The Effects of the Steroid Era on the 2008 Baseball Season

Here we are, just under two months into the baseball season. This is the time when we start to get a picture of how things are shaping up.  MVP and CY Young candidates start to make themselves visible.  You have the young up and coming teams, the overachievers and the underachievers.  Oh yes, the season is about to hit its summer stride. 

So, now that things are becoming a bit clearer, how is baseball recovering from the black eye it received from the roided out fist of steroids? 

Obviously, home runs are down.  For the first time since 1993, the average home runs per game have dropped below two per game.  Don’t forget that year was an expansion year in which the Rockies and the pre-humidor baseballs entered the league.

This season, there are nine players on pace to hit 40-plus homers and two (Lance Berkman, Dan Uggla) on pace to hit 50.  This is a bit confusing, since last year there were three players with over 40 home runs and two with 50 and over.  It may seem that there are more homers being hit, but you have to consider two things.

The first is that as the season goes on, the home run pace begins to decrease, due to the fact that pitchers take a little longer to get going than hitters.

The second factor is that hitters go on streaks throughout the season.  Just take a look at Lance Berkman and Dan Uggla.  If either of those guys hits 50 homers, he can join Brady Anderson and Luis Gonzales in the "I sold my soul to Satan" 50-home run club.

What does all this mean? It means that teams actually have to focus on other means of producing runs, rather than waiting for a three-run bomb from their eighth-place hitter. A perfect example of this is the fact that stolen bases are up this season.  War fundamental baseball!

Another facet of the game that has noticeably changed is the pitching.  Pitchers can be more aggressive with hitters without worrying about getting smacked around like Carlo Rizzi did by Sonny Corleone in "The Godfather."

Last year, Jake Peavy was the only starter with an ERA under three with 2.54.  So far this season, there are 20 starters with an ERA under three and two starters (Edinson Volquez and Cliff Lee) with an ERA under two.  If this doesn’t signify a drastic change between hitters and pitchers, then my name isn’t Max Power.

Another noticeable change is in attendance.  Last year, there was an average of 32,682 people attending games.  That has fallen about to about 30,500 this year. 

That is the biggest drop in attendance since after the strike in 1995 where the drop was an average 6,234 people per game from 1994.  While a 2,000 per game drop in attendance seems significant, you have to take into account that each year since 2004, attendance has surpassed 30,000 per game.  Only twice (1993, 1994) has that happened since 1990.  Baseball has never been this popular.

Now for the kicker, late in the 2003 the BALCO scandal came to light and exposed what we already knew.  That season, baseball attendance averaged 27,832 per game.  So with all this negativity surrounding baseball, how did the fans respond?  They respond by coming out to games.

Attendance rose to just over 30,000 in the 2004 season and reached its peak last year at 32,682.  More people actually came to games during the three-plus years that steroids were widely publicized than they ever had.  So, were steroids bad for baseball? 

Sure, it cost a lot of players their credibility, but what the hell does Major League Baseball or the fans care.  They got paid and we got entertained.