Sabernomics: Bradbury: A Response to My Critique of the Mitchell Report Study

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I have received a response to my critique of Did Steroid Use Enhance the Performance of the Mitchell Batters? The Effect of Alleged Performance Enhancing Drug Use on Offensive Performance from 1995 to 2007 by Brian J. Schmotzer, Jeff Switchenko, and Patrick D. Kilgo.

What follows is the authors’ response. I will comment on this response within the next few days. I thank the authors for responding to me.

To sum up, we feel that many of the issues you have raised as “obvious factual errors” should more fairly be described as differences of opinion. Our methodology, while not perfect, is defensible and leads to the best estimate of the steroids effect that has yet been published. Furthermore, the essential conclusion of our study does not change even when incorporating your suggested changes, which shows just how robust the result is. Based on the information that is out there in the Mitchell Report, we don’t see how you can come to any conclusion except that there is a substantial positive effect on offensive performance due to steroids.