Left Fielder
Barry Bonds (with Pirates from 1986-1992)
.275/.380/.503, 1010 G, 4255 PA, 147 OPS+ (with Pirates)
Barry Bonds was the sixth overall pick in the June 1985 Amateur Draft, which makes you wonder who was drafted ahead of him that year. The five players taken before Bonds were B.J. Surhoff (Brewers), Will Clark (Giants), Bobby Witt (Rangers), Barry Larkin (Reds), and Kurt Brown (White Sox). Larkin is in the Hall of Fame, Clark was very good for many years, Surhoff had a solid career and Witt had a few good years. Kurt Brown, taken one pick ahead of Bonds, played seven years in the minor leagues, but never made it to the show. The Pirates got one of the greatest players to ever step on the field with the sixth pick that year.
Bonds moved through the minor leagues quickly. He played 71 games with the Prince William Pirates in the Class-A Carolina League, then started the 1986 season with the Hawaii Islanders in the Triple-A Pacific Coast League. He made his major league debut as a 21-year-old on May 30, 1986.
In 113 games in his rookie year, Bonds hit just .223/.330/.416, but showed flashes of what was to come with 16 home runs and 36 steals. Bonds played center field exclusively that year. When the Pirates acquired Andy Van Slyke before the 1987 season, Bonds was moved to left field, where he would play for the rest of his career. When he was young, Bonds was a terrific fielder. He never had a great arm, but he played the position well with good instincts and great speed.
The 1987-1989 Barry Bonds was a very good player. He averaged 6.6 WAR (Baseball-Reference) per year thanks to great defense and good hitting. In 1990, he became BARRY BONDS. He made his first all-star game, won a Gold Glove, a Silver Slugger, and was the NL MVP. It was also the first year he hit more than 30 home runs and had more than 100 runs scored and more than 100 RBI. He also stole a career-high 52 bases.
The rise of the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1990 coincided with Barry Bonds coming into his own as a player. The team had gone through an ugly stretch since their World Series victory in 1979. Willie Stargell retired after the 1982 season. In 1985, the team was hit with the Pittsburgh Drug Trials, which revealed rampant use of cocaine among the players on the Pirates and others around the league. Even the man inside the Pirate Parrot mascot was part of the scandal. The 1985 Pirates team went 57-104 and had an average attendance of 9,199.
The Pirates improved in the late 1980s as a young core of players improved. They arrived in 1990, winning the NL East with a 95-67 record. Unfortunately for Pirates fans, the team lost in the playoffs to the “Nasty Boys” Cincinnati Reds. Bonds was just 3 for 18 in the series.
Bonds was very good again in 1991. He won another Gold Glove Award, another Silver Slugger, and finished second in MVP voting to Terry Pendleton (even though Bonds out-WAR’d him by 1.8 wins). The Pirates made the playoffs once again and once again lost to the NL West winner. This time it was the upstart Atlanta Braves, the team who had gone worst-to-first during the regular season and would go on to play the Minnesota Twins in an epic World Series. Bonds was terrible again in the NLCS, going 4-for-27 without a single RBI in seven games.
The 1992 season brought more of the same. The Pirates won 96 games and won the NL East for the third straight year and faced the Atlanta Braves in the playoffs for the second straight year. Barry Bonds had another MVP season, his second in three seasons. He led the league in runs scored, on-base percentage, and slugging percentage while also hitting 34 homers and stealing 39 bases.
When the playoffs rolled around, Bonds started slowly. The Pirates fell behind three games to one and he just wasn’t hitting. Through the first 17 post-season games of his career, he had a lifetime batting line of .143/.304/.161. He finally came alive in Game 5. He went 2-for-5 with two runs scored and one RBI. His RBI-double in the bottom of the first inning was just the second extra-base hit of his post-season career.
Bonds followed up a productive Game 5 by going 2-for-4 in Game 6. He also hit his first post-season home run. The Pirates won easily, 13-4, setting the stage for an epic (and awful) Game 7.
The finale of the 1992 NLCS featured Doug Drabek against John Smoltz. They were both 15-game winners during the regular season and both pitched well in this one. Doug Drabek went into the ninth inning having thrown 120 pitches and holding a 2-0 lead.
The Braves rallied to make it 2-1 and had the bases loaded with two outs. By this point, Stan Belinda was on in relief. The Braves sent Francisco Cabrera up to pinch-hit. He had come to the plate just 11 times for the Braves during the regular season. On a 2-1 pitch, Cabrera lined a single to left. David Justice scored easily, but Sid Bream was the man on second wearing a brace on his right knee and running like he was carrying a piano on his back. He came rumbling around third and chugged for home as Barry Bonds fielded the ball in left and fired to the plate. Bream slid in just ahead of the tag and the Braves had their come-from-behind victory.
That was the last play of Barry Bonds’ career in Pittsburgh. He signed as a free agent with the San Francisco Giants on a six-year, $43 million contract that made him the highest-paid player in the game. He would go on to win five more NL MVP Awards, including four in a row from 2001 to 2004 when he turned baseball into his own personal video game.
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