Ryan Braun and Steroids

Ryan Braun is an outfielder for the Milwaukee Brewers. He won the MVP award in 2011. At the end of that season he was accused by Major League Baseball of taking steroids. However, he got off on a technicality. He was accused again in 2013. This one stuck and he was suspended for the rest of the season. That time he admitted it and took his punishment. He has played almost two full seasons since his suspension.

What is interesting in Braun's case is that he is still in the prime of his career. He is 31 years old. Many that have been accused of taking steroids were near the end of their career. If they did come back from a suspension, a decrease in their statistics could be because they are no longer using steroids or just because of father time. A decrease in Braun's statistics would seemingly be due only to him now playing clean.

To compare his statistics pre and post-suspension would be an interesting exercise. It wouldn't be helpful to look at the totals as he played almost seven seasons before the suspension and only two seasons after. However, you could translate those time periods into single 600 at-bat seasons. That is what I did. You can do so by looking at the grand totals and setting up proportions. Also helpful in this exercise is knowing that the definition of batting average is the number of hits divided by the at-bats.

Algebra students would have plenty of opportunity here to review proportions. Let me just skip the messy stuff and go right to the final stats.

Pre-Suspension Statistics:
At-bats 600, Runs 104, Hits 187, Doubles 38, Home Runs 34, RBIs 110, Batting Average .312

Post-Suspension Statistics:
At-bats 600, Runs 90, Hits 166, Doubles 33, Home Runs 26, RBIs 96, Batting Average .277

You could then ask students what they make of these statistics. Some, perhaps with some leading by you, might suggest looking at the percentage decrease. This turns out to be quite interesting. You can easily make the claim that a player is 86 to 87% as effective without using steroids. At least that seems to be the case with Braun in pretty much every area. I've compare post to pre-suspension statistics and changed them into percentages. Check this out:

Runs 87%, Hits 89%, Doubles 87%, Home Runs 76%, RBIs 87%, Batting Average 89%. Its kind of surprising these numbers are all in the same ballpark, so to speak.

Anyway this might make a good review of proportions, takes a topic they've all heard about, and gets students to do some statistical analysis.