I feel there is a real failure of the sabermetric community for not quantifying the impact of many of the changes in the steroid era such as smaller parks, maple bats, juiced balls (even Tango agrees the ball was livelier) and smaller strike zones. The few studies I have seen have been weak.
There is a perception that the inflated offense was due primarily to the steroid use of a handful of players known or suspected to have used, and statistically that’s not possible.
When you consider that Tony Gwynn at age 37 and 38 had career highs in HR then something besides steroids was going on. Consider also the drastic jump that occurred almost overnight in the early 90′s. The distribution of HR’s hit shifted to the right so guys who used to hit single figure HR were hitting HR in the teens, tens to twenties, twenties to thirties, etc. BABIP likewise jumped across the board.
If this becomes clearer, folks will be more likely to discount steroid use. Especially if they were to become aware that the number of players who used steroids was likely far higher than the number of known suspects and not limited to HR hitters or power pitchers. It was probably across the board so much so that using was not cheating as much as leveling the playing field.
Right now there is a perception that steroids caused more of an effect than they probably did. And while there is no question individuals benefited, how much was from the steroids alone and how much the motivation that caused them to use steroids which also meant spending more time in the gym during the offseason.
Since steroid testing began, has anyone noticed players getting smaller? HR’s being hit shorter distances? Pitchers velocities dropping? Sure, HR are down and so is offense, but that could be attributed to a less livelier ball (the specs are so large the difference in how far a ball travels in the 400 ft test at the high and low end of the spec is 50 ft).
MLB has sought to encourage the belief that steroids were the root cause of the jump, but that’s probably to cover up their juicing the ball to increase attendance and revenues.