The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2020 Hall of Fame ballot. Originally written for the 2013 election at SI.com, it has been updated to reflect recent voting results as well as additional research. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Like Mark McGwire, his rival in the great 1998 home run chase, Sammy Sosa was hailed at the height of his popularity as a hero, a Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year, and a great international ambassador for baseball. In the same year that McGwire set a new single-season record with 70 home runs, Sosa hit 66 and took home the National League MVP award. Three times in a four-year stretch from 1998 to 2001, he surpassed Roger Maris‘ previously unbreakable mark of 61 homers, and he hit more homers over a five- or 10-year stretch than any player in history. In 2007, he became just the fifth player to reach the 600-home-run milestone after Babe Ruth, Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, and Barry Bonds.

As with McGwire, the meaning of Sosa’s home runs changed once baseball began to crack down on performance-enhancing drugs, with suspicions mounting about his achievements. He was called to testify before Congress in 2005, along with McGwire, Rafael Palmeiro, and several other players. Sosa denied using PEDs, but while he never tested positive once Major League Baseball began instituting penalties for usage, The New York Times reported in 2009 that he was one of more than 100 players who had done so during the supposedly anonymous survey tests six years prior. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2020 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

No less an authority than Sports Illustrated anointed Jason Giambi “The New Face of Baseball” on the cover of its July 17, 2000 edition. At a time when balls were soaring over fences in record numbers, the wet, hulking slugger with his bulging biceps and flaming skull tattoo was midway through a season in which he would hit 43 homers while batting .333/.476/.647. His performance not only garnered him the AL MVP award, it helped the upstart A’s win the AL West.

Having gone through lean times since their 1988-92 heyday, the small-market A’s had returned to contention thanks to their resourcefulness and their signature belief in plate discipline. Giambi, a protégé of Mark McGwire who was blessed with extraordinary eyesight and a cerebral approach that belied his hard-partying persona, was just about the the most disciplined hitter in the game, at least this side of Barry Bonds. In 2000, his 137 walks, .476 on-base percentage, and 187 OPS+ all led the AL. He would hit the trifecta again the next year, with league highs of 129 walks, a .477 on-base percentage, and a 199 OPS+ to go with his 38 homers.

Giambi would remain one of the game’s faces during less happy times as well. In early 2004, two years into his seven-year, $120 million contract with the Yankees, his name surfaced in connection to the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative, which stood accused of distributing PEDs to athletes in several sports. In grand jury testimony that had leaked, Giambi confessed to having injected human growth hormone and testosterone as well as using “the clear” and “the cream,” two undetectable “designer” steroids distributed by BALCO.

Since baseball did not yet have a testing and suspension regimen, Giambi was never punished, but he was cast as a villain for awhile. Unlike so many other high-profile players associated with PEDs, however, he managed to find a way back into the good graces of both fans and the industry after publicly admitting to having used the drugs. He made a non-specific apology in 2005 so as to avoid further legal hassles, but got more specific two years later. The Yankees tried to free themselves of his contract multiple times to no avail, and commissioner Bud Selig threatened to fine and suspend him if he did not speak with former senator George Mitchell for his investigation into the game’s drug problems. Those heavy-handed attempts to shame him instead turned him into something of an antihero. He became a fan favorite all over again in New York, then spent six more seasons bouncing from Oakland to Colorado to Cleveland as a respected clubhouse sage and quasi-coach, finally retiring at age 43 following the 2014 season.

Though he made five All-Star teams, won an MVP award, and hit 440 homers — reaching 20 homers 11 times, 30 homers five times, and 40 homers three times — Giambi doesn’t have strong qualifications for Cooperstown via either traditional or advanced statistics, though he’s not as far off as one might think. He fares much better via WAR and JAWS than this ballot’s other first base/designated hitter types, but that doesn’t mean he’s likely to get enough support even to remain on the ballot, or that he merits it. Note that as with Bonds and McGwire, I don’t see his PED usage as disqualifying, as it’s confined to the period before MLB and the players’ union implemented a testing program.

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The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2020 Hall of Fame ballot. It was initially written for The Cooperstown Casebook, published in 2017 by Thomas Dunne Books, and subsequently adapted for SI.com and then FanGraphs. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

It happened so quickly. Freshly anointed the game’s top prospect by Baseball America in the spring of 1996, the soon-to-be-19-year-old Andruw Jones was sent to play for the Durham Bulls, the Braves’ Hi-A affiliate. By mid-August, he blazed through the Carolina League, the Double-A Southern League, and the Triple-A International League, and debuted for the defending world champions. By October 20, with just 31 regular season games under his belt, he was a household name, not only the youngest player ever to homer in a World Series game — breaking Mickey Mantle’s record — but doing so twice at Yankee Stadium.

Jones was no flash in the pan. The Braves didn’t win the 1996 World Series, and he didn’t win the ’97 NL Rookie of the Year award, but along with Chipper Jones (no relation) and the big three of Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, and John Smoltz, he became a pillar of a franchise that won a remarkable 14 NL East titles from 1991-2005 (all but the 1994 strike season). From 1998-2007, Jones won 10 straight Gold Gloves, more than any center fielder except Willie Mays.

By the end of 2006, Jones had tallied 342 homers and 1,556 hits. He looked bound for a berth in Cooperstown, but after a subpar final season in Atlanta and a departure for Los Angeles in free agency, he fell apart so completely that the Dodgers bought out his contract, a rarity in baseball. He spent the next four years with three different teams before heading to Japan at age 35, and while he hoped for a return to the majors, he couldn’t find a deal to his liking after either the 2014 or 2015 seasons. He retired before his 39th birthday, and thanks to his rapid descent, has barely survived his first two years on the Hall of Fame ballot, with shares of 7.3% and 7.5%.

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Madison Bumgarner is staying in the National League West, but it won’t be with the Giants, the only professional organization he’s ever known. And he’s not joining the Dodgers, the championship-starved, longtime rivals who pursued him after losing out on Gerrit Cole, either. Instead, the 30-year-old lefty will join the rebuilding Arizona Diamondbacks via a five-year, $85 million contract, one that includes $15 million in deferred payments as well as a five-team no-trade clause.

The deal is the fourth-largest for a pitcher this winter after those of Cole (nine years, $324 million with the Yankees), Stephen Strasburg (seven years, $245 million with the Nationals), and Zack Wheeler (five years, $118 million with the Phillies), but it’s well short of the $100 million-plus contract he was reportedly seeking. Indeed, the gap between the third- and fourth-largest deals is strikingly large, particularly given that the two pitchers are similar in age (Bumgarner is 10 months older than Wheeler) and that for our Top 50 Free Agents list, both Kiley McDaniel and the crowd had the two pitchers very close together in terms of their paydays. The teeming masses estimated that both would receive four-year deals at $72 million, with McDaniel estimating $68 million for Wheeler and $64 million for Bumgarner.

It’s not hard to understand the discrepancy. Wheeler was worth a hefty 9.8 WAR over the past two seasons, including offense, with 5.3 (4.7 from pitching) in 2019. Bumgarner was worth 5.2 WAR over that same span, with 3.7 (3.2 from pitching) in 2019. Given his recent performance and the mere 749.1 major league innings under his belt, Wheeler, despite the injuries in his past, is seen as a pitcher who’s still on an upward trajectory, while Bumgarner, with 1,846 innings to his name, may have his best days in the rearview mirror. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2020 Hall of Fame ballot. Originally written for the 2014 election at SI.com, it has been updated to reflect recent voting results as well as additional research. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule, and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Jeff Kent took a long time to find a home. Drafted by the Blue Jays in 1989, he passed through the hands of three teams who didn’t quite realize the value of what they had. Not until a trade to the Giants in November 1996 — prior to his age-29 season — did he really settle in. Once he did, he established himself as a standout complement to Barry Bonds, helping the Giants become perennial contenders and spending more than a decade as a middle-of-the-lineup force.

Despite his late-arriving stardom and a prickly personality that sometimes rubbed teammates and media the wrong way, Kent earned All-Star honors five times, won an MVP award, and helped four different franchises reach the playoffs a total of seven times. His resumé gives him a claim as the best-hitting second baseman of the post-1960 expansion era — not an iron-clad one, but not one that’s easily dismissed. For starters, he holds the all-time record for most home runs by a second baseman with 351. That’s 74 more than Ryne Sandberg, 85 more than Joe Morgan, and 86 more than Rogers Hornsby — all Hall of Famers, and in Hornsby’s case, one from before the expansion era (note that I’m not counting homers hit while playing other positions). Among players with at least 7,000 plate appearances in their career who spent at least half their time at second base, only Hornsby (.577) has a higher slugging percentage than Kent’s .500. From that latter set, only Hornsby (1.010) and another pre-expansion Hall of Famer, Charlie Gehringer (.884), have a higher OPS than Kent (.855). Read the rest of this entry »

SAN DIEGO — In the wake of a record-setting season for total home runs — 6,776, or 1.39 per team per game, an increase of 21.4% relative to last year, and 11.0% relative to the previous record, set in 2017 — on Wednesday morning, Major League Baseball released its long-awaited report from a committee of scientists and Rawlings representatives in their attempt to account for what has happened during the 2017-19 seasons. Shortly afterwards, an eight-member panel consisting of representatives from the committee, Rawlings, and MLB then fielded questions from the media. It was a lot to absorb, even given familiarity with the topic, but the general impression from all that’s been put forth is that MLB and Rawlings don’t have the firmest of grips on their product and its performance.

The full 27-page “Preliminary Report of the Committee Studying Home Run Rates in MLB” (PDF) is highly technical, and worthy of further scrutiny, scientific study, and perhaps skepticism, but a few things came through in the press conference and a cursory trip through the report. First, Rawlings and MLB denied that there’s anything underhanded when it comes to changing the ball. Said President/CEO of Rawlings Michael Zlaket, “We have never been asked to ‘juice’ or ‘de-juice’ a baseball. And we’ve never done anything of the sort. Never would.”

Second, beyond a reiteration of the committee’s 2018 finding (PDF) that the ball-to-ball variability in aerodynamic drag is greater than the year-to-year change in average drag — a consequence, the league and Rawlings maintain, of using a product made of natural materials and constructed in part by hand — is that even the scientists involved in MLB’s committee are still grappling with the complex interplay of factors that affect drag. Seam height plays the biggest role, but hardly the only one. It will take further study to untangle the other factors — work that both Rawlings and MLB say that they’re committed to doing, via the committee. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2020 Hall of Fame ballot. Originally written for the 2013 election at SI.com, it has been updated to reflect recent voting results as well as additional research. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule, and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Roger Clemens has a reasonable claim as the greatest pitcher of all time. Cy Young, Christy Mathewson, Walter Johnson, and Grover Cleveland Alexander spent all or most of their careers in the dead-ball era, before the home run was a real threat, and pitched while the color line was still in effect, barring some of the game’s most talented players from participating. Sandy Koufax and Tom Seaver pitched when scoring levels were much lower and pitchers held a greater advantage. Koufax and 2015 inductees Randy Johnson and Pedro Martinez didn’t sustain their greatness for nearly as long. Greg Maddux didn’t dominate hitters to nearly the same extent.

Clemens, meanwhile, spent 24 years in the majors and racked up a record seven Cy Young awards, not to mention an MVP award. He won 354 games, led his leagues in the Triple Crown categories (wins, strikeouts, and ERA) a total of 16 times, and helped his teams to six pennants and a pair of world championships.

Alas, whatever claim “The Rocket” may have on such an exalted title is clouded by suspicions that he used performance-enhancing drugs. When those suspicions came to light in the Mitchell Report in 2007, Clemens took the otherwise unprecedented step of challenging the findings during a Congressional hearing, but nearly painted himself into a legal corner; he was subject to a high-profile trial for six counts of perjury, obstruction of justice, and making false statements to Congress. After a mistrial in 2011, he was acquitted on all counts the following year. But despite the verdicts, the specter of PEDs won’t leave Clemens’ case anytime soon, even given that in March 2015, he settled the defamation lawsuit filed by former personal trainer Brian McNamee for an unspecified amount.

Amid the ongoing Hall of Fame-related debates over hitters connected to PEDs — most prominently Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, and Sammy Sosa — it’s worth remembering that the chemical arms race involved pitchers as well, leveling the playing field a lot more than some critics of the aforementioned sluggers would admit. The voters certainly haven’t forgotten that when it comes to Clemens, whose share of the vote has approximated that of Bonds. Clemens debuted with 37.6% of the vote in 2013 and only in 2016 began making significant headway, climbing to 45.2% thanks largely to the Hall’s purge of voters more than 10 years removed from covering the game. Like Bonds, he surged above 50% — a historically significant marker towards future election — in 2017, benefiting from voters rethinking their positions in the wake of the election of Bud Selig. The former commissioner’s roles in the late-1980s collusion scandal and in presiding over the proliferation of PEDs within the game dwarf the impact of individual PED users and call into question the so-called “character clause.”

Clemens’ march towards Cooperstown has stalled somewhat in the two years since, as he’s added just 5.4% to reach 59.5%. Whether or not the open letter from Hall of Fame Vice Chairman Joe Morgan pleading with voters not to honor players connected to steroids had an impact, the end result is time run off the clock. He still has a shot at reaching 75% before his eligibility runs out in 2022, but like Bonds, needs to regain momentum.

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Last winter, as Manny Machado and Bryce Harper became the first free agents to reach the $300 million plateau, the Yankees kept their powder dry, deciding both that they had enough depth at those players’ respective positions and enough money spent beyond the Competitive Balance Tax threshold. Despite a considerably more glaring need in their rotation, they bypassed the market’s top free agent pitcher, Patrick Corbin, as well, unwilling to go to a sixth year to secure his services, which ended up selling for $140 million to the Nationals. On Tuesday, the Yankees spent the money they had been squirreling away, agreeing to a nine-year, $324 million contract with 29-year-old righty Gerrit Cole.

The Yankees reportedly outbid the Dodgers, Angels, and multiple mystery teams (possibly the Astros and Giants) for Cole, a pitcher whom they have coveted since selecting him in the first round of the 2008 draft (28th overall), only to lose out to his commitment to attend UCLA. Three year later, he was the first overall pick by the Pirates, for whom he pitched from 2013-17 and helped to two Wild Card berths, before being traded to the Astros for four players in January 2018, just two and a half months after Houston had won its first World Series.

In Houston, Cole reconfigured his arsenal, scrapping his sinker and relying more upon his four-seamer and breaking balls, and ascending into elite territory. Over the past two seasons, only Jacob deGrom and Max Scherzer have outdone his 13.4 WAR and his 2.67 FIP, while only deGrom and Justin Verlander have bettered his 2.68 ERA; no starter in that span has outdone his 37.3% strikeout rate. In 2019, Cole set a record for an ERA qualifier by striking out 39.9% of all hitters while also leading the AL with 326 strikeouts, a 2.50 ERA, a 2.64 FIP, and 7.4 WAR. Not only was he poised to hit the market at the apex of his value to date, he was positioned to hit a trifecta unseen since the winter of 1974-75, when Cy Young winner Catfish Hunter of the three-time defending world champion A’s was suddenly declared a free agent after owner Charlie Finley failed to make deferred annuity payments in a timely fashion as stipulated by his contract. Read the rest of this entry »

Didi Gregorius has a new home, with a familiar manager. On Tuesday, the 29-year-old shortstop agreed to a one-year, $14 million deal with the Phillies, meaning that he’ll reunite with new skipper Joe Girardi, under whom he played from 2015-17 with the Yankees while developing into a strong two-way contributor. The short-term deal gives Gregorius a shot to rebuild his value after a subpar season in which he missed over two months due to a late-2018 Tommy John surgery and then hit for just an 84 wRC+, his lowest mark since his 2012 rookie season. It closes the door on a return to the Yankees, who declined to issue him a $17.8 million qualifying offer, and it’s a relatively low-cost bet on upgrading the Phillies middle infield, where the double-play tandem of Jean Segura and the recently non-tendered César Hernández both underperformed in 2019.

The Amsterdam-born, Curaçao-raised Gregorius had produced just 1.9 WAR in 191 games for the Reds (who signed him in 2007 and brought him to the majors in late ’12) and Diamondbacks (who acquired him in a three-team deal centered around Trevor Bauer in December 2012) before being dealt to the Yankees in December 2014; he arrived as part of a three-team deal that sent Robbie Ray and Domingo Leyba from the Tigers to the Diamondbacks and Shane Greene from the Yankees to Detroit. Given the nearly impossible task of filling the shoes of the just-retired Derek Jeter (to whom former Diamondbacks general manager Kevin Towers had audaciously compared Gregorius in 2012), he proved more than up to the task, quickly illustrating that he could cover far more ground at shortstop than the aging superstar, whose glovework was never his strength. Even with just an 89 wRC+ in 2015, Gregorius was worth a solid 3.1 WAR, 2.9 more than Jeter provided in his final season.

Developing a more pull-oriented approach with more consistent elevation of the ball, Gregorius’ left-handed swing played exceptionally well in Yankee Stadium at a time when balls began soaring out of the park at record rates. From 2016-18, Gregorius hit 72 homers, more than any other shortstop besides Manny Machado (107), Trevor Story (88), and Francisco Lindor (86), and over that span batted .277/.319/.472 (109 wRC+) with 8.8 UZR, and 11.6 WAR, seventh among shortstops. He set career highs with 27 homers, a 122 wRC+ (.268/.335/.494, the last two also highs), an 8.4% walk rate, and 4.7 WAR in 2018, but shortly after the Yankees were eliminated in the Division Series, the team announced he would need surgery on his right elbow.

His 2019 season debut on June 7 came inside of eight months following TJ surgery, making it one of the quickest returns by an infielder. Yet he hit just .238/.276/.441 with 16 homers in 344 PA overall, and just .207/.250/.420 for a 69 wRC+ from August 1 onward, managing just 0.9 WAR. He went 9-for-33 in the postseason, with a grand slam in Game 2 of the Division Series against the Twins.

Via Statcast, Gregorius’ quality of contact wasn’t the issue; he actually hit the ball a bit harder in 2019 than ’18, and in the air with a bit more frequency:

The big difference in his two seasons was what happened when he didn’t make contact. With his chase rate rising from 36.2% to a career-high 41.1%, Gregorius made less contact (67.0%) with pitches outside the zone than ever before, and matched his career high in swinging strike rate (11.4%) while setting a new high in strikeout rate (15.4%) even as his walk rate dipped back to 4.9% — hence the dent in his wOBA. The collection of stats paints a picture of a player who was pressing. Not that he ever admitted to it, but it wouldn’t be hard to understand why, given that Gregorius was attempting to demonstrate he was back to full health and worthy of a long-term contract after missing a good chunk of his walk year; in the spring, talks regarding an extension with New York had been scuttled.

Though Gleyber Torres‘ defensive metrics at shortstop were modest (-2.1 UZR, 1 DRS in 77 games), the Yankees apparently saw enough from him to be comfortable in returning the going-on-23-year-old to his natural position for 2020. Such an alignment would help to alleviate an infield logjam, by making DJ LeMahieu the regular at second base, the position he played while winning three Gold Gloves with the Rockies from 2015-18; he made 66 starts there in 2019, with another 75 at the infield corners. That would leave Luke Voit and Mike Ford to play first base, and Gio Urshela and Miguel Andújar to cover third base, with the latter, who missed nearly all of the 2019 season due to a torn right labrum, possibly subject to a move to first given his brutal defensive showing (-16.0 UZR, -25 DRS) as a rookie in ’18.

As for the Phillies, they recently non-tendered Hernández, who had yielded diminishing returns in recent seasons, declining from highs of 3.8 WAR (2016) and 111 wRC+ (’17) to 1.7 WAR and 92 wRC+ in ’19. While they signed Josh Harrison to a minor league deal late last month, and still have Scott Kingery, man of many positions, the addition of Gregorius — who also reportedly drew interest from the Brewers and Reds — means that the going-on-30-year-old Segura will move from shortstop to second base, where he spent 2016 with the Diamondbacks while setting career highs in WAR (5.0) and wRC+ (126). In 2019, he hit .280/.323/.420 for a 92 wRC+, an 18-point drop from the year before; his WAR dipped from 3.7 to 2.3 despite just a minor decline in defense (from 0.8 to -1.3, though via DRS the drop was from 5 to -5). Having both Segura and Gregorius in the lineup means getting walk rates of around 5% from both middle infielders, which could be a problem for a team on which only Rhys Hoskins and Bryce Harper walked more than 45 times.

Projection-wise, Gregorius is forecast to produce 2.5 WAR via ZiPS and 2.6 via Steamer, a performance that would be well worth the salary and would set the shortstop up for a multiyear deal, though probably nothing on the order of what he could have hoped as he put the finishing touches on his 2018 season. With Segura projected at 2.4 WAR but having recently been worth well more than that, the upside is a pair that could produce about 8 WAR instead of five, which is basically what the Phillies got from all of their second basemen and shortstops combined in 2019 (5.1 total).

The team still has to figure out what to do when it comes to third base, with Maikel Franco also non-tendered after a -0.6 WAR season, and in center field; Kingery will probably figure in the mix at one position or the other, perhaps keeping the hot corner warm for 2018 overall number three pick Alex Bohm, whom general manager Matt Klentak expects to arrive sometime in 2020. The Gregorius signing has reportedly taken the Phillies out of the hunt for Anthony Rendon, though they may still be “interested bystanders” when it comes to Josh Donaldson, which is a more plausible premise for a John Hughes movie featuring an unrequited crush at a high school dance than a major infield upgrade.

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2020 Hall of Fame ballot. Originally written for the 2013 election at SI.com, it has been updated to reflect recent voting results as well as additional research. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule, and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

If Roger Clemens has a reasonable claim as the greatest pitcher of all time, then the same goes for Barry Bonds as the greatest position player. Babe Ruth played in a time before integration, and Ted Williams bridged the pre- and post-integration eras, but while both were dominant at the plate, neither was much to write home about on the base paths or in the field. Bonds’ godfather, Willie Mays, was a big plus in both of those areas, but he didn’t dominate opposing pitchers to the same extent. Bonds used his blend of speed, power, and surgical precision in the strike zone to outdo them all. He set the single-season home run record with 73 in 2001 and the all-time home run record with 762, reached base more often than any player this side of Pete Rose, and won a record seven MVP awards along the way.

Despite his claim to greatness, Bonds may have inspired more fear and loathing than any ballplayer in modern history. Fear because opposing pitchers and managers simply refused to engage him at his peak, intentionally walking him a record 688 times — once with the bases loaded — and giving him a free pass a total of 2,558 times, also a record. Loathing because even as a young player, he rubbed teammates and media the wrong way and approached the game with a chip on his shoulder because of the way his father, three-time All-Star Bobby Bonds, had been driven from the game due to alcoholism. The younger Bonds had his own issues off the field, as allegations of physical and verbal abuse of his domestic partners surfaced during his career.

As he aged, media and fans turned against Bonds once evidence — most of it illegally leaked to the press by anonymous sources — mounted that he had used performance-enhancing drugs during the latter part of his career. With his name in the headlines more regarding his legal situation than his on-field exploits, his pursuit and eclipse of Hank Aaron’s 33-year-old home run record turned into a joyless drag, and he disappeared from the majors soon after breaking the record in 2007 despite ranking among the game’s most dangerous hitters even at age 43. Not until 2014 did he even debut as a spring training guest instructor for the Giants. The reversal of his felony obstruction of justice conviction in April 2015 freed him of legal hassles, and he spent the 2016 season as the Marlins’ hitting coach, though he was dismissed at season’s end.

Bonds is hardly alone among Hall of Fame candidates with links to PEDs. As with Clemens, the support he has received during his first seven election cycles has been far short of unanimous, but significantly stronger than the showings of Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, and Rafael Palmeiro, either in their ballot debuts or since. Debuting at 36.2% in 2013, Bonds spun his wheels for two years before climbing to 44.3% in 2016 and 53.8% in 2017 thanks to a confluence of factors. In the wake of both Bonds and Clemens crossing the historically significant 50% threshold, the Hall — which in 2014 unilaterally truncated candidacies from 15 years to 10 so as to curtail debate over the PED-linked ones — made its strongest statement yet that it would like to avoid honoring them in the form of a plea to voters from vice chairman Joe Morgan not to honor players connected to steroids. The letter was not well received by voters, but in the two cycles since, Bonds has gained just 5.3 percentage points. Like Clemens, he needs to recapture his momentum to have a shot at reaching 75% by the time his eligibility runs out in 2022.

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