this is dumb. john olerud hit 255 career home runs and had a marked decline after his age 33 season, just like every player ever who was not on steroids

and for a player like olerud, "forgetting" isn't sufficient...

All that adds up, according to Baseball Reference, to 53.7 career wins above replacement and 27.4 wins above average. Those are borderline Hall of Fame numbers, and probably slightly on the wrong side of the border. But keep in mind, WAR is an adjusted-for-league-average stat. And Olerud was playing in a league full of cheaters, like McGwire and Palmeiro and Sosa and Bonds. They make his adjusted numbers, which are already on the borderline for Hall consideration, look worse than they should be. And he was playing in a league full of cheaters like Roger Clemens, who he faced 107 times, more than any other pitcher, and against whom he hit just .205/.335/.373. So, first, Olerud's numbers are worsened because a good chunk of the pitchers he faced were cheating, and second his numbers get worsened again in the adjustment process because he gets compared to other hitters who were cheating. What that means, I think, is that if you want to try to pretend the steroid thing never happened, i.e. to imagine that all the cheating players just hadn't been there, John Olerud has a pretty strong Hall of Fame case.