Because of the now-saturated steroid talk about Alex Rodriguez, there is likely some small sector of fans that doubt whether Rodriguez has achieved any of his personal accomplishments without the aid of las drogas. I suppose that’s fair. That’s how trust works. Ruin it once, and it throws everything else into question. I get it.

Thing is, that’s not really how steroids work, at least not in the case of Alex Rodriguez. The numbers suggest that A-Rod would still be on his 800-home run pace even without the steroids. From J.C. Bradbury:

So, what were A-Rod’s steroids worth? 2.37 home runs over two seasons, or a little over one home run a season. At least, that is the estimate based on the method I laid out above; however, it’s probably best to say that there was no observed effect. It is possible that the steroids did give Rodriguez a boost, and this may have helped him through an injury or some other factor that my estimate does not account for. It’s also likely that he hit more home runs than expected through random chance. Given the general swings in the play of the game, it is very difficult to separate true performance changes from random swings in performance. The deviation here isn’t large enough to say much.

Bradbury sort of covers this, but it’s worth driving home: When looking at Rodriguez’s numbers, it’s important to remember that he was playing in Arlington. That’s a hitters park. As ESPN the Mag’s Paul Kix points out, A-Rod’s home-road splits in his time at Texas favored his at-bats at home:

In 1998-2000, A-Rod was a Mariner, and he hit 51 dingers at home and 74 on the road.

From 2001-2003, by contrast, A-Rod was a banned-substance-using Texas Ranger. And, yes, while he hit 86 home runs at home, he only hit 70 on the road. If he’s juicing for more power, how come the juice doesn’t help him anywhere but suburban Dallas?

Rodriguez, for all of his personal faults, isn’t Brady Anderson. He didn’t juice up for a few years, start cranking line drive homers at an incredible rate, and then level back off into a contact hitter with mediocre power. He’s pretty much always been awesome. At everything. The marginal effect of steroids on someone as talented as A-Rod doesn’t amount to much. It’s like giving Shakespeare better ink.