he listed three things of which two have already existed for a very long time. Specialty relievers and advanced data/film on hitters has been available for a really long time no matter how you look at it >_>
No they haven't. What are you talking about? Never has there been a time where pitchers would enter a game, retire a batter, and then leave with a congratulatory pat on butt. Starters back in the day would pitch until they were no longer effective, and how many pitches they threw never dictated whether they would leave the game or not. Even when relievers came in, they would regularly go 3-4 innings at a time. How often do we get pitchers today asked to get any more than three outs? Go find me specialty relievers from the 70's and 80's (don't actually try it, because you can't do it). And when I say "back in the day" I'm not even going back 100 years. Pitch counts weren't a big deal until a decade or do ago.*
Easily accessible spray charts, heat zones, and pitch data have NOT been available for a long time. Today's technology allows us to break down the game into the barebones; to every pitch, every flight trajectory of a ball in play, every behavior of a ground ball, and while you had a general sense of which pitching and defensive methods were more effective against certain hitters, never before did you have a quantifiable statistic of just how effective they were. The vast amounts of defensive shifts we see in today's game have not been present until recently, and more emphasis has been placed on pitcher's being effective in short bursts.*
Besides, steroids and PED's aren't a new toy, and they aren't magical beans. Even with the alleged use of steroids (Bonds has never tested positive for the drug), he and the other poster boys for steroids, Arod et al, we're light years above everyone else. Did they have better steroids than everyone else? How come when Bonds was in Pittsburgh and Arod in Seattle, before the two were linked to any PED's, they were already Hall of Fame caliber players? Do steroids improve hand eye coordination, reaction time, swing mechanics, and pitch recognition (hint: it doesn't)? Those aspects are all far more important to hitting than raw strength. Just go look at all the names ever busted for PED's, and you'll see numerous slap hitters and career minor leaguers who never made a name for themselves with their production. Those types of players are in far more abundance than the Mark McGwires and Sammy Sosas of the world. *Besides, where was all the hoopla when folks like Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, and Mike Schmidt were pumping their bodies with amphetamines?*
