Common sense says it does. Otherwise, Maris never broke Ruth’s record. He only tied it, if you count postseason. If we’re discussing overall greatness as players, i.e. over a career, I would consider some place for postseason failure/success/nonappearace. But the discussion on this thread, as laid out in the OP, is about regular season.
Common sense says it does. Otherwise, Maris never broke Ruth’s record. He only tied it, if you count postseason. If we’re discussing overall greatness as players, i.e. over a career, I would consider some place for postseason failure/success/nonappearace. But the discussion on this thread, as laid out in the OP, is about regular season.
Let me elaborate on furt’s well-placed sarcasm here.
Ernie Banks: Played nineteen seasons as a Chicago Cub; finished with 512 career home runs. He won the NL MVP in two consecutive seasons, batting .313/.366/.614 in 1958 and .304/.374/.596 in 1959. Postseason experience: None. Nada.
Ted Williams: One of the greatest hitters in the history of the game. A career .344/.482/.634 line, which is unreal. Won the AL MVP in 1946 and 1949. Also won the Triple Crown twice, in 1942 and 1947. If that weren’t enough, his best season came in 1941, where he led the league in batting average, on-base percentage, slugging percentage, home runs, runs, and walks, but finished fourth in RBI. His batting average (.406) and on-base percentage (.551, the all-time record) were remarkable. Postseason experience: Not in 1941. Not in 1942 or 1947, either. (So I guess he didn’t really accomplish much those years after all.) Only once in Williams’s career did the Red Sox make the postseason, in 1946. But when they got there, he tore the cover off the ball, right? Five hits in twenty-five at-bats, to the tune of .200/.333/.200. Yup.
Ty Cobb: Played twenty-four seasons and still managed to retain the all-time best career batting average, at .366. Career line of .366/.433/.512, much of that coming during the dead-ball era. His best season was 1911, the year in which he won his only MVP (back then, you could only win once): .420 batting average, .467 on-base percentage, and a .621 slugging percentage despite hitting just eight home runs–he had 47 doubles and 24 triples. He also stole eighty-three bases. Postseason experience: Compared to Banks and Williams, Cobb was a regular in the Fall Classic. He appeared three times, from 1907-09. Although he did bat .368 in the 1908 Series, his career postseason numbers are .262/.294/.354. Stellar.
Now we get to the cream of the crop–
Jose Offerman: Still active. Career .278/.365/.375 batter whose best season, 1998, saw him blister the ball to a .315/.403/.438 clip. The '98 season, of course, is notorious for its low offensive levels. Postseason experience: In forty-two postseason at-bats, all coming in 1999, Offerman’s hit .429/.520/.571. Clearly, something happens to Jose when the leaves change color. That or, y’know, it’s a small sample size.
Billy Hatcher: Played for seven teams in a twelve-year career spanning from 1984-95. Career highs came with the Astros in 1987–another low-offense year–when he hit .296/.352/.415 with a whopping eleven home runs. (The San Diego Chicken, by contrast, managed seventeen homers that year.) Postseason experience: He played with Houston in 1986 and Cincinnati in 1990. His shining moment was against Oakland in the '90 World Series: nine hits in twelve at bats, with four doubles and a triple. An eye-popping .750/.786/1.250. This helped his career postseason stats up to .404/.456/.654 in fifty-two at-bats. (Bonds won the MVP that year–obviously a mistake of colossal proportions, since he hit only .167 in the playoffs!)
Wille Aikens: Ah, Willie Aikens. Batted a respectable .271/.354/.455 in eight years in the major leagues. His best year, 1983, was actually pretty damn good–.302/.373/.539 for the Royals. Still, George Brett he ain’t. Postseason experience: Until the playoffs, that is. In forty postseason at-bats, Aikens mashed four homers–all coming in the same six-game World Series in 1980!–and batted a cumulative .374/.490/.725. Damned if he didn’t have a better season in 1980 than his teammate Brett, who batted .390 in 117 regular season games, but only .343 when it came down to crunch time. What were they thinking giving Brett the MVP?
Marquis Grissom: Still hanging around out there with the Dodgers, Grissom’s played twelve seasons and owns a career line of .273/.323/.404. He sure is fast, though. Best year is 1996–.308/.349/.489, with 207 hits in (wow) 671 at-bats. Postseason experience: He’s had plenty and made the most of it, batting.328/.360/.466 in nine postseason series. In the 1995 divisional series, he hit three home runs in four games and batted .524, as the Braves beat the Rockies. Not that the fact that they were playing the Rockies could possibly have had anything to do with it. The guy’s just a stud who knows how to turn it on when it counts. Which, y’know, is all that really matters.
And don’t even make me bust out Mark Lemke’s '91 World Series performance on y’all. The man’s truly a baseball immortal.
The same thing happened to the man who caught one of the big, important Mark McGwire home runs the year he broke Roger Maris’s record. (Either the ball that was hit out of the park for home run #61, 62, or 70 – I don’t remember which.)
Since the ball was worth close to three million dollars, the guy who got the ball snatched away from him sued the guy who took it from him, in order to get it back.
At the time I mentioned Barry Bonds in connection with the postseason, I truly was unaware of his record in such games.
It must be painful for his fans to think about his sub-Mendoza line batting average (.196 to be exact) in the postseason, or his average of 1 HR per 97 at-bats.
Still, I certainly wouldn’t want any of those losers furt or Gadarene mentioned batting for my team instead of Bonds with a key game on the line. And certainly not this guy. Why, he never hit more than 25 home runs in a season!
Again, sorry for inadvertently hitting a nerve.
You may now return to your regularly scheduled admiration.
I’m sorry, Jack, I’ve honestly forgotten. …What was your point, again? No, really.
(Oh, and Barry Bonds: .374/.587/.884 with runners on base. .382/.650/.944 with runners in scoring position. .314/.547/.829 in close and late game situations. .365/.565/.1000 in September. .571/.760/1.429 in October. What a freaking choker.)
Seriously? You’d have Billy Hatcher circa 1987, Jose Offerman circa 1998, Willie Aikens circa 1983, or Marquis Grissom circa 1996 (hell, or Dave Henderson circa 1988)instead of Barry Bonds circa 2001 with the game on the line? If so, you’re a strange, strange man.
Sorry to get to the party so late. I don’t make it a point to check GD regularly, but Gadarene pointed out this thread to me in the IMHO thread on this year’s award winners.
Don’t have too much to add, being squarely in the “Bonds has just had one of the two or three greatest offensive seasons of all time” camp, but I did decide to do a little research. I agree that VORP and EqA are rather arcane and difficult to understand, but I did think it’d be useful to look at how Bonds this year stacked up against other outstanding offensive efforts when compared with the average performance of that year. So I picked out the top 20 OPS seasons of all time, threw out the two pre-1900 instances, and calculated the difference between the individual and league OPS, resulting in what one might call “Marginal OPS” – the amount by which the individual player’s OPS exceeded the league average. I also included Rogers Hornsby’s 1922 campaign, one of only four seasons before Bonds’ that Keith Woolner’s VORP metric rates at 140 or higher (Bonds’ 2001 comes in at 154 by that measure, second only to Ruth’s 1920 mark of 156 – the only two 150+ seasons).
The results aren’t surprising. They tend to reinforce what OPS, VORP, EqA, and other measures by themselves have told us: Bonds’ 2001 season compares quite well with Ruth’s 1920 and 1921 seasons, Williams’ 1941 and 1957, Hornsby’s 1922, 1924 and 1925, etc.
What about other guys whose absolute number wasn’t among the top twenty, but who were far better than everyone else that year? Yaz’s 1967? Good enough to be among the top twenty Marginal OPS performances of all time, tied with Gehrig’s .441 in 1927. Norm Cash in 1961? Barely makes the list, just below Hornsby’s 1922 and just above McGwire’s 1996 at .426. I’m sure there are other dominant seasons that I’m forgetting about, but I doubt there are any that would crack the top ten.
OK, that accounts for how much better than average these seasons were. What about the margin between these performances and the next best performance in the same league the same year:
[sub]*Gehrig finished second to Ruth in OPS in 1927, so I zeroed out this column for him that year.[/sub]
By that standard, Bonds’ 2001 didn’t tower over the rest of the pack in the way that Ruth and Hornsby did in the twenties, but his margin was greater than any other player has ever achieved.
Taking everything into consideration, I’m comfortable with the contention that Bonds’ year was about as good as anyone, including Ruth, has ever had. On almost all statistical measures where he’s behind one of Ruth’s season’s the margin’s not great, and he’s ahead of all of Ruth’s seasons in certain stats (notably Slugging Percentage).
Well, I guess it’s how you define “key game”. If it’s a midsummer contest against the Pirates and runners are in scoring position, then Bonds would be good to have coming to bat.
If it’s the deciding game of a postseason series on the line, then you’re absolutely right - I’d want Dave Henderson in his prime at the plate instead of Bonds.
Oops! I mentioned the postseason again.
Dammit, I’m sorry. Please roll out some more sabermetrics. We’ll have a barrel of fun.
Ah, it’s the old clutch hitting argument. Fantastic. (And how far afield you’ve wandered, Jack, from your original points. Talk about nonresponsiveness…)
Quick question for you: what’s the substantive difference between batting against top teams down the stretch of a pennant race (with your team on the brink of elimination), and batting against top teams in a divisional, championship, or World Series (with your team on the brink of elimination)?
Anyway:
That’s from this page. (Thanks, rackensack!) Here’s another bit on clutch hitting from the same page. And this is a fantastic essay on the subject by Rob Neyer. One more page, explaining the math in layman’s terms.
To sum: you can have your postseason lineup of Hatcher, Offerman, Aiken, and Grissom. I’ll take Bonds, Williams, and Cobb. We’ll see who wins.
With all due respect, that’s just stupid, and borders on trolling. It’s akin to saying you’d rather have Terrence Long at the plate than Jason Giambi because Long hit two home runs last night.
But extend it beyond Bonds. Who would you rather have at the plate in a key World Series at bat; Ted Williams or Pat Borders? A specific answer, please.
With all due respect, I’d say there’s a bigger gap in your baseball knowledge than the one between Dave Henderson’s front teeth.
You may know him only from his game-salvaging home run in the AL playoffs on Oct. 12, 1986. But he also has a .324 batting average in World Series play and an overall .298 batting average in the postseason. He drove in four runs with two homers and a double in a single game in the '89 World Series, plus three additional homers in League Championship Series play. He was also a solid major league player who hit close to 200 home runs in his career.
Barry Bonds has not shown similar abilities in postseason situations. I am not suggesting that it’s because he doesn’t try, or “chokes”, or similar fool suggestions. He just doesn’t perform in such games. His lifetime postseason average is more than 100 points below Henderson’s, with dramatically less power. I’ll take Henderson. He rose to the occasion.
And you can forget dredging up every player you can think of who had moments of postseason glory and demanding that I substitute them for Bonds, Ted Williams or whomever. They’re your and your sabermetric buddy’s obsession, not mine.
Drop the “trolling” nonsense as a response to the presentation of inconvenient facts. It also sounds odd coming from someone who staged a lengthy rant earlier in the year about how the Red Sox would never, ever win a World Series and suggested that all team efforts short of that achievement were futile. Aside from coming across as dumb, it seemed designed entirely to provoke Sox fans. That did more than “border on trolling”.
And? I’m sorry, but what does this show? Willie Aikens hit four home runs in six games in the 1980 World Series. If the Royals and Phils had played a Series that lasted sixty games instead of six, would Aikens have hit forty homers? Why not? It’s the postseason.
Exactly. He rose to the occasion. Read “he just doesn’t perform” as “he hasn’t performed so far.” There’s no evidence that past postseason success has predictive value external of the player’s total numbers, and there’s nothing suggesting that, had the Giants made the postseason this year, Bonds would have gone out and stunk the joint up. Can you say “small sample size”? Can you pronounce “small sample size”?
Hell, I will bring up Mark Lemke. Career .246/.317/.324–offensively useless. In his first World Series appearance in 1991, he batted .417/.462/.708. Nearly every hit counted. (The 1991 Series is almost unmatched in terms of drama, in my opinion.) He had three triples in six games. Three triples!
In the next year’s NLCS, Lemke continued his torrid postseason success, batting .333 with a .462 on-base percentage. What a clutch guy, right? When it comes down to crunch time with the Blue Jays, the Braves are obviously going to want him at the plate. Well… Four hits that World Series, in nineteen at-bats. .211 average. .250 on-base percentage. .211 slugging percentage.
But that was probably just a fluke. After all, Lemke had already shown himself to be one of those guys who excels in the pressure of the postseason. And as we all know, the Braves went to many Series in the 1990s–what better person for them to have than Mark Lemke?
Let’s face it–those numbers are pretty rancid, even for a low-offense guy like Lemke. Almost every one of them is below his career averages. Hell, maybe he just tailed off at the end of his career there, postseason or no postseason. But I’m forgetting a number set:
1996 NLCS: .444/.500/.630
Yup. Divisional series he bats .167, World Series he bats .231, and in-between he bats… .444?? So what the hell? Does he know how to hit in the postseason or doesn’t he?
Jack? See why sample size is important?
Which is why RickJay and I brought up Ron Swoboda in the first place. No, wait…that was you.
Drop the “trolling” nonsense as a response to the presentation of inconvenient facts. It also sounds odd coming from someone who staged a lengthy rant earlier in the year about how the Red Sox would never, ever win a World Series and suggested that all team efforts short of that achievement were futile. Aside from coming across as dumb, it seemed designed entirely to provoke Sox fans. That did more than “border on trolling”.
[/QUOTE]
He’s right, RickJay. How dare you post that kind of rant in GD! Oh…it was in the Pit? The place where rants, y’know, belong? Never mind.
Keep digging, Jacky. You’ll come out the other side eventually.
Who would you rather have at bat in a key World Series situation: Pat Borders or Ted Williams? Please answer.
Actually, I knew he had good postseason stats.
I also know that Tony Fernandez hit .400 in the first half of 1999, a much longer string of games than Henderson’s playoff appearances. Amazingly, Tony Fernandez was not a career .400 hitter.
He has not performed in those games. That’s a fact. It reflects on his career value, too. But it also means very little in terms of whether or not he will perform in postseason games in the future. That’s a fact as well. He’s got the talent; if, by your claim, he doesn’t “choke” or stop trying, there is every reason to believe that his performance over several thousand regular season games is a vastly better indicator of how he will perform in future playoff games than his performace in maybe two dozen playoff games.
But once again; who would you rather have hitting for you in that key Game Seven situation - Borders or Williams? Or I’ll give you another choice; Rick Dempsey or Willie Mays. Or how about someone more contemporary; would you rather have Jeff Bagwell or Eddie Perez? The choices are yours.
Hmmm…Willie Aikens, 3 postseason series. Dave Henderson, 8 postseason series.
I think that you might want to revisit the definition of ‘small sample size’.
Not that Mark Lemke would be my hitter of choice in the postseason, but did you happen to notice that his numbers are considerably better than those of Barry Bonds?
If you can find any place I suggested that I’d want Ron Swoboda batting in place of Barry Bonds, then quote it. The reference was to Swoboda and '69 being more significant and memorable in the end than Bonds and his bloated HR numbers in the regular season.
You’re free to gush over Bonds. I choose not to. That’s called a difference of opinion. Someday, when you attain intellectual and emotional maturity, you will learn to recognize and accept differences in opinion, without squawking about another person “missing the point”, “not being responsive” or similar evasions. On this subject, as on many others, I think you’re full of it. Live with that, stop whining and move on.
I believe trolling is discouraged everywhere on the SDMB, the Pit included. Or maybe the recent banning incident there was just an illusion.
RickJay, you can play fantasy league and bat whomever you want in any situation. Maybe Bonds will have a glorious postseason some day.
Right about the time peace is declared in the Middle East and the Jays get back to the Series.
laugh Whatever, man. 121 at-bats is tremendous. Simply tremendous.
Which means what? Seriously.
You said an argument can be made that Swoboda had a better year in '69 than Bonds did in 2001. (And, once again, who’s focusing on home runs?)
You’re so delightful. Would you like a catalogue of points this thread (made by myself, RickJay, DynoSaur, and rackensack) that you haven’t bothered to address, presumably because they don’t fit with whatever argument it is you’re making? You’re calling me evasive for pointing out your nonresponsiveness…we’re through the looking-glass now. …But of course you’re right. What was I thinking telling you that invoking the postseason was “missing the point” in a thread that, well, had nothing whatsoever to do with the postseason? Silly ol’ me.
(And really–pick a position and stay with it, will ya? Every time you abandon an assertion–like when you said that the season doesn’t end on October 7th, and we called you on it–your rhetorical tactics get more and more transparent.)
I said the Pit was for ranting. You’re the one who bizarrely characterized RickJay’s anti-Red Sox screed as trolling, not me.
My goodness…are you even pretending to have an objective basis for your remarks anymore? This is a classic example of why I call you nonresponsive: RickJay and I have both asserted that past postseason performance is not predictive of future success, and we’ve backed those assertions up. Like, two posts ago. You don’t get to just continue along as if your point hasn’t been rebutted. It’s okay to have a difference of opinion–just, y’know, support your opinion if you want us to take you seriously, 'kay?
I swear, you’re the board equivalent of a kid with his fingers in his ears singing “La La La I can’t hear you.” Criminy.
(By the way–Terrence Long is the greatest player in the history of the game.)
Jackmanii, could you please succinctly state the argument you’re making in this thread? You said we’re having a difference of opinion. This is my opinion:
Barry Bonds’s 2001 season was one of the top three greatest offensive seasons in baseball history, based on his records for OPS, slugging percentage, walks, and home runs, his splits (specifically RISP), his increased production as the year went on, and a slew of performance-related metrics like runs created, equivalent average, and value over replacement player. This has been my position throughout the thread. I haven’t deviated from it.
Your opinion, if it differs from mine, must be one of two things:
Barry Bonds’s 2001 season is not one of the greatest offensive seasons in baseball history, because _________.
or
Barry Bonds’s 2001 season is one of the greatest offensive seasons in baseball history, but not for the reasons Gadarene stated, and with the following qualifications: ___________.
Because you stated that Ron Swoboda may have had a better season in 1969 than Bonds had this year, I suspect that your opinion may tend towards the former option rather than the latter. But I’d like you to lay it out for me, so we can cut through this peripheral stuff about Dave Henderson and Mark Lemke.
Basically, if Dave Henderson’s postseason record (for example) is useful to you in making an argument about Barry Bonds’s 2001 offensive season, I’d like to know exactly how. Otherwise we’re just gonna keep on covering random-ass shit that doesn’t speak to the question at hand.
Anyway, I’d appreciate it if you could lay out your position for us. Thanks.
Gadarene, I appreciate your point that Barry Bonds had a wonderful regular season*. You do not, or cannot accept that I do not share your passion for this particular ballplayer, for reasons duly enumerated.
Now ain’t that too damn bad.
I will add a primer on reading comprehension to your Xmas gift list.
*P.S. The baseball season ends with the last out in the World Series.
What “passion”? Could you address my previous post, please? --If you feel you’ve enumerated your position before, just go ahead and cut and paste.
It’s got nothing to do with my “not accepting” anything, Jack. I’m asking for coherent elaboration that addresses the topic at hand.
I’ve repeatedly given my position. Tell me, please, the ways in which you disagree.
…Oh, and post- means “after,” 'member? I submit that if you asked a hundred baseball fans (“real” fans) when the season ends, it would be implicit to the vast majority that you were talking about the regular season. If you don’t feel this to be the case, kindly make a mental amendment to the title of this thread: Is Barry Bonds Having the Greatest Offensive Regular Season Ever? That’s what everyone else in this discussion has been talking about already.
