI.com.

IainDaniel

What no comments on the A-roid interview down in Tampa. Heard a bit of it Mad Dog "Chris Russo"

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min0 lee

I missed it but now I hear he implicated his cousin who conveniently lives out of the country.

IainDaniel

Yes. So basically Steroids are over the counter in the Dominican. And his "cousin" illegally brought them into the US. Sounds like a little lie again to me.

Over all it sounded pretty honest. But seemed like some lies are there still.

Obstacles don't have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don't turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it.

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min0 lee

You never know with A-Rod.
The Dominicans can get you anything as far as steroids are concerned. In fact the first shot of steroids was from a Dominican, he used to own Tito's Gym in Woodside Queens.
Looks like he may be hiding names.

min0 lee

Rodriguez provides additional details of steroid use
NEW YORK (SI.com) -- In a lengthy press conference at the Yankees spring training complex in Tampa, Fla., Alex Rodriguez gave additional details and information about his use of performance-enhancing drugs, which he maintains took place only between 2001 and 2003.

Rodriguez says a cousin, whom he would not identify, first introduced him to a substance he referred to as "Boli" that could be purchased in the Dominican Republic and brought to the United States.

"It was his understanding it would give me a dramatic energy boost and was otherwise harmless," Rodriguez said in a prepared statement before the question and answer portion of his press conference. "My cousin and I, one more ignorant than the other, decided it was a good idea to start taking it. We consulted no one and it was pretty evident that we didn't know what we were doing. We did everything we could to keep it between us. I stopped taking it in 2003 and haven't taken it since. I stopped taking it for several reasons. In 2003 I had a serious neck injury and it scared me half to death. I was scared for my career and my life after baseball. Second after players voted for a mandatory drug policy, I realized how serious this all was and I decided to stop then."

Rodriguez says he took injections of the over-the-counter substance roughly twice a month for three years while he was playing for the Texas Rangers.

"I didn't think they were steroids. That's part of being young and stupid. It was over-the-counter. It was really amateur hour. We went outside team doctors, team doctors and team trainers. It was two guys doing a very amateur and immature thing. We probably didn't even take it right. We used to do it about two times a month and I'm not even sure we did it right to affect us in the right way.

"All these years I never thought I did anything wrong."

Rodriguez stood by his previous statements that he did not take any banned substances before or after joining the Rangers. "My mistake has nothing to do with where I played," he said. "My mistake was because I was immature and I was stupid. I blame myself. For a week here I keep looking for people to blame and I keep looking at myself."

Among the other topics A-Rod discussed:

• On what he thought the benefits were of taking those substances: "I'm not sure. I will say this: When you take any substance, especially in baseball it's half mental and half physical. If you take this glass of water and say you'll be a better baseball player, you probably will be. I'd say I felt more energy but it's hard to say."

• On how he could not have known more about what he was taking: "I wish I knew. I was [25 to 28 years old], I was pretty naïve. Initially I was curious. I just gave it a try."

• On whether he had taken amphetamines or human growth hormone: "No on the human growth hormone. What I used to take a lot in the Seattle days was something called Ripped Fuel, which has since been banned by MLB."

• On why he remained so secretive about what he was taking: "I knew we weren't taking Tic Tacs. I knew it potentially could be something that perhaps was wrong, but I really didn't get into the investigation perhaps like I would've. But again, when you're curious and you're ignorant, there's a lot of things you don't tell a lot of people, not just that and that was one of those things I decided not to share with anyone."

• On what he thought about commissioner Bud Selig saying he "shamed the game": "I certainly made a mistake and I feel poorly for [that]."

• On Feb. 7, Sports Illustrated broke the news that Rodriguez had tested positive for testosterone and Primobolan in 2003. In an interview with ESPN last week, Rodriguez admitted to taking a banned substance, blaming himself for being young and stupid, a criticism he frequently leveled at himself during Tuesday's press conference.

Primobolan is, according to the New York Times, a drug that is illegal to sell and market in the United States. Gary Wadler, a member of the World Anti-Doping Agency, told the Times last week that if the drug is injected it can be detected for almost two weeks, but if taken orally it might be detectable for less than a day, while the performance-enhancing effects last far longer.

Rodriguez's positive test came during survey testing in 2003 that was supposed to be anonymous as the player's union and Major League Baseball tried to determine whether full-blown testing was needed in the game. Those test results ware seized by federal agents in April 2004 in connection to their investigation into BALCO. There are no punishments for players who tested positive during that time period.

Several members of the Yankees organization were present, including the four homegrown members of the Yankees dynasty seated in the front row: Mariano Rivera, Andy Pettitte, Derek Jeter and Jorge Posada. At the end of his opening statement, Rodriguez started to address his teammates but quickly became too emotional to speak. After a long pause followed by a sip of water, he simply said, "Thank you."

Rodriguez later composed himself enough to say, "Like I said earlier, this has been a very difficult day to get through and without you being here it would be impossible. I thank you and I love you. It will be the best season of our lives."

Rodriguez is a three-time AL MVP, winning his first in 2003 with the Rangers and two more since being traded to the Yankees in February 2004. He has 553 career home runs (11th all-time) and is on pace to break Barry Bonds' career record of 762 home runs.

Asked if he considered taking banned substances to be cheating, Rodriguez said, "That's not for me to determine. I'm here to say I'm sorry and in some ways I wish I went to college and got an opportunity to grow up at my own pace. I guess when you're young and stupid you're young and stupid and I'm guilty of both of those.

Rodriguez acknowledged that he will have to address questions about his statistics and his trustworthiness for the rest of his career. "The only thing I can ask of the American people is to judge me from this day forward," he said.

min0 lee

God it's great being a Yankee fan.
No other sport provides you with so much drama year round.

IainDaniel

I love it how you inject it every 2 weeks.... but it doesn't cross your mind that it is steroids. HAHA

Oh yes and he also admitted to some type of amphetamine use. Ripped Fuel

Obstacles don't have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don't turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it.

Michael Jordan
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min0 lee

MLB banned it because of the ephedrine in ripped fuel?

IainDaniel

Yep... an amphetamine.

Obstacles don't have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don't turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it.

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soxmuscle

I'm just now reading the "game thread" about it on another board but it appears as if he shed some light but for the most part was untruthful.

Apparently, he tried to force tears, at one point pausing to speak for 45 seconds.

Anybody have any youtubes?

Age: 20 | Height: 5'7" | Weight: 150 lbs | Penis: 12 inches
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IainDaniel

only one I saw

YouTube - ALEX RODRIGUEZ A ROD FULL PRESS CONFERENCE PART 1 A ROD BREAKSDOWN AND CRIES

YouTube Video

Obstacles don't have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don't turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it.

Michael Jordan
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soxmuscle

Seeing it now on Sportscenter.

Oh my god... is he serious?

Age: 20 | Height: 5'7" | Weight: 150 lbs | Penis: 12 inches
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min0 lee

He's your favorite Yankee.

min0 lee

Here he is demonstrating how his "Cousin" injected him.

min0 lee

he he

I Are Baboon

None of this would have happened if A-Rod had just gone to college.

dg806

More lies......He is probably still doing it....or was until he got caught.

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IainDaniel

Wow oh wow is he ever getting lambasted, for that interview yesterday.

HAHA. Lies embedded in lies.

Obstacles don't have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don't turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it.

Michael Jordan
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min0 lee

Damon: Murder Is Worse Than Steroids
(BDD / ESPN screen image)
In Times Like These, The Nation Turns Its Lonely Ears
to the One and Only Johnny Damon
Johnny Damon speaks to the media today in Tampa following A-Rod’s presser: “Yeah he did some bad things. He took a steroid. Definitely do not condone that, at all, but there could be a lot worse things he could have been doing out there. He hasn’t done a crime. So there’s worse things that he could have done but you know I’ve known Alex since he was 15 and he’s always been super nice to me and so I’m going to support him and try help him through this time. (Reporter: Johnny, what would have been worse?) Murdering someone... There’s plenty of things that could be worse than what he did. (Reporter: In your mind, is what he did cheating?) For part time in his career, perhaps, but you know what, the pitchers that were facing him too at the time were doing it.”

soxmuscle

Johnny Damon is a dumb person.

I believe he's got some kind of a learning disability.

The reporter who asked "what's worse than steroids," probably knew that he was about to get a gem of a quote.

I'm surprised Damon hasn't been in the papers much in the past...

Age: 20 | Height: 5'7" | Weight: 150 lbs | Penis: 12 inches
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Triple Threat

I'm confused. I thought that possession of steroids was a felony. Aren't felonies considered crimes?

min0 lee

Triple Threat

IainDaniel

or that one of the reasons he quit was because of the steroid rule being introduced.

But I thought you knew it wasn't steroids?

Obstacles don't have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don't turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it.

Michael Jordan
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Robert

Romano Hits the Airways!

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IainDaniel

Yeah it was a decent interview.. I was listening to it on Maddog with the B-team.

However it could have gone into a lot more, the interviewers lack of knowledge hurts the interview. But he made some excellent points.

Obstacles don't have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don't turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it.

Michael Jordan
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Robert

I don't think so, he had the knowledge of the average person and that is how Romano answered his questions, in a way that anyone could understand.

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IronAddict

This just in... Alex Rodriguez now says he took steroids to "bulk up".....quote Alex: "I needed to bulk up. There I was, an ass-half.....and i wanted to be an ass-whole."

The journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.