You can’t find a message board anywhere around the internet that doesn’t spread fallacies about Jason Giambi: That steroids made him the player that he was, and that he hasn’t even approached his pre-2003 numbers.  Well, courtesy of the Baseball Musings Day by Day Database, we can compare Giambi’s numbers over the past year (6/13/05-6/13/16) to the numbers he put up in his prime:

As you can see, Giambi has compensated for his slight drop in average with the best home run and walk rates of his career.  The results are numbers on par with his very best years.  He was still a slightly better player from 2000-2001, but I think that most players would accept that miniscule of a decline in the five years between ages 29-30 and 34-35.  Of course, if we run this table again between July 4^th, 2005 and July 4^th, 2006, we will see numbers equal to the 2000-2001 period, as Giambi had hit 27 of his 32 2005 homers from Independence Day on.

This is by no means proof that steroids did not help Giambi, but it is pretty good evidence that he had the ability to be just as good without them.  Of course, there is the possibility that he simply traded in his tub of steroid cream for a vial of HGH.  Unfortunately, we’ll probably never know for sure whether that’s the case for him or for anyone else.  I will give Jason credit for owning up to what he did and apologizing, rather than pleading ignorance or blaming the local shortstop for handing him a syringe; it makes me suspect that he truly was repentant and is now clean.

But since we have no reason to suspect Giambi of HGH use more than we do anyone else (if a crappy middle reliever had used it, who couldn’t have?), we have to give Giambi his credit as one of the top 100 hitters of all time.  And he’s not all that far off from entering the top 50.