Barry Bonds without the hullabaloo
On his 54th birthday, let’s reconsider Barry Bonds’ career as if never (allegedly) started using PEDs.
Fifty-four years ago today, Barry Bonds was born in Riverside, California. He was born into a family of athletes, starting with his father, a future MLB player, his aunt, an Olympic hurdler, and his uncle, a future NFL draft pick. Imagine the athletic competitions at their family reunions.
Barry’s father, Bobby, had a 14-year MLB career during which he was worth 57.9 WAR (baseball-reference), which is tied with Joey Votto, who is in his 12th season. The elder Bonds had more WAR than Hank Greenberg, Willie Stargell, and Joe Medwick, all Hall of Fame players. He was a three-time all-star and three-time Gold Glove winner. Twice he finished in the top four in MVP voting. He was a very good player.
As good as Bobby Bonds was, he didn’t come close to the accomplishments of his son, Barry, who turns 54 today. To mark the occasion, how about we all come together and wish a happy birthday to the Home Run King, the 14-time All-Star, 12-time Silver Slugger, 8-time Gold Glove winner, and 7-time MVP! Best wishes to the man who launched 762 career home runs and walked 2558 times, both tops all-time! Enjoy your day, Mister .298/.444/.607!
No? You’re not feeling the love? Barry Bonds, of course, is one of the most controversial athletes of his generation. He was controversial for small things before he was controversial for big things. He never had a friendly relationship with the press, which he acknowledged in this interview with Terence Moore in 2016. He also famously got into a shouting match with Pittsburgh Pirates manager Jim Leyland in 1991 (NSFW because of the profanity from potty-mouth Jim Leyland).
The bigger issue with Bonds is the (alleged?) PED use. According to the book “Game of Shadows,” Bonds “decided to use performance-enhancing substances after watching McGwire—whom the excerpt says he suspected was “a juicer”—gain national acclaim for eclipsing Roger Maris’ storied single-season record.”
During that 1998 season, the headlines were all about Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, as they battled for the single-season home run record. All summer long, it was McGwire this and Sosa that. As division rivals, they had some great head-to-head contests in St. Louis and Chicago.
In the end, McGwire came out on top, with an incredible 70 home runs. Sosa finished with 66. Bonus points if you can remember who finished third in the NL that year, with 50. Hint: it wasn’t Barry Bonds.
What about Bonds in 1998? He hit 37 home runs, which was ninth in the league. He also hit .303/.438/.609 and was an all-star and Gold Glove winner. He led the league in WAR, but finished eighth in MVP voting, behind the famous home run duo, both of whom finished a half-win or more behind him in WAR. Bonds even finished behind Greg Vaugh, the guy who was third in the NL in home runs and who was worth nearly two fewer wins than Bonds.
I don’t know if the “Game of Shadows” narrative is true. I wasn’t there. You weren’t there. None of us ever saw Bonds take a PED. But just for fun, let’s say it is true or, at the very least, true-ish. Let’s say Bonds started taking PEDs after the 1998 season. We’ll disregard those years and look at just the first 13 years of his career.
Bonds becomes a Pirate
Bonds was drafted by the Pittsburgh Pirates out of Arizona State University in the first round of the 1985 MLB June Amateur Draft. He was the sixth pick taken that year, behind B.J. Surhoff, Will Clark, Bobby Witt, Barry Larkin and Kurt Brown. With apologies to Kurt Brown, that top four is pretty damn good.
Larkin is in the Hall of Fame. Clark was a very good player with one of the sweetest swings in baseball. Surhoff had eight above-average seasons in the big leagues. And Bobby Witt had a few good years and a near perfect game in 1994 that ended up being a one-hitter when Witt claims, the umpire missed the call on a play at first base. He was Armando Galarraga before there was an Armando Galarraga.
Bonds played seven years with the Pirates, hitting .275/.380/.503. He averaged 25 home runs and 36 steals per year and won the Gold Glove Award in his final three seasons in the ‘Burgh. He averaged 7.2 WAR per season, which is MVP level production.
The last days in Pittsburgh
His play on the field translated to wins for the Pirates. Bonds was the driving force behind the team’s three straight playoff seasons from 1990 to 1992, winning the NL MVP Award in 1990 and 1992 and finishing second in NL MVP voting in 1991 (by WAR, he should have won that one also, but it went to Terry Pendleton).
Despite the success with the Pirates, Bonds’ final play in a Pirates uniform is one of the most gut-wrenching plays in team history. With the Pirates up 2-1 in the bottom of the ninth inning of Game 7 of the NLCS, Stan Belinda allowed a line-drive single to left field off the bat of Francisco Cabrera.
With a hefty knee brace on his right leg, former Pirate Sid Bream took off from second base, running like he had a piano on his back. He rounded third and headed for home, his feet pounding the dirt like he was angry at it. Bonds fielded the ball and fired it in, but the throw was wide to the first base side of the plate. Catcher Mike LaValliere caught the ball and made a valiant attempt to tag Bream, but was too late. The Pirates lost 3-2.
Barry Bonds heads west
That offseason, Bonds signed with the Giants as a free agent and the Pirates embarked on a 20-year stretch without making the playoffs, with many of those seasons ending in a lower division finish. These were the lost years in Pittsburgh. There was no joy Mudville (or Steel City, if you prefer).
With the Giants, Bonds took his game to another level. We’ll just look at his first six seasons in San Francisco. From 1993 to 1998, Bonds averaged 115 R, 39 HR, 110 RBI, 32 SB and a .307/.445/.617 batting line. He was an all-star every year and a Gold Glove winner in five of these six seasons. He won another NL MVP Award and finished in the top five three more times.
In his first six years with the Giants, Bonds averaged 8.3 WAR per season. He was a terrific all-around offensive player and still strong on defense. Combining his seven years in Pittsburgh and six in San Francisco and Bonds had nearly 2000 hits, 411 home runs, 445 steals, 1364 runs scored and 1216 RBI. By the end of the 1998 season, he was worth 99.9 WAR.
How Barry Bonds looks without PEDs
If Bonds had walked away from baseball after the 1998 season, he would be 31st all-time in WAR, tied with Warren Spahn and just behind Randy Johnson, Joe Morgan, and Albert Pujols. He would be two or three wins better than Jimmie Foxx, Eddie Mathews, and Carl Yastrzemski.
All of those players except Pujols, who is still playing, were Hall of Famers. Four of them were first-ballot Hall of Famers. That’s the company Bonds kept before he allegedly began using PEDs.
We can take this a step further, because, why not? We’re here anyway, thinking about Bonds and wondering what type of cake he’s eating today. White cake with white frosting (my favorite)? Chocolate cake with chocolate frosting (also very good)? Yellow cake with chocolate frosting (highly underrated)?
Let’s say Bonds was much too virtuous to ever dally with PEDs. His pride wouldn’t let him. He wanted to do it the all-natural way, with a healthy diet and commitment to exercise. For this version of Bonds, we can do some calculating, with the help of Tom Tango’s WARcels.
WARcels is based on Tango’s Marcels projection system, a projection system so simple it was named after a monkey (The TV show “Friends”, perhaps?). Instead of projecting actual statistics, WARcels just uses a player’s weighted WAR from the previous three seasons, adds in regression and aging, and produces a projected WAR. Do that for multiple seasons and we can fill out a player’s career the all-natural way. This is hypothetical, of course.
In that 1998 season, Bonds was 33 years old and worth 8.1 WAR. I used Tango’s WARcels system to project another seven years for Bonds. He plays until he’s 40 years old in this scenario. In real life, he played until he was 42 years old, nine more seasons, and amassed another 62.9 WAR. This includes the four years from 2001 to 2004 in which Bonds dominated baseball like Bo Jackson dominated Tecmo Bowl.
Instead of being worth 62.9 WAR over his final nine seasons and retiring after his age-42 season, my math suggests Bonds would have been worth 31 WAR over seven more seasons, retiring after his age-40 season. If we add that to his 99.9 WAR through his first 13 seasons, we have a squeaky-clean Barry Bonds with 130.9 career WAR.
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This new Barry Bonds would rank ninth all-time in WAR. The three players ahead of him would be Hank Aaron, Roger Clemens (uh-oh), and Tris Speaker. Of course, Clemens should have the same adjustment as Bonds if we’re taking this hypothetically to its logical conclusion.
Behind Bonds on the all-time WAR list would be Honus Wagner, Stan Musial and Rogers Hornsby. A little further down the list would be Ted Williams, Lou Gehrig, Rickey Henderson and Mickey Mantle. This hypothetical Barry Bonds wouldn’t be on a tier that contains just him and Babe Ruth, but this Stan Musial, Ted Williams, Rickey Henderson tier would be impressive enough.
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So do you agree? Are we too rough on Barry Bonds? Should he be remembered, regardless of PED accusations, as one of the greatest players of the last 30 years? Comment below!