The Curious Case of Shawn Green

"As everyone else was gettin' stronger as they was gettin' older, I seemed to be gettin' weaker..."

Recently, I was having a discussion with someone from my work about Shawn Green (seriously). We all remember Shawn and his power hitting ways of the late 1990's and early 2000's. He burst on the scene north of the border as a power/speed threat, and quickly turned himself into one of the league's elite run producers of the latter half of the decade. But after a good run, something weird happened. He slowly started to get worse. It was something us baseball fans have not been accustomed to recently. It was unexplainable - he just started to not hit as well, and not hit as many homers, and not drive in as many runs as he used to. You see, when someone is good they stay good for a long, long, long time...right? So something had to be up.

Knowing that I'm a Mets fan, this co-worker sought me out and asked, "What ever happened to that guy?"

My reply was, "He didn't take steroids. He got old."

You see, we've been conditioned to believe that something otherworldly must have taken place to account for Green's steady decline. The way his career progressed, and subsequently ended, just didn't seem, well, what's the word...natural.

Let's do some very rudimentary statistical analysis:

AGE/HR/RBI/SLUG

• 1995 - 22/15/54/.509
• 1996 - 23/11/45/.448
• 1997 - 24/16/53/.469
• 1998 - 25/35/100/.510
• 1999 - 26/42/123/.588
• 2000 - 27/24/99/.472*
• 2001 - 28/49/125/.598
• 2002 - 29/42/114/.558
• 2003 - 30/19/85/.460
• 2004 - 31/28/86/.459
• 2005 - 32/22/73/.477
• 2006 - 33/15/66/.432
• 2007 - 34/10/46/.430

*note - 2000 was the first year of his big deal in LA and I guess he was "trying to do too much", which is the most reasonable explaination for his numbers being a bit lower than the year before and after

When you glance at the numbers quickly, what do you discover? You see that his career can be divided up into three distinct sections: his early increase in skills/ability, his 'prime' and his 'decline'. Hmm, very curious. I thought that once a player reached his 'prime', he just continued on at that pace until he decided he no longer wished to unleash his talents on the world? That doesn't seem to be the case here, though. Again, something strange is going on...

Oh, now I remember. All those guys that were capable of playing above and beyond normal ability were on 'roids! When mortal men age they gradually get slower and less agile and lose some of their youthful ability and responsiveness. That means they can't get as many hits. I guess Shawn didn't take steroids. Good for him.