Is Barry Bonds Having the Greatest Offensive Season Ever?

[RickJay]

*Originally posted by Spiritus Mundi *
**Driving in 100 runs isn’t helping your team much at all if the average player would drive in 120 runs in your sitution;

I disagree. Driving in 100 runs helps your team to 100 runs. **
[/QUOTE]

No, it doesn’t. You’re making two incorrect assumptions here:

1. that the 100 runs driven in are an independent act of the RBI man alone, and

2. That the 120 RBI actually represent 120 runs contributed, which obviously is not the case.

(1) simply means that 120 RBI can’t be credited to a player has “Creating 120 runs.” Those runs are also produced by the players who reached base, players who advanced runners into better scoring position, and players who avoid outs thereby increasing scoring chances towards the end of a game. You can’t say Smith created 120 runs because he had 120 RBI, because Jones, Brown and Williams also did things that created those 120 runs.

(2) means that we can expect that a fair number of runs would have been scored anyway. If you’re comparing major league players it doesn’t make sense to score from zero and say “Had Smith not driven in those 120 runs they would never have been scored.” In all likelihood most of them would have scored anyway. Maybe more would have been scored.

Yes, it does. It also means that your contribution is sometimes dependent upon the actions of other playuers. Thus the concept of a team.

That’s fine if you want to define it that way, but in the real world not all “contributions” are positive. Alex Gonzalez drove in 70 runs this year for the Blue Jays, but he doesn’t really add 70 runs to the offense in any practical sense that matters. If he had been released on March 31 they would not have gone the season with an eight man lineup. His “contribution” can only be fairly measured in terms of what his MARGINAL value to the team was. Otherwise you’d have to conclude that all hitters have positive value, unless they hit .000.

Besides, what your argument actually seems to support is the idea not that Bonds’ and Gonzalez’ OPS should be used to evaluate their contributions–but that their contributions should be adjusted downward (or upward) based upon the statistical accomplishments of the other players on their teams.

Their OPS should be used AND we should consider the effect their teammates had on their runs scored and RBI totals. (Unless you want to discount runs and RBI entirely, but I’m not quite ready to take THAT big a step.) I want to know how much better Bonds made the Giants offense. It’s quite reasonable, to my mind, to believe that Bonds improved their offense more than Sammy Sosa improved his, even if Sosa drove in and scored more runs. I believe that if you switched the two players, the Giants would have scored fewer runs and the Cubs would have scored more; more to the point, I believe Bonds added more runs to the Giants in 2001 than Sammy Sosa added to the Cubs.

**Correct. None of the statistics mentioned thus far have tracked this, of course. RBI/RBI + LOB probably correlates fairly well with it, but a true metric would need to track RBI + runners on base who scored in any manner / runners on base. **

OBA has a very strong impact on the ability of a player to contribute runs that don’t show up in that player’s runs and RBI totals. Bonds, the last time I checked - and this was two weeks ago or so - had used up 68 fewer outs than Sammy Sosa, which is mostly a reflection of his higher OBA. His ability to take walks and not consume outs gives Marvin Benard, Jeff Kent, Andres Galarraga et al. 67 more chances to create runs of their own and get something going. There’s a tremendous upside to Bonds not consuming those outs that Sosa consumes (and Sammy is second in the league in walks, so man, that Bonds is something!)

[Spiritus_Mundi]

gadarene

Actually, OBP and SLG track this quite well. Drawing a walk doesn’t use up an out, and is therefore intrinsically valuable even if it doesn’t result in your personally driving in or, ultimately, scoring a run.

No. You are neglecting the rather important context of the discussion: actual runs produced. OBP and SLG value walks no matter the context. Like batting average, they correlate with runs produced but are not a direct reflection of runs produced. The key sentence of rickjay’s was: can contribute to the scoring of a run without getting a run or an RBI, either through base advancement or not using outs.

Now, you might argue for factoring in OPS with runners on base. This also neglects to factor in the actual production of runs, though.

I’d also argue that a triple with the bases empty is valuable whether or not the man who hit it scores later from third, but that’s outside the scope of this particular debate.

I don’t see why. It is a direct contradiction of my contention that value should be assigned to the elements that decide the outcome of the game. That seems to put it in scope, eh? I argue that a runner who does not score from third has no effect on the outcome of the game. Thus, stranding a runner at third is not a positive contribution to one’s team.

to what degree do you feel park effects should be taken into account when evaluating the actual worth of a player’s statistics?

Park effects are definitely important. I don’t think they should be applied individually, though. It seems more reasonable to me that a player’s total production in an area should be determined (using whatever means), and then that value should be adjusted by a factor dependent upon the deviation from mean for the aggregate park/games in which the player appeared.
rickjay

me: Driving in 100 runs helps your team to 100 runs.

you: No, it doesn’t. You’re making two incorrect assumptions here:

1. that the 100 runs driven in are an independent act of the RBI man alone, and

2. That the 120 RBI (contributed by a hypothetical “average” player in the same slot) actually represent 120 runs contributed, which obviously is not the case.

No. Look again at what I said.
(1) Helps your team to 100 runs, not generates 100 runs independently.
(2) Of course. That is why I said: There is no value to the team in runs which “would have been scored” had things been different.

(1) simply means that 120 RBI can’t be credited to a player has “Creating 120 runs.”

I agree. You can say, however, that every RBI and every run scored represent a direct contribution to the winning condition of a game. And you can say (at least I can) that contributing to 100 runs is more valuable, as a general principle, than contributing to 90 runs.

(2) means that we can expect that a fair number of runs would have been scored anyway. If you’re comparing major league players it doesn’t make sense to score from zero and say “Had Smith not driven in those 120 runs they would never have been scored.” In all likelihood most of them would have scored anyway. Maybe more would have been scored.

Of course it makes sense. The value generated by a player is a matter or fact (though how we measure that value is, obviously, a matter of opinion). If you want to argue that the value generated was less than some hypothetical contribution, then you may zero your scale in whatever manner you choose. That does not alter the actual value generated.

If I sell $1000 worth of widgets, I produce a value for my company that relates directly to that $1000. Now, if an “average” salesman would have sold $1200 given my client list, then I am probably not the best salesman in my company. If no other salesman sold more than $900, though, then I did produce the most value.

The award is most valuable player, not best player.

**me: **your argument actually seems to support is the idea . . . that their contributions should be adjusted downward (or upward) based upon the statistical accomplishments of the other players on their teams.

**you: **Their OPS should be used AND we should consider the effect their teammates had on their runs scored and RBI totals.

One simple question: why? You have supplied no reason for OPS to be considered a better metric for the value (contribution toward a win) of a player than RBI and runs scored.

I want to know how much better Bonds made the Giants offense.

I want to know how much value he provided to the Giants team. Now, the argument that the value delivered should be weighed as a percentage of the value available makes sense. That is not an argument for OPS over the more direct measure of runs produced.

more to the point, I believe Bonds added more runs to the Giants in 2001 than Sammy Sosa added to the Cubs.

I agree. That is to the point, but it does not support the use of OPS as a metric for “runs added”.

OBA has a very strong impact on the ability of a player to contribute runs that don’t show up in that player’s runs and RBI totals.

Ability? Sure. Production? No.
OBP & OPS are fine metrics. I’m not knocking them. They are excellent measures of potential production. They are not superior measures of actual run production. In an argumnet over who is the best player, I will turn to them immediately. In an argument over who is the most valuable player, I will not. (Which is not to say that I discount them utterly, as with yourself and RBI.)

[RickJay]

Originally posted by Spiritus Mundi *
**
No. Look again at what I said.
(1) Helps your team to 100 runs, not generates 100 runs independently.*

Okay, but what does that mean? Are you adding value to the offense or not? As you “Help your team” get those 100 runs, are you passing up the opportunity to get 110?

It’s possible to drive in a run and hurt the offense and help lose the game. If the bases are loaded in the ninth with one out and you’re losing 5-2, hitting a sacrifice fly is probably REDUCING your chances of victory, not increasing them. Joe Carter was like that - he got 100 RBI every year, but he’d swing at anything and try to drive in the run at all costs. He’d very obviously try NOT to reach base if there was a man on if it meant he wouldn’t get the RBI.

If I sell $1000 worth of widgets, I produce a value for my company that relates directly to that $1000. Now, if an “average” salesman would have sold $1200 given my client list, then I am probably not the best salesman in my company. If no other salesman sold more than $900, though, then I did produce the most value.

Relative value’s all that matters. Your sales figures are NOT a good comparison, because $1000 has an intrinsic value all its own. A thousand bucks is a thousand bucks. It has the value of a thousand bucks, even if its opportunity cost is different. You can buy X goods for $1000, even if I have $1200.

But in baseball, “runs” have no intrinsic value; they are valuable only in comparison to the number of runs your opponent scores. You can’t buy a fixed number of wins with X runs. Five runs is as useless as nothing if I score ten. The VALUE of a baseball player’s contribution absolutely must be viewed in context, or else it loses meaning. 70 RBI from a shortstop in Frobes Field in 1968 is much more valuable than 100 RBI from a left fielder in
Coors Field in 2001.

**you: **Their OPS should be used AND we should consider the effect their teammates had on their runs scored and RBI totals.

One simple question: why? You have supplied no reason for OPS to be considered a better metric for the value (contribution toward a win) of a player than RBI and runs scored.**
[/QUOTE]

In 99.9% of cases, OPS will be much more closely aligned to the number of runs created than runs scored and RBI. Mind twisting as that is, it’s true. It is entirely possible for a player to drive in and score fewer runs than another player, but actually contribute more to scoring runs; merely the ability to not get out means OTHER players will get runs and RBI they would otherwise not have had, and that’s real value. (It’s not ALWAYS true, though, which is why you can’t live by OPS alone. It’s a shorthand stat, and misses a lot of measurable things.)

I want to know how much better Bonds made the Giants offense.

That’s a good question, and it depends how you measure it, but in my opinion, looking briefly at his numbers, Bonds has created about 225 of San Francisco’s 785 runs. Sosa, for the sake of comparison, has manufactured about 185 runs. I’m doing this quicklike, I’m sure someone else could do better math than I.

Using the number of outs Bonds has used, the average left fielder would create, I dunno, about 80-90 runs. So Bonds has created at least 130-140 more runs than the average left fielder. I’d guess, just using the numbers, that the difference between Bonds and a replacement-level guy off the waiver wire is at least 10-12 games - a HUGE, huge contribution, a historically enormous season.

Of course, we would have to go game-by-game and take all situations into account to actually determine his value, but given that he’s hit even BETTER in the clutch than he usually does, I’d guess that analysis would favour him. The stats just let you estimate, and it’s entirely possible, albiet unusual, that OPS could be inaccurate. But the estimates are usually pretty damn close.

[dunne_u.wurrie]

No doubt he’s having a great year.

Now, let’s go here for some historical perspective.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8962-2001Oct5.html

“You’re dead. You’re all dead.” – Frank Sinatra

[Spiritus_Mundi]

Okay, but what does that mean? Are you adding value to the offense or not? As you “Help your team” get those 100 runs, are you passing up the opportunity to get 110?

Well, this is the difference between focusing upon what has actually happened and hypothesizing about what might have happened. Value is created by what did happen.

Relative value’s all that matters. Your sales figures are NOT a good comparison, because $1000 has an intrinsic value all its own.

Nothing has intrinsic value. Dollars and runs are both evaluated in terms of the games that we play with them.

But in baseball, “runs” have no intrinsic value; they are valuable only in comparison to the number of runs your opponent scores. You can’t buy a fixed number of wins with X runs.

This is correct. That is, in fact, the justification that is often given to the bias toward winning teams in MVP consideration. Now, given your penchant to argue corrections for every factor not entirely under a player’s control, I am surprised to find you arguing this side. But yes, I agree that it makes sense to bias the award towards player’s whose run production has actually helped their team “buy” wins. Are you saying that OPS accounts for this? Perhaps you could explain how.

In 99.9% of cases, OPS will be much more closely aligned to the number of runs created than runs scored and RBI.

This is a startling claim. Please provide a demonstration or a citation. Remember, the phrase is “number of runs created” not “deviation from teh hypothetical mean of runs potentially creeated by a player in the same situation”.

looking briefly at his numbers, Bonds has created about 225 of San Francisco’s 785 runs. Sosa, for the sake of comparison, has manufactured about 185 runs.

Surely you don’t mean to say created. Contributed to, perhaps? Helped create?

That said, perhaps you would share the technique you have used to arrive at this figure.

[Spiritus_Mundi]

WHat a night last night for baseball fans. Bonds and Henderson. I don’t much like either of them as personalities, but 2 of the greatest players of our day nevertheless.

[RickJay]

*Originally posted by Spiritus Mundi *
**WHat a night last night for baseball fans. Bonds and Henderson. I don’t much like either of them as personalities, but 2 of the greatest players of our day nevertheless. **

I’ll answer your previous post when I get some time, but I wanted to add my agreement here. Man, two major records in one night.

And did anyone notice Babe Ruth lost BOTH his walk records this year? He lost the career record for walks in April (to Rickey) and the season record for walks to Barry (just a few days ago.)

Has there ever been another day in modern history when two major records were tied or broken on the same day?

[tracer]

And in case anyone reading this thread lives in a cave with no TV somewhere, I just wanted to be the first to say:

Barry Bonds just hit home runs number 71 and 72, back to back! Woo hoo!!

[furt]

*Originally posted by dunne u. wurrie *
**No doubt he’s having a great year.

Now, let’s go here for some historical perspective.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8962-2001Oct5.html
**

Yeah, Boswell’s a great authority on baseball history. :rolleyes:

[december]

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by RickJay *
**

Has there ever been another day in modern history when two major records were tied or broken on the same day? **

I don’t know about one day, but Babe Ruth did lose two other records in the same year – 1961. He lost the season home run record to Roger Maris and lost the record for consecutive scoreless innings pitched in the World Series to Whitey Ford. As one columnist put it, “It was a bad year for the Babe.”

[tracer]

Since Babe Ruth set his record for Most Walks in a Single Season back when the season was only 154 games long, will there be an asterisk next to Barry Bonds’ single-season walks record?

[ihrkelings]

Didn’t Barry take almost every Thursday off? I think he played a lot less than 150 games all told.
Also, he hit all those runs with almost a hundred fewer at bats than Sammy Sosa this year, Right?
AMAZING! Best to Rickey, Tony and Cal too. It was a great year for baseball.
(Sniffle.) Now, what am I going to do? Back to the drawing board (literally).

[Gadarene]

ihrkelings: Bonds ended up playing 153 games this year. Here’s his full final line:

[ul]
[li]153 games played[/li][li]476 at-bats[/li][li]129 runs[/li][li]156 hits[/li][li]32 doubles[/li][li]2 triples[/li][li]73 home runs, best all-time[/li][li]107 extra-base hits, third best all-time[/li][li]137 RBI[/li][li]177 walks, best all-time[/li][li]93 strikeouts[/li][li]13 stolen bases[/li][li]3 times caught stealing[/li][li].515 on-base percentage, best since 1957[/li][li].863 slugging percentage, best all-time[/li][li]1.3785 OPS (on-base plus slugging), just behind Ruth’s 1.3791 for second-best all time[/li][li].328 batting average[/li][/ul]

It’s worth noting that Ruth’s record OPS is benefited by the fact that sacrifice flies were scored as sacrifice hits in 1920, and did not count against on-base percentage. Ruth had five SACs that year–if even one of them was a sacrifice fly, then under the rules of today Ruth’s OPS would fall below Bonds’s. Which is absolutely meaningless.

By the way, here are the top six single-season slugging percentage leaders:

[ol]
[li]Barry Bonds, .863 (2001)[/li][li]Babe Ruth, .8472 (1920)[/li][li]Babe Ruth, .8463 (1921)[/li][li]Babe Ruth, .7722 (1927)[/li][li]Lou Gehrig, .7654 (1927)[/li][li]Babe Ruth, .7644 (1923)[/li][/ol]

Pretty distinguished company, to say the least. (Mark McGwire’s 1998 season ranks eighth on the list at .7525, and Jeff Bagwell’s strike-shortened .7500 in 1994 comes in at number nine. Sammy Sosa finished this year at .737, which is twelfth best or so. Todd Helton’s .685 is number forty-five with a bullet.)

Anyone still want to make an argument for someone other than Bonds as MVP? astorian, I’ve been waiting on you…

[Jackmannii]

*Originally posted by Gadarene *
Here’s his full final line:

[ul]
[li]Postseason play: Just watching.[/li][/ul]

Thought I’d round out the list.

He’s had the top home-run hitting year of all time.
And now to the best part of baseball, one which goes beyond a single fat statistical harvest.

Play ball!
And watch who gets into the stadium…

[Gadarene]

[ul]
[li]With runners on base: .374/.589/.892[/li][li]Runners in scoring position: .375/.648/.943[/li][li]September/October: .403/.600/1.038[/li][li]Lack of postseason play: Not his fault[/li][/ul]

Let’s be evenhanded here, Jackie…

[Jackmannii]

*Originally posted by Gadarene *
**Let’s be evenhanded here, Jackie… **

With great pleasure, Gaddie me lad.

While this may be trifling to home-run king worshippers, if you take all the 60+ home run seasons by McGwire, Sosa and Bonds, and correlate them with the number of playoff series, pennants and World Series won by their clubs, you get…what exactly?

I didn’t see his name mentioned here, but this guy by consensus carried his team on his back into the World Series. I’d award him both a better offensive and all-around season than that of Bonds, even if his final numbers aren’t quite as gaudy (though the .417 Sept-Oct. batting average and .800 with the bases loaded aren’t half bad.

When it comes right down to it, you can make a case for Ron Swoboda having a better year in '69 than Bonds did this year. Ron had a memorable World Series including saving a key game for the Mets with the best catch in a critical moment that I’ve ever seen. He got the ring. Barry and his agent will go for the endorsements.

Them’s the breaks.

Casual and non-fans (like the fools in Houston booing their club for walking Bonds, when the Astros were hanging on to the NL Central lead by the skin of their teeth) are agog over now-meaningless stats.

So, who do you like in the playoffs? If the Astros can just get by Atlanta, the greasy crystal ball predicts a Houston-Cleveland World Series…

[DynoSaur]

To add a couple more esoteric statistics to the discussion: EqA: .430 EqR: 194.1 RARP: 143.5

For the statistically uninitiated (which there don’t seem to be many of 'round here), EqA is equivalent average, EqR is equivalent runs, and RARP is Runs Above Replacement Player

More specifically:
EQA is a measure of the player’s total offensive performance, fully adjusted for the era and park in which he played. The scale of EQA is very similar to that of batting average; a .300 EQA is almost exactly as common, historically, as a .300 batting average. An average player has an EQA of .260 by definition. It is calculated from EQR per out; the constants 0.2 and 0.4 are simply scaling factors.

EQR is a measure, extrapolated from the player’s statistics, of how many runs the player created, scaled for league/ballpark/etc.

RARP is a comparison of EqR to the EQR that would be produced by a replacement-level player (the kind of guy you could pick up on waivers or from AAA at any time). It also has the nice effect of including a positional adjustment in it (ie, LFs are compared to replacement-level LFs, SSs are compared to replacement-level SSs, etc)

For some historical perspective, .430 is easily the best EqA ever, above Ruth’s .419 in 1920.

194 EqR bests Ruth’s 1923 record of 184.

And Bonds’ RARP of 143.5 beats Ruth’s 1921 record of 129.

Oh, and as the generally-accepted standard for run/win conversion is 10/1, that 143.5 RARP translates into 14-15 wins above a replacement-level LF (and approximately 12 wins more than the average LF).

Oh, yeah, and he did all this playing in a home park where the park factor is 0.910. So, um, yeah. Best season ever.

And, speaking as a huge Sammy fan, if anyone votes for him over Bonds as MVP, they should never be allowed to vote again, because it’s obvious that thay have no idea what they’re doing.

[Gadarene]

While this may be trifling to home-run king worshippers, if you take all the 60+ home run seasons by McGwire, Sosa and Bonds, and correlate them with the number of playoff series, pennants and World Series won by their clubs, you get…what exactly?

Are you suggesting that hitting 60+ home runs now hurts your team’s chances of making the postseason? (Excluding from your analysis, of course, Ruth and Maris) Or are you saying that hitting 60+ shouldn’t mean anything to real fans unless that team makes the postseason? Hell, you don’t give much credit to Sosa’s '98, so I guess a batter’s numbers aren’t any good unless he takes his team at least to the championship series. I just want to get this straight…

When it comes right down to it, you can make a case for Ron Swoboda having a better year in '69 than Bonds did this year. Ron had a memorable World Series including saving a key game for the Mets with the best catch in a critical moment that I’ve ever seen. He got the ring. Barry and his agent will go for the endorsements.

What was I thinking? Clearly Lloyd McClendon had a good case for winning the 1992 MVP over Bonds; after all, he batted .727 in the NLCS. And in 1998, Scott Brosius was certainly the Yankee who had the best year… Not to mention Rick Dempsey in 1983.

…Because Ron Swoboda, who batted .235/.326/.361 in 1969, managed to hit .400 in the World Series, a case could be made that he had a better year than Bonds this year? Do you mean statistically–which is the topic of this thread–or, y’know, holistically? You’re trolling, Jack.

That Bonds, man…what a slacker. If he’d only hit three home runs on Friday, then the Giants might be in the playoffs. You snooze, you lose, Barry.

[Gadarene]

By your critera, Jack, it seems as if we’d best get Ernie Banks the hell out of the Hall of Fame. Mr. Cub, indeed. :rolleyes:

[Jackmannii]

“This was a great, great way to end it with a victory and a home run. You can’t ask for anything better,” Bonds said. “I never thought I could do it.”
Barry Bonds, quoted by the Associated Press.
“And if I have my choice between a pennant and a triple crown, I’ll take the pennant every time.”
Carl Yastrzemski.