Archive for Barry Bonds

For the next five minutes, convince yourself that Barry Bonds retired following the 1998 season. Perhaps he suffered a bad injury in the offseason prior to spring training in 1999. Maybe he got tired of playing baseball and wanted to become a farmer. Make up whatever fantastic story you want to about his life after 1998 — just don’t have it include playing major league baseball.

We’re focusing on 1998, of course, because that’s the final year Bonds was considered “clean” by most sources. For our purposes, I’m not going to try to pinpoint specific months or dates: 1999 was the first season Bonds had Greg Anderson as a full time personal trainer, the man who supposedly introduced him to certain PEDs, and there are books written about this subject that can inform a reader on specific timing far better than I can here. For today, the offseason after the 1998 is the delineating line.

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It’s the winter of 1998. K-Ci & JoJo are on the top of the charts with “All My Life.” In theaters, You’ve Got Mail reigns supreme. When the news of Barry Bonds’ retirement breaks, newspaper columns talk about how incredible his 13-year career was — often juxtaposed to the outsized personality he showed in the clubhouses of the Pirates and Giants. SportsCenter is particularly watchable, and Stuart Scott and Rich Eisen reflect on what might have been: about how, if only he were able to play for a few more years, Bonds could have been the first player in baseball history to hit 500 home runs and steal 500 bases. What an honor to have been able to watch this guy play, they say to the camera.

Following the sudden shock of his retirement, writers and analysts turn to another subject: Bonds’ Hall of Fame chances. They tally his counting statistics through the 1998 season and compare them against every player since 1871:

Given the exceptional power and speed numbers, as well as his stellar defense, Bonds has the statistics to get into Cooperstown on one of his first few tries. However, there is one issue that raises a flag for voters: his character. Always making the game about himself, Bonds’ history is littered with showing up coaches, arguing about his contracts, and always needing to to be the center of attention. After a couple years of not getting in, comparisons to Dick Allen’s situation starts to surface, but finally — after Bonds has paid his character penance — he’s voted in. A few years later, analysts run the numbers on the best players in history up to their age-34 season with a new metric, Wins Above Replacement. Bonds is the 12th-best player in baseball history up to 1998 by WAR for players aged 34 and under, and he ends up 19th overall with no age cap.

Even though he retired with seemingly so much left to give on the field (he put up 8.5 WAR in his final season, 1998), Bonds is a clear Hall of Famer.

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Barry Bonds last played in a major league game in 2007. Eight years later, he is now reportedly preparing to file a grievance against Major League Baseball, contending that MLB and its teams improperly colluded to prematurely drive him from the game.

As you may recall, back in 2007 Bonds hit an impressive .276/.480/.565 during his age-43 season, all while setting MLB’s all-time career home run record by hitting his 756th career HR in August. And although Bonds was projected to post a .380 wOBA for the 2008 season, he nevertheless went unsigned that off-season, effectively ending his major league career. This despite the fact that he had even gone so far as to offer to play for the league minimum salary (set at the time at $390,000 per year).

These relatively suspicious circumstances caused many to speculate that MLB’s teams conspired together to drive Bonds from the game. Indeed, both Bonds’ agent (Jeff Borris) and the Major League Baseball Players Association expressed concern at the time that MLB clubs had jointly agreed not to sign Bonds, with the MLBPA announcing after the 2008 season that it had found evidence of improper collusion. Despite all of this, however, Bonds and the union ultimately decided at the time not to officially charge MLB’s franchises with collusion, instead reaching an agreement with MLB to postpone any grievance against the league until Bonds had resolved his then-pending criminal charges relating to his alleged perjury and obstruction of justice during the federal BALCO investigation.

Fast-forward to last month, when the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed Bonds’ criminal conviction for obstruction of justice. With Bonds’ criminal troubles now all but behind him – technically, prosecutors are still considering whether to file a long-shot, last-ditch appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court – he is now once again returning his attention to potentially filing a grievance against MLB. So does Bonds has any chance of winning a case against the league, and if so, what might he stand to gain from charging its teams with collusion?

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In discussing Thursday how Jose Bautista has been, without question, the best and most valuable player in the American League this year, the topic of where his first “half” ranks historically was raised. Bautista played 84 games through the break and tallied 6.6 wins above replacement. Last year, he finished with 6.9 WAR in an excellent breakout campaign. He essentially matched his production from a year ago in half of a season.

Nobody else is even close to him this season either — it would actually take the combined WAR totals of Adrian Gonzalez and Jay Bruce, an MVP candidate and an All-Star, to match his singular productivity. But where does his 6.6 WAR total through the first half of the season rank?

According to our splits data and the yeoman work of David Appelman, Bautista’s 6.6 WAR is the second-highest total since the 1974 season. That was the first year in the sample given the full availability of detailed event information on a game-by-game basis. Babe Ruth produced insane totals in 1920 (14.1), 1921 (14.4), 1923 (15.4) and 1927 (13.2) but we don’t have the capability of determining his totals through the same period.

In any event, here are the top four WAR totals through July 10 in a given year from 1974-2011:

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As long as Jose Bautista continues to hit like this it is our duty to write articles in his honor. Earlier in the week Dave Cameron analyzed how much of a bargain Bautista’s 5 yr/$65 mil extension with the Blue Jays will represent even if he sustains just a semblance of his current performance. Dave also offered up a pu pu platter of statistical nuggets summarizing Jose’s nutty season. Today I’ll look at where Bautista’s rise to superstardom ranks historically to answer the titular question.

We all know the man can hit. In just 35 games he has 4.0 WAR to his name, slashing .360/.509/.816 and with 16 home runs in the process. His rest of season ZiPS projection is .267/.388/.567, which is better than most players are hitting right now. Seriously, his regression-riddled wOBA for the rest of the season is .419 — only six players currently boast a mark greater than that.

Everything about his turnaround defies logic. This isn’t the case of an upper echelon prospect like Brandon Wood figuring something out. Bautista was always patient at the plate and played decent defense, but he was the epitome of a player whose value was linked directly to his team-controlled status. He was a stopgap solution, a non-tender candidate, not a stud in the making. He wasn’t going to make $65 million in his entire career, and now that amount over five years is considered a massive bargain. But is his drastic improvement unprecedented? In the annals of baseball history, has anyone ever improved as much and as quickly?

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It’s obvious that Jason Heyward’s .277/.393/.456 debut was impressive, especially since it came at the tender age of 20. When it comes to his walks, it was just a hair short of record-breaking. His 91 walks last year were the the third most walks in a debut since 1960. Heyward will obviously be a boon to his team if only for that great walk rate, but are there are any other players that broke in with similar plate discipline stats that can show us a similar debut and can therefore tell us something about Heyward’s possible future development path? Or is Heyward unique?

Well, there is a player in the news right now that might just be somewhat comparable: Jeff Bagwell. Bagwell may have to wait to get into the Hall, but he debuted with 75 walks at 23 years old. That’s the most walks in a rookie season put forward by a player younger than 23 since 1985 (other than Heyward’s of course). We also know, with the benefit of hindsight, that walks would feature greatly in his game going forward, as he steadily upped his contribution in the category from 75 to a peak of 149 in 1999. His plate discipline came well-formed and was refined over time, and the similarity seems to suggest that Heyward will have many .400+ OBPs – Bagwell had seven, with two more over .397.

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Yesterday, we talked about the possibility that Albert Pujols is in the midst of his best season, but that his performance has gone largely unnoticed due to our general expectation that he will be, well, awesome. In the discussion thread, one of the topics mentioned involved how we, as fans, are desensitized to Pujols’ 1.100+ OPS primarily due to the absolutely ridiculous seasons of Barry Bonds from 2001-04. With that in mind, I’d like to remind those that have forgotten exactly what the much-maligned Bonds did in this four-year span.

First, just a general look at some of his numbers:

Year    GP     2B     HR     BB     K      BA/OBP/SLG      OPS
2001    153    32     73    177    93    .328/.515/.863   1.379
2002    143    31     46    198    47    .370/.582/.799   1.381
2003    130    22     45    148    58    .341/.529/.749   1.278
2004    147    27     45    232    41    .362/.609/.812   1.422

His slash line in this entire span was .349/.559/.809, which resulted in an OPS of 1.368, a good 300 points ahead of second-place Todd Helton. Each component of that slash line led the major leagues in this span as well. Bonds posted an OPS+ of 256 in these four years, way ahead of Albert Pujols’s 167.

We all know the walks are just mind-boggling, as are the intentional free passes, but Bonds did not strike out much in his actual qualifying at-bats either. It was literally frightening to face him from 2001-04 and teams counteracted this fright by just conceding an open base (or even letting him go to first when the base was occupied) and hoping to retire the subsequent batters.

His WPA/LI counts in these years: 13.04, 11.96, 8.92, 10.87. Yes, they led the league each year, by quite the large margin as well. The closest year came in 2003, when Albert Pujols still finished over 1.5 wins lesser than Bonds.

Looking at these years from an all-time perspective, his OPS numbers in each season ranks amongst the top eight of all time, with his 2004 season ranking first. The 2002 season ranks third, 2001 ranks fourth, and 2003 ranks eighth. Babe Ruth occupies spots #2, 5, and 6, with Ted Williams claiming seventh place. Now, you might be inclined to think that Ruth’s OPS+ would be much higher given that the offense “back in the day” wasn’t as good as it is now, but you would be wrong.

In actuality, Bonds’ OPS+ in 2002, 2004, and 2001 rank #1, 2, and 3 on the all-time list, with his 2003 season coming in at #9. In my estimation, this is hands down the greatest four-season stretch of offense in the history of the sport.

I’ll close by reiterating something RJ Anderson at Beyond the Box Score showed not too long ago. The WARP3 (Wins Above Replacement Player) of the average Hall of Fame hitter is 118.2. The WARP3 of Barry Bonds is 236.4. Barry Bonds makes the average Hall of Fame hitter look like a replacement player.

As every baseball fan not living under a rock knows, Ken Griffey Jr. hit his 600th home run last night, putting him in a category with just Barry Bonds, Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth, Willie Mays, and Sammy Sosa. Griffey is currently being managed by Dusty Baker, who previously managed Bonds and Sosa and played alongside Aaron, which is eerily interesting in its own right.

Griffey did not play in much of the Reds/Phillies four game series last week, while stuck on 599, but between 599 and 600 he remained pretty productive, posting the following milestone tweener numbers:

Griffey Between: 6-14, 3 2B, 9 BB, .429/.652/.643, 1.295 OPS

With that in mind I decided to take a look at how the 600 Club sans-Ruth performed in between certain milestones.

Willie Mays: 599 on 9/15/69, 600 on 9/22/69
Between: 7-21, 2B, 2 RBI, .333/.391/.381

Sammy Sosa: 599 on 6/15/07, 600 on 6/20/07
Between: 0-13, 5 K

Barry Bonds: 599 on 8/6/02, 600 on 8/9/02
Between: 3-8, 2B, 5 BB, .375/.700/.500

Barry Bonds: 659 on 4/5/04, 660 on 4/12/04
Between: 4-17, 2B, RBI, 7 BB, .235/.458/.235

Barry Bonds: 699 on 9/12/04, 700 on 9/17/04
Between: 3-9, 2B, RBI, .333/.571/.444

Barry Bonds: 713 on 5/7/06, 714 on 5/20/06
Between: 4-29, 2B, 2 RBI, .138/.400/.172

Barry Bonds: 754 on 7/27/07, 755 on 8/4/07
Between: 2-18, 10 BB, .111/.444/.111

Barry Bonds: 755 on 8/4/07, 756 on 8/7/07
Between: 2-5, 2B, .400/.571/.600

Griffey’s milestone tweener plate appearances produced the highest OPS of this group. Granted, Babe Ruth’s gamelogs are not easily available, and he may have out-OPSd Griffey between some of his milestones but, as a devout baseball fan, regardless of these numbers, I cannot help but wish some of what Dave discussed this morning actually came true.