Why Does No One Suspect Randy Johnson of Steroid Use?

I'm not saying he did steroids. I just think it's weird no one else is. One of the main markers of steroid use, people think, one of the only things that actually shows up in the empirical record is that they allow players to remain effective later into their careers. Traditionally baseball players would start declining around the age of 30 to 33, and then drop off sharply after something like 35. During the Steroid Era, players were staying successful into their forties. So here's a career trajectory comparison between two of the best pitchers of the 90s and 2000s: Randy Johnson and Pedro Martinez. Let's look at each of them through the age of 28 and then after the age of 29:

Young Pedro: 125 W, 56 L, 1576.1 IP, 2.68 ERA, 168 ERA+, 10.4 K/9, 2.5 BB/9, 6.7 H/9, 38.5 WAA, 52.0 WAR

Pedro through his age 28 season was historically dominant. Actually, his age 28 season itself was historically dominant, as his ERA was less than half that of the next lowest qualifier in the AL.

Old Pedro: 94 W, 44 L, 1251.0 IP, 3.23 ERA, 139 ERA+, 9.6 K/9, 2.3 BB/9, 7.5 H/9, 22.9 WAA, 34.0

That's... not much of a decline. He was a bit worse, but still pitched at a Hall of Fame level. What he didn't do, though, was pitch for very long. Well less than half his career was after his age 29 season.

Young Randy: 49 W, 48 L, 818.0 IP, 3.95 ERA, 101 ERA+, 9.0 K/9, 5.7 BB/9, 7.1 H/9, 0.1 WAA, 7.6 WAR

During the same part of his life when Pedro was rocketing to stardom, Randy Johnson was... okay? Average-ish? His strikeout and hit rates showed promise, but he was walking batters like his name was Oliver Perez.

Old Randy: 254 W, 118 L, 3317.1 IP, 3.13 ERA, 146 ERA+, 11.0 K/9, 2.7 BB/9, 7.3 H/9, 68.1 WAA, 96.7 WAR

Randy Johnson had a Hall of Fame career entirely after his age-28 season. And not even a borderline one, a greatest-of-the-great one. It's a good thing, too, 'cause he might as well not have been in the league until age 29 at all. Unsurprisingly, he's second all time in WAR after the age of 29 to Cy Young; Phil Niekro, knuckleballer extraordinaire, is third. He was 880th in WAR up to age 28. Yeah.

Now, there's a perfectly good explanation for why 28-year-old Randy Johnson had never been anything but a mediocre pitcher but 29+-year-old Randy Johnson was one of the most dominant pitchers of all time: he figured out his control. He always had the unhittable, strikeout stuff, but as Sandy Koufax will tell you, that only matters once you figure out how to throw it in the zone. Still, he did the same thing Bonds and Clemens and Palmeiro did. Actually, he did it even moreso: he had the most WAR of any player in baseball over the age of 35 from 1994 on. Yeah, including Bonds. Together they have a big lead over Clemens, and he's a ways in front of #4 on the list, Jamie Moyer. (Who, uh, wasn't doing steroids, I don't think.) So why, of the three people who put up more than 40 WAR after the age of 35 in the steroid era, is Randy Johnson exempt from suspicion? No one elsee seems to be. Well, that's not quite right: various people seem to be, like Frank Thomas, for no articulable reasons. But it cannot be denied that Randy Johnson had exactly the lack of age-related decline thought to be distinctive of steroid use. That's more evidence than we have on Piazza or Bagwell.

The Dominant Club

Baseball pitchers are supposed to get outs while avoiding runs, and the way to avoid runs is to avoid baserunners. The standard way to generate a baserunner is through a walk or a hit. The most dominant way to avoid a baserunner is via the strikeout. To be good, then, pitchers would like to strike lots of batters out while allowing very few hits or walks. But here's an interesting thing: almost no one in Major League Baseball history has managed to strike out more batters over their careers than they have allowed to reach base on a hit or a walk. As best I can tell, in all of MLB history only two starting pitchers have done this over the course of a whole career. Randy Johnson gave up 3346 hits and issued 1497 walks, a total of 4843, and he struck out 4875 batters, for a difference of +32. Pedro Martinez, the best starting pitcher ever in my opinion, allowed 2221 hits and 760 walks for a total of 2981 such baserunners, and he struck out 3154 men, for a difference of +173. No one else has ever maintained this feat over a whole career as a starting pitcher.