I played baseball for a decade - yes, I get what you're trying to say; you're just not correct in saying it. The speed at which you swing is instrumental in connecting the bat with the ball. If you have a slow-ass lumbering swing, you're not going to get around on fastballs. If you can't get around on fastballs, you have to trigger early to keep from getting blown away. If you have to trigger early, you're going to swing fastball and a changeup/curveball is going to kick your ass when you're way out ahead of it. Or you have to cheat to protect from inside fastballs and suddenly sliders away kick the shit out of you.

You're trying to create a distinction between some idiot that's never played and a superstar - that's not who we're talking about. Every single person that plays major league baseball can recognize a breaking ball. All of them. And yes, being able to swing a bat faster absolutely makes it easier for them to hit a baseball.

It allows a hitter to wait back on a pitch longer before committing because he knows he can get the head through the zone quicker. As a consequence, it can let him see a breaking ball before he swings at it. That's the most obvious way a hitter can help his ability to hit a breaking ball through increased batspeed.

And like I said, when he's a tick slower on the uptake for said breaking ball, he can now get the bat into the zone to either tip it foul to survive when he would've missed it, or drive it when he would've popped it up or grounded out with it.

I'm not arguing steroids with you here - I'm arguing baseball. I'm allowing your stated position - that batspeed is increased by steroids - to control the discussion w/r/t the physical impact of steroids. But what you clearly don't understand is that hitting a baseball is MUCH more complicated than you believe it is.

Ultimately, I flat-ass couldn't recognize a breaking ball so I couldn't keep playing; anyone with a show-me curveball would own me. There was no amount of steroids in the world that were going to help me. However, if you're someone that's playing in MLB, or even in the high minors, you're a hell of a good hitter. You can recognize breaking balls and you have good enough hand eye coordination to hit an Aspirin with a broomstick. At that point, the difference between a star and a role-player is purely in the margins.

The additional batspeed generated through the use of PEDs absolutely helps in those margins and absolutely improves a hitter's ability to hit breaking pitches.

If you're trying to make a layperson's response to this, you're not going to be accurate.

This is a better argument.......

This is all I was ever saying.

Correct. And if you can already hit a curveball, then taking something that makes you leaner and faster and stronger SHOULD allow you to hit the ball further, absolutely.

your take it improving fast twitch fibers is wrong. the other stuff you write there, I agree on 100%.

remember this discussion the next time you hurl insults at me. I am not some blow hard macho asshole about this stuff. I am all for intelligent debate.

Thanks.

You missed his point the first half dozen times because you either lack basic reading comprehension skills or you chose to ignore them. Its ridiculous that he had to chew it up for you, partially digest it, and regurgitate it into your gullet in order for you to process it.

Its not like it was a complicated point.

Steroids can increase batspeed.
Increased batspeed improves hitting.

Therefore, steroids improve hitting.

Actually he didn't. He and I were saying the same thing.

Steroids won't let you hit a curve ball. He finally admitted that.

Dumbass.

If a major leaguer can hit a curve ball, and gets stronger, than yes he can swing the bat with more velocity.

But if he can't hit a curve ball, or has trouble hitting certain KINDS of pitches, steroids will not make up for that. Period.

Now go get yer shinebox.

This may or may not have been brought up already BUT.

Jose Bautista has been tested 16 times in the last 2 seasons. 0 positive tests. Braun is 1/1 with an MVP. Go figure.

I'm pretty sure they aren't testing for HGH yet though..

Yup, steroids are completely safe. And you were there for all the post mortems.

If Bautista is taking something, it's something that's probably unknown to the general population and quite undetectable. Not something well-known and relatively ineffective (for a baseball player) like HGH.

Of course, as I've said before, there is zero reason to suspect him of taking something over any other player in baseball.

So its just a coincidence that after baseball started cracking down on steroids, these records have not been approached again. Did baseball players all of a sudden get worse?

I....argh.

We're not saying the same thing. There is no such thing as a major league hitter that can't hit a curve ball. Send Adam Dunn to A ball and he'd hit 80 Hrs off those cruddy curves even if he couldn't hit one with a tennis racket at the ML level. You continue to draw this dichotomy between MLB players and stiffs; that just doesn't make sense.

There are major league hitters that cannot routinely hit a curveball well. Not far mind you, but well. That means as much as a simple linedrive.

Many of these hitters can't hit it because they can't get to the right point in the hitting zone on time. Understand - the bat is actually in the proper hitting spot on a breaking ball for a fraction of a second - not the entire time it's on plane; remember, you swing down on a baseball; it's not just about being on the same lateral plane, but being at one point in time at the exact fraction of a second you're supposed to be there.

If I'm a major leaguer with average batspeed and an average ability to make recognize a breaking pitch, I may hit .230 against an average curveball. That's because I'm having to cheat to catch fastballs and in so doing I have to commit too early and end up hanging myself out. Or because I'm not picking up the spin quite quick enough.

Now if my batspeed improves - I'm going to be able to sit back on the breaking pitch better and not fool myself. I'll also be able to make up for 2nd tier pitch recognition by being faster to and through the zone. That will help me make consistent contact with breaking balls more. It will help me fight them off and live to see a hanger. It will help me line them into center because my timing is more in synch, even with my mediocre batting eye.

I will hit them better. I won't just hit them farther.

As I said in my very first post, the one that I doubt you even got to the end of, it cannot make a bad hitter good (bad being "not major league caliber"; every person that plays Major league ball is a good hitter; it's just a matter of degrees). But it absolutely can make a good hitter better. It has nothing to do with just hitting the ball farther, but with a hitter's ability to wait on pitches as well as their ability to get the bat into the zone better.

If I struggle with sliders because I have to cheat around on fastballs and with added batspeed I no longer have to cheat around on fastballs, then yes, PEDs DO help you hit sliders better. So yes, PEDs DO help you if you struggle with certain kinds of pitches.

Batspeed is second only to hand-eye coordination in hitting. Vladdy has wretched plate-discipline, a piss-poor approach and his balance tends to be irrelevant because he swings at everything, but the man can hit because he has the most freakishly quick wrists I've ever seen, so he can let the ball get in a little more and then snap the bathead through. Notice as he's aged, he suddenly can't hit worth a damn. Not for power, not even for average. It's because the batspeed is gone. Alfonso Soriano was a similar hitter in his prime and his having similar problems now.

You're just yelling that PEDs don't help your hand/eye coordination and claiming that means it doesn't help you become a better hitter, just someone that can hit a ball longer - that's simply not true.

Increasing batspeed helps everything for a hitter. It helps his contact rates, so it increases the number of pitches he sees. If he sees more pitches, he sees more mistakes. It helps him square balls up better because he can get the bat through the zone easier. It helps him drive down on the ball just a little quicker to make up for average pitch recognition. Further, strength helps with control. If the bat 'feels' lighter through added strength, the hitter can control it easier in that they don't have to exert themselves as much to guide it through the zone. When you're not as strained, you're more in synch and more in control.

I'm not sure how much more apparent I can make this - PED's make you a better hitter.

Yes, it can help you hit a curveball. The faster your swing, the later you have to start it. The later you have to start your swing, the longer you have to watch a pitch. The longer you watch a pitch, the more likely you are to accurately identify it as a curve. The more you correctly identify a pitch as a curveball, the better you will be at hitting it.

This isn't string theory.

No, it just suddenly became a pitching era around 2008 (several years after they started drug testing). There are many theories for why that happened, but the biggest is that MLB changed their baseballs once again (probably to fool the fans/media into thinking that their testing was making some kind of a difference).

Here's a bit of reading about MLB's history of doing that:
http://steroids-and-baseball.com/
http://steroids-and-baseball.com/cha...baseball.shtml

Remember that pitchers were using PEDs just as much as hitters were. Wouldn't we expect a dropoff in performance from them without PEDs, too? We certainly haven't seen that at all (at least not since 2007/2008 when offensive levels fell around the game).

The point to take out of all of this, though, is that there are many more factors outside of PED use that can be attributed to both higher and lower offensive levels throughout the game.

This is wrong. But you can't fix stupid.

Explain where I went wrong, smart guy.

Hmmmm....

It is string theory?