Bonds, over his last 100 games or so, is perhaps the biggest statistical outlier in the game’s history. He breaks the formulae, in that the many walks Bonds takes are, collectively, less valuable than our usual tools for evaluating such things would perceive. He’s being given so many walks in RISP/first-base-empty situations that they are, if not a negative, certainly not the positive that, say, linear weights might indicate. They’re not a bad thing–and they certainly don’t warrant the kind of “Bonds should swing more” analysis that has been proffered–but the context of the walks is something to consider when evaluating his performance.
Yesterday, I provided an overview of Barry Bonds‘s amazing performance so far this season, and reaching back to the latter part of 2001. There’s no question that Bonds is the most dangerous hitter in the game today. However, I do believe that we’ve run into a problem with our advanced metrics. Bonds, over his last…