Soo Today: A short history of baseball slugging

A look at the interesting followup to the 2002 study, “Baseball’s Great Hitting Barrage of the 1990s” by Ben Rader and Kenneth Winkle.

Their research showed three distinct eras of offense in recent baseball history - an era of low productivity (1969-93), the great offensive barrage (1994-2000) and what they termed the “new equilibrium” (2000-06).

In comparing the latter two eras, they found a direct correlation between the larger de facto strike zone and lower offensive production, plus a circumstantial, but strong, correlation between testing for performance-enhancing drugs and lower offensive numbers.

...Initially, we really thought we were onto something with this weight-height ratio related to offensive productivity, but then it turned out the strike zone is an even stronger correlation,” Rader said.

“I think the problem with the steroids is you don’t know when they’re using steroids or the amount,” he said.

“Some people claim that the increased weight results from use of steroids, and, boy, it peaks right in the middle of the hitting revolution, then it begins to fall off once they begin to test.”

“They begin effective tests in 2003, and since then, it’s down, and in fact it’s down below what it was in 1990.”