Ryan Braun

The regular season is over. Let's take a look at Ryan Braun's year. He plays for the Milwaukee Brewers. He is a former Most Valuable Player. He also has taken performance enhancing drugs. In fact he has been caught twice. The first time he got off on a technicality. This last time he was suspended. This season was his first one back. I'm going to assume he is drug free now, since he has got to figure he is being watched pretty closely by the powers that be. I can't think of anyone else in this position and gives a great chance to look at this scientifically. Usually for those players found cheating, it has been well after the fact and/or they are on the downhill side of their career. That makes sense. That is probably the reason they are taking them in the first place. Ryan Braun is 30 years old. Right in his prime or pretty darn close. So here we have a chance to compare how a player does with and without performance enhancing drugs. Here we go.

Braun was up to bat 530 times in 2014. So, lets take all his previous pharmaceutical years and pro rate them into a 530 at-bat season. How do they compare?

2014 - 141 hits. Performance enhanced years - 165 hits.
2014 - 19 home runs. Performance enhanced years - 30 home runs.
2014 - 81 runs batted in. Performance enhanced years - 97 runs batted in.
2014 - Batting average of of .266. Performance enhanced years - batting average of .311.

The drop off is pretty dramatic. The percent of 2014 to the other years are 85%, 63%, 84%, and 86%, respectively. Overall, let's go with 85%.

In fact, let's just adopt the 85% rule for anyone that we know has taken performance enhancing drugs. Barry Bonds - 85% of 762 home runs is 648. Instead of first place you now trail Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth, and Willie Mays. You don't deserve to be ahead of those players. Some others in the all-time home run top ten list are also cheaters - Alex Rodriguez, Sammy Sosa, and Mark McGuire - and with the 85% rule would not be there. This seems more than fair. Certainly more fair than taking drugs to gain an unfair advantage over clean players.