dino -
I'm not going to cut-and-paste al your posts, but I's like to offer some comments. First, let me say I have no doubt people were juicing - I'm not an apologist, wanted to get that out there. Now, having said that:
- steroids have been proven to promote healing. One thing they do NOT do is promote core strength, which anyone who has ever swung a bat above Little League can tell you is where power comes from.
- big strapping arms are of little benefit for power. If they were, everyone would get them even without supplements (ever seen Frank Howard, Boog Powell, etc.). All the power hitters would be at the gym bulking up their Popeyes - which they're not.
- starting in the '80s we saw reductions in scouting and development budgets. It's a lot easier to identify and develop batters than pitchers. The result: more offense.
- concurrently there was a switch in mindset to offense over defense as it is more exciting to most fans, and baseball was losing fan base. The result: more offense.
- with that as well, we saw the onset of the throwback, bandbox ballparks (and, though not a bandbox definitely an offensive juggernaut, Coors Field). The result: more offense. Which also means your analogy to the NBA is specious. A basketball court is constant; baseball parks are not. Even from season to season parks are tweaked (and players change teams). Therefore individual performance can vary - even dramatically, when other factors are taken into account - in a year.
- I have never seen a study that confirms power numbers were up due to steroids. Power numbers are more than home runs: move the fences in five feet and home runs go up; that has nothing to do with an individual's power hitting ability. Allow for other factors such as the above and look at power, not just HRs (unless you are suggesting that every hit improved by steroids is a home run) and the numbers for the 'steroid era' are not out of whack.
- the fact multiple players improved at once actually belies the argument. Maris wouldn't have hit 61 without Mantle's 54 (and I don't recall anyone crying 'substance abuse' over the power surge of the '50s). The single outlier like George Foster's 52 in 1977, 27% more than the second place homer hitter while playing in a pitcher's park, is more suspicious. BTW, I'm not accusing George of anything.
So yes, players used steroids. To what effect is up for debate; my feeling is the impact was negligible except to the extent it enabled players to remain healthy/heal more quickly. Now, this doesn't take into account the placebo effect: if they thought juicing helped, it did. Can't quantify irrationality.