Thanks for the updates, tracer. How unfortunate, or positive for him whatever the case may be, that since he is in the West Coast, and because of the tragedies in New York and Washington, he has the quietest all-time season ever.
Here is an unusual stat, or probably is the norm for power hitters (Ted Williams is known to say to always take the first pitch to see what the pitcher has got). Bonds hit 57 of his HRs on the second pitch on an at-bat. So the 1-0 or the 0-1 count is the time to watch him.
I had prepared a long statement refuting that SI article and the medias general dislike of Barry because he doesn’t cater to them (Think Roger Marris). But I dont feel like hijaking the thread.
That article always seems to get my blood going 
They don’t pay Bonds big money to be a nice guy. They pay him big money to help the team win games. I follow the Giants pretty closely, and I’ve never noticed Bonds not playing his best while on the field. So he wants to be left alone when he’s off the field–deal with it! Bonds is having a great year on the field, and it should be recognized with the MVP award for that acomplishment.
A slight hijack–I just heard a story about the bats Bonds is using. Apparently, someone (Sam’s Bats) started making bats out of maple–it is stronger and finer grained than ash, and so breaks less often. The story didn’t mention what effect the maple had on ball distance–could Barry’s maple bat be one reason for the number of long-balls he’s been hitting?
I’m not questioning your estimation, but you will note that people have come close to Hack Wilson’s record before. Hank Greenberg had 183 only 8 years later, for instance.
Frankly, I think the safest record in baseball anymore is the triples/season record. If any of these modern day players ever hits 37 triples in one season (one more than Owen Wilson had to set it) I’ll give each and every person on this board a C-Note.
Anyhow, on topic, Barry Bonds is having quite the remarkable season. Time will tell how it compares, though.
And if he doesn’t get the MVP award it will be a grave injustice.
Like I said, I am not as into baseball as others. I really meant the elite awards (HR, RBI, Hits, SO, etc.) IF triples is a big record, then I yield the point.
And yes, people have gotten close, but always come up short.
As for Bonds as MVP, I don’t neccessarily disagree. But an old baseball rule of thumb is that you’ve got to look to the playoff teams first, right? Regardless of whether you think this is fair, it does seem to be a rule (not a hard and fast one- I seem to remember Larry Walker taking it a few years back). SF could still win the West or WC. But if it started today,
East- Atl (none)
Central- Hou (Bagwell, Berkman and Alou have had good seasons, but nothing comparing to Bonds)
West- Ariz (The two pitchers have had great seasons, but nothing worthy of breaking the Cy Young/Pitcher rule)
WC- ST. Louis (No one, really. A lot of good Players)
Yeah…It has to be Bonds regardless of playoffs. AL? Thome? Giambi? Boone? Ichiro?
Kallessa wrote:
Barry Bonds started using maple bats (made by the SAM Bat company) last year. He wasn’t the first player to start using the maple bats, and they’ve become quite popular.
Maple has a specific gravity that varies between 0.63 and 0.67. An article at http://www.sambat.com states that this is much denser than the white ash wood used in conventional baseball bats, but a table of specific gravities at http://www.reade.com/Particle_Briefings/spec_gra2.html says that white ash wood has a specific gravity of 0.67, so I don’t know which source to believe. Maple’s main advantage over ash, though, is that it’s considerably harder, and doesn’t break as easily.
There’s also an article about the Coming of the Maple Bat at http://www.dustybaker.com/technology%20August%20Sam%20Bat.htm.
It’s not. I doubt most baseball fans know who holds the record. It’s Owen “Chief” Wilson of the Pirates; he hit 36 triples in 1912. Even by the standards of the day it was a fluke.
The RBI record, which is either 190 or 191 depending on who you believe, is laregely dependent upon having a big slugger who comes up after a lot of guys who get on base a lot. Hack Wilson set the RBI record while hitting behind guys with really high on base percentages. It’s not inconcievable that someone like Juan Gonzalez or Manny Ramirez could challenge that record if the guys hitting in front of them all had big years getting on base.
I think the most unchallengable major record, under the conditions of the game as they are today, is the single season batting average record: .424, by Rogers Hornsby in 1924. (Or maybe it’s .426, by Nap Lajoie in 1901; there are conflicting data sets.) Batting averages just aren’t expanding like home runs are. Nobody’s come reasonably close to breaking that record since it was set.
Of course, there are four playoff teams in each league, so as a matter of course it’s pretty likely that the league’s best player will be on a playoff team. Prior to the expansion of the playoffs in 1995, far more MVPs came from teams that didn’t make the postseason.
aggiej,
OK, I know next to nothing about Baseball aside from the basic rules.
But if Barry Bonds is as good as his stats say, and that the Giants would not be in with a playoff chance without him, so what if he’s a self centred egomaniac?
At the end of the day, he gets what the club pay him for. Results. Until he stops doing that, then your criticism is unfounded. He may be an asshole off the field, but you should only judge him in the context of the OP by what he does on the pitch.
RickJay wrote:
Stephen J. Gould had an explanation for that in his book Full House. He claimed that the disappearance of .400 hitting in major league baseball was due to the general improvement in the players at all levels. There’s an upper limit, a “right wall” to the distribution, of how good a player in any position can be, simply due to the limits of human physiology. Even the best human being can only pitch a ball so hard, or see a pitch coming so well.
Back in the 1920s, the competition to get into the major leagues wasn’t as fierce as it is today, and the pool of talent available to team owners simply wasn’t as great. Under such conditions, a really really good player would stick out like a sore thumb in comparison to all the other players in the league. A really really good hitter could hit practically anything the average pitcher could throw at him. Nowadays, though, almost all of the pitchers are really really good too – so it’s more difficult for even the best hitter to hit safely more than one time out of three.
Sure, Bonds has some great offensive numbers, maybe the best ever…no doubt about it.
But I like Todd Helton. Last year he was the first player in National League history and only the fifth in major league history to have 200 hits, 40 home runs, 100 RBI, 100 runs, 100 extra-base hits and 100 walks in a season…and it looks like he may do it again this season.
As of yesterday:
190 hits, 46 HR, 142 RBI, 128 runs, 100 extra-base hits, and 97 walks. So he needs 10 hits and 3 walks to repeat.
Quite a few baseball fans have tried to account for this by rating players by standard deviation in OPS, runs created, or what have you. I suspect that sort of method would make Bonds look even better.
I guess I did snub Luis Gonzalez here. Didn’t mean to do it.
Helton’s a great player, no doubt about it. But I do believe that I could slug .500 at Coors. And that’s, well, sayin’ something.
Repeat after me, people: park effects are your friend.
Just to flesh out Gadarene’s last post:
Helton
Overall Home Road
BA 336 384 283
OB 434 478 385
SLG 678 774 572
Bonds
Overall Home Road
BA 320 324 317
OB 505 510 501
SLG 846 884 813
As you can see Helton does get a huge boost from Coors (surprise), while Bonds has clearly been more productive everywhere. This is no insult to Helton as no one can match Bonds’ numbers this year. Since the MVP award is mainly about who has the most eye-popping offensive stats, and Bonds is well ahead of the field, he would get my vote, followed by Sosa, Pujols, Gonzalez, Green.
Though I have little use for Barry Bonds as a human being, he is a great ballplayer, a sure first-ballot HAll of Famer, and PROBABLY deserves this year’s MVP awards. I’d PROBABLY hold my nose and vote for him, if I were a sportswriter.
But… the greatest offensive season EVER? It’s not even 100% clear that he’s having the greatest offensive season in the year 2001!
If you were to judge offensive players by the runs they produce (that is, runs scored and runs batted in), Bonds is currently FOURTH in the national League, behind Sammy Sosa, Todd Helton and Luis Gonzalez.
All three men have scorred more runs than Bonds, and all three have driven in more runs. As I said, I’d probably vote for Bonds as MVP, but if someone else voted for Sammy Sosa or Luis Gonzalez, I’d respect their votes.
So… no, Barry is not having the greatest offensive season ever. A phenomenal year, yes, but not the best ever.
A couple points:
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The single season RBI record is 191. That has been determined by several different people and statistical agencies. So give Hack Wilson his credit.
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About Nap Lajoie’s 1901 season. In that year, the American League didn’t use the “foul strike” rule. I.e., you could foul off as many pitches as you wanted and they didn’t count as strikes. This was a tremendous help to the offense and I believe the AL fell in line with the NL foul strike rule the next year.
astorian:
Frankly, I wouldn’t. On-base percentage and slugging percentage are far better barometers of a player’s season than RBI and runs scored, as they are less dependent on externalities (the other players in the lineup)–just as ERA is better than victories in determining how well a pitcher has performed. To illustrate, here’s a Rob Neyer column which not only shows that Cubs No. 1 and No. 2 hitters have a greater combined on-base percentage than their Giants counterparts, but that Cubs No. 4 and No. 5 hitters (as both Bonds and Sosa bat third) have a greater combined slugging percentage than the Giants hitters in those positions do. Isn’t this something that might help explain the runs/RBI disparity between Bonds and Sosa? If not that, what?
Anyway, Bonds’s OBP and SLG are off the charts this year: he’s on track to break Ruth’s record of walks in a season, his on-base percentage is the best in forty-four years, and his slugging percentage stands at .845, better than anyone since 1927 and only .02 points behind Ruth’s all-time season mark. If Bonds isn’t MVP this season, it’s gonna look awfully silly down the road–even sillier than Ted Williams’s MVP omission in 1941 looks today.
I honestly don’t see how anyone could construct an MVP argument for anyone but Bonds (with the possible exception, perhaps, of Randy Johnson–if you wanted to go that route). Could you help me out, astorian?
Well, I understand the argument you make, and it has some compelling elements. I think it is a mistake to dismiss the more “traditional” statistics as meaningless, though. The problem I see with emphasizing only OBP/SP is that it pretends the object of the game is to have each plaer record as many bases as possible. The game is decided, however, by runs scored.
Yes, the ability to drive in runs is strongly influenced by the ability of your teammates to get on base. Nevertheless the single with a man on second is a more valuable contribution than the triple with the bases emtpy. Similarly, the RBI single in a tie game is more valuable than a grand slam in a blowout loss.
That said, while I love Gonzo’s contributions this year, I think Bonds is clearly the MVP. An amazing number of his HRs have serverd to tie the game or give the Giants a lead. That’s value, pure and simple. Combine that with his outrageous statistical year and it’s a slam dunk.
The records I consider most untouchable right now are wins and complete games in a season. Today’s starters don’t come close to the number of appearaances necessary to challenge.