Objective Evidence

You don't have to be a sports fan to know baseball is struggling right now with arguably its biggest star, Alex Rodriguez, admitting that he took performance enhancing drugs in the 2001, 2002, and 2003 seasons.

Since his admittance earlier this week, the court of public opinion has been in nonstop session. As I was driving home the other day I heard a radio host ranting and raving that all of Rodriguez's accomplishments should either be stricken from the record books or noted with a bold asterisk.

Now, this talking head is entitled to his opinion but his subjective rant, though articulate and convincing, was born from passion and probably the need to garner ratings. So the question is-Should we cast a wary eye on his statistics during the years he allegedly used drugs? Well, let's be objective rather than subjective. And what a message that is to all. If you are on a team and a critical decision must be made or a problem must be solved, don't react to opinion or draw conclusions from strong emotion. Collect as much data and information as you can to make a rational and intelligent decision. The same in life. Think of all the critical decisions we face in life. Don't impulsively decide on action. It is better to collect as much information as we can to put ourselves in the best position to decide. The outcome may be opposite of our hopes but draw comfort from knowing that you used a sound process to decide.

Back to Arod. The video at the bottom of this post is a graphical summary of his hitting statistics from 1996 to 2008. (His first full year in the major leagues was 1996) My hypothesis is that performance enhancing drugs will give one more strength or greater hitting power. The statistics came from mlb.cm and cover the major hitting categories: home runs, RBI, batting average, slugging percentage, hits, and strike outs. I also looked at the total number of games played each year. My hypothesis here is that chemical enhancement will lead to quicker healing and/or more resistance to injury.

Please watch the video (no narration, just graphs) and form your own opinion. For now, I'll leave it to you to answer the following question:

Did taking performance enhancing drugs in the 2001-2003 seasons affect his hitting performance?

I'll offer my take in a later post.

Stephen

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