It seems legitimate to me to wonder how much PEDs actually work - how much they actually improve performance.
In that vein consider the following piece by FOBPR Bill James. In it, James comes up with a method of rating the most unusual careers in baseball history by assigning point values to a variety of very unusual achievements (having more triples than doubles, a higher OBP than SP, etc.).
James uses 10 categories, five of which relate to a baseball players’ normal prime (72 percent of all prime seasons occur between the ages 24 and 30. Those five:
1. Establishing a new season high in HRs at 31 or later;
2. Increasing or decreasing HR rate after one’s 500th career game;
3. An “off-prime” season OPS 100 pts. higer or lower than career norm;
4. An off-prime peak season in the Triple Crown stats;
5. Establishing a new season high in HRs after 500th career game.
Barry Bonds ranks first in each of these categories except #4, and that only because Met Ott put together a .328-42-151 season at age 20, before the prime; the second-, third- and fourth-best season in history in #4 are all by Bonds. In #3 Bonds has the first, second and eighth-ranked seasons and two other apparent juicers, Sammy Sosa and Luis Gonzalez, are in the top 10.
The following are the combined point totals over all 10 categories James chose:
| Rank | Player | Pl Tot |
| 1 | Barry Bonds | 1974 |
| 2 | Mark McGwire | 803 |
| 3 | Sammy Sosa | 521 |
| 4 | Babe Ruth | 511 |
| 5 | Roy Thomas | 393 |
| 6 | Yank Robinson | 323 |
| 7 | Max Bishop | 303 |
| 8 | Andres Galarraga | 293 |
| 9 | Ken Griffey Jr. | 293 |
| 10 | Luis Gonzalez | 288 |
| 11 | Rogers Hornsby | 288 |
| 12 | Cy Williams | 283 |
| 13 | Jack Crooks | 278 |
| 14 | Rafael Palmeiro | 268 |
| 15 | Brady Anderson | 262 |
| 16 | Hank Aaron | 246 |
| 17 | Eddie Yost | 244 |
| 18 | Willie Keeler | 240 |
| 19 | Gene Tenace | 237 |
| 20 | Ken Caminiti | 237 |
| 21 | Albert Belle | 237 |
| 22 | Jack Clark | 228 |
| 23 | Edgar Martinez | 227 |
| 24 | Willie McCovey | 222 |
| 25 | Juan Gonzalez | 212 |
Bonds has more than twice as many points as the guy in second place, and nearly quadruple the points of everyone else. And this is everyone else, every player in the 120-plus year history of major league baseball. And this despite the fact that Bonds gets zero points in several of James’ categories, simply because they don’t have anything to do with Bonds.
Consider also that Mark McGwire finishes second, Sammy Sosa third and Juan Gonzalez 10th.
Understand that James wasn’t writing about PEDs or the Steroid Era, and wasn’t trying to make a point about Bonds. Still…
