Wow, how refreshing! I think the steroid era of baseball is one of the most fascinating dynamics in sports history. Eric, you definitely would have more money in the bank if you had used.
I spent a few years in the late 90s calculating the optimum split between hitting and pitching, and even the splits between the individual categories, by calculating return on investment. It is easy to determine the precise value that players earn in hindsight. If you were to actually draft a league after the season is over (which is quite fun partly because you get to know the winner right away), the split is 50/50. But buying players in the future is a different story. Can't really get into the methodology here, but in order for pitchers and hitters to return the same total value, I calculated that you needed to spend 68% on hitting and 32% on pitching. At the time, most leagues were closer to 60/40, so I was an advocate for spending more on hitting. This may be slightly different now, that was the steroid era, and it was 4x4, but the market seems to have settled close to that value now.
I still play 4x4. Slightly less money is spent on pitching than in 5x5. The biggest difference is that closers and setup men are more expensive and starters are cheaper. In 4x4 you can drive three categories (without completely punting wins) with 3 starters, 2-3 closers, and 4 setup men, who often win 5-6 games because they appear in so many tie games. Which means there are lots of good starters left over for a $1-$2. Some of that savings goes to closers, a little to top notch setup men, and some to hitting.
As soon as you add K's, then your mix is more like 6 starters and 2-3 closers. Otherwise you have to punt K's.
The trend even in 4x4 has been that closers have gotten cheaper I think because they have gotten less reliable. Back in the day, top notch closers went for $35, top starters for $20. These days, top notch closers are $25, closer to 5x5 prices.
I don't know how you do it, but just do it! I was at the Rockies/Diamondback game last Thursday afternoon and three hours into the game it was still the bottom of the 4th. I wanted to kill myself. I'd already drank my budgeted $473 worth of beer (3). Three hours with dad is better than five and half hours with dad, at the old, ball, game.
Russell, going to miss your odd angles.
From the graph: Hitters peak age increased two years from 1980 to 1990, 28.5 to 30.5. Is this steroids? (Hitters born in 1960 and 1970 respectively.)
Hitters born in 1980 is not shown. If steroids increased the peak age for hitters, I would expect a peak at hitters born in 1980. Is this data available?
I\'d like to hear more about the \"meme\" around the steroid impact on performance by age during the late 90\'s, 2000. I have asked this question several times and have never seen a response. Seems like this wouldn\'t be too hard to quantify with all the data available and incredibly talented people at BP.
I would expect to see a graph where peak performance years rises throughout the late 90\'s and 2000, and then begins to drop down 2004 or so. Please?
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