We are a jaded society. The entertainment industry drowns us in hyperbole
and excess, to the point where magazines devote their cover story to the
outfits worn by celebrities to an award show. The sports industry is nearly
as guilty, or haven’t you noticed that college players are being touted for
the Heisman trophy in the second week of the season? Baseball wants more
offense and hockey wants more action and basketball wants another Michael
Jordan and golf wants Tiger Woods to win every week. We are so bombarded
with "new" and "improved" and "bigger" and
"better" and "the best ever" that we don’t believe any
of it.
That’s a shame, because when an athlete does something truly magnificent and
unprecedented, we are unable to appreciate it. When a baseball player
produces one of the finest seasons in the 125-year history of the sport, we
are unable to distinguish his performance from the merely great. In a
society that uses "Ruthian" to denote a gargantuan amount of,
well, anything, few notice that a player is having a season that Babe
Ruth himself would envy. While Barry Bonds may be having the most
valuable season in the history of baseball, there are those who can’t decide
if he’s even the Most Valuable Player in the National League this year.
And that’s exactly what he’s having, folks. This isn’t run-of-the-mill
greatness here. This is the kind of season that our grandchildren will look
up in Total Baseball XVII some day and wish they could have seen in
person.
The 63 home runs, you know. But did you know that of all the 60-homer
hitters in history (it’s happened seven times now), none amassed as many
extra-base hits as Bonds is on pace to hit?
Year Player HR XBH2001 Barry Bonds 63 106 (projected) 1927 Babe Ruth 60 97 1998 Mark McGwire 70 91 1999 Sammy Sosa 63 89 1999 Mark McGwire 65 87 1998 Sammy Sosa 66 86 1961 Roger Maris 61 81
With 106 extra-base hits, Bonds would finish in the top five all-time in
that category:
Year Player XBH1921 Babe Ruth 119 1927 Lou Gehrig 117 1930 Chuck Klein 107 2001 Barry Bonds 106 (projected) 1948 Stan Musial 104
Impressive, certainly, but it becomes more impressive when you consider how
few at-bats Bonds garners per game. Bonds is currently averaging 3.16
at-bats per game, which is considerably fewer than any player with even 90
extra-base hits in a season:
Year Player XBH AB G AB/G2001 Barry Bonds 94 427 135 3.16 1920 Babe Ruth 99 458 142 3.23 1998 Mark McGwire 91 509 155 3.28 1923 Babe Ruth 99 522 152 3.43 1924 Babe Ruth 92 529 153 3.46
Not counting Bonds’s 2001, Ruth has five of the top seven seasons on this
list, as (like Bonds) he averaged nearly a walk a game for much of his
career. At the other end of the list, Chuck Klein holds three of the
four highest at-bat counts per game, a product of his relatively low walk
totals as well as to his increased chances to bat playing in an incredible
hitters’ park during an incredible hitters’ era.
If we look at another measure–extra-base hits per at-bat–Bonds is left
standing with the twin pillars of baseball greatness:
Year Player XBH AB XBH/AB1921 Babe Ruth 119 540 .2204 2001 Barry Bonds 94 427 .2201 1920 Babe Ruth 99 458 .216 1927 Lou Gehrig 107 584 .200 1923 Babe Ruth 99 522 .190
All of this is just a long-winded way of saying that Barry Bonds not only
has the highest slugging average in National League history (by a margin of
64 points)…
Year Player SLG1920 Babe Ruth .847 1921 Babe Ruth .846 2001 Barry Bonds .838 1927 Babe Ruth .772 1927 Lou Gehrig .765
…but that his isolated power–slugging average minus batting average–is
the best ever, in any league, by an enormous margin:
Year Player ISO2001 Barry Bonds .520 1920 Babe Ruth .472 1921 Babe Ruth .469 1998 Mark McGwire .454 1996 Mark McGwire .418
Let’s stop for a moment. As sacred as Ruth’s home run record was, isn’t it
true that Ruth’s record for slugging average was far more impressive? Sixty
homers may have been the record for 34 years, but Hank Greenberg and
Jimmie Foxx both hit 58 shortly after Ruth hit 60. But Ruth’s twin
towers of slugging–.847 in 1920, .846 in 1921–have lasted for 80 years
without a serious challenge. The highest slugging average posted by anyone
other than Ruth, Lou Gehrig‘s .765 mark, still fell 82 points short,
which is greater than the difference between George Brett‘s career
mark and that of his brother Ken. Seriously.
Today, with just three weeks left in the season, Bonds sits just nine points
behind a mark most of us never thought we’d see approached, let alone
broken. If Bonds hits two homers in his next game, he’ll pass Ruth’s
slugging mark.
Okay, so Bonds’s power is legendary. How about his on-base skills? After
reaching base six times on September 7, Bonds’s OBP briefly touched .500 on
the nose. A .500 OBP is not unprecedented–it’s been accomplished 15
times–but it hasn’t been seen in 44 years. Since Ted Williams and
Mickey Mantle both broke the .500 barrier in 1957, the highest OBPs
on record are:
Year Player OBP2001 Barry Bonds .499 1994 Frank Thomas .494 1961 Norm Cash .488 1962 Mickey Mantle .488 1995 Edgar Martinez .482 1988 Wade Boggs .480
Bonds’s OBP since May 1 is .524. He’s reached base in 24 straight games and
in 39 of his last 40.
Add it all together, and Bonds has a 1337 OPS. Once again, Bonds is entering
territory previously seen only by Babe Ruth:
Year Player OPS1920 Babe Ruth 1378 1921 Babe Ruth 1358 2001 Barry Bonds 1337 1923 Babe Ruth 1309 1941 Ted Williams 1286
The 1250 OPS barrier has been cleared eight times, but Bonds would become
just the third player to do so.
If we consider Bonds’s performance relative to his league, he drops on the
leader board just a tad, as the offensive level of the 2001 National League
is a little higher than it was in Ted Williams’s day:
League
Year Player OPS OPS Ratio
1920 Babe Ruth 1378 734 1.876
1921 Babe Ruth 1358 765 1.775
1957 Ted Williams 1259 710 1.771
1923 Babe Ruth 1309 739 1.771
2001 Barry Bonds 1337 756 1.769
1941 Ted Williams 1286 730 1.761
Ruth’s 1920 and 1921 seasons look virtually identical on paper, with the
exception that Ruth played in 10 more games in 1921. As this chart shows,
the AL was still coming out of the dead-ball era in 1920, and relative to
the league Ruth’s performance that year dwarfs any season before or since.
Since 1957, the highest ratio recorded by a player was 1.647, by Mark
McGwire in 1998.
But while Bonds’s season ranks "only" fifth all-time in terms of
relative OPS, is it possible to argue that he’s having a better overall
season than Williams or Ruth ever had? Even ignoring the quality-of-play
issue (Ruth played in a lily-white league, and the American League was very
slow to integrate in the late 1940s and 1950s), it’s easy to make a case
that Bonds should move up at least three slots on this leader board:
- Bonds is a much better defensive player than Williams was, particularly
the Williams of 1957, when the Splinter was 38 years old. The young Babe
Ruth was a thinner and faster version of the Ruth that’s immortalized today,
but he was never thought of as one of the best defensive outfielders in the
game. - Bonds is the best baserunner of the three, by far. Ruth was fairly
speedy in his day, but in 1920 and 1921 he combined for 31 steals and 27
caught stealings. Williams stole 24 bases and was caught 17 times…in his
career. Bonds is 11-for-13 in stolen-base opportunities this year, adding
perhaps two runs to the bottom line, and he goes first-to-third faster than
Ruth or Williams ever dreamed. - Bonds has played in 94% of his team’s games, compared to 92% and 86% for
Williams in 1941 and 1957. Ruth played in 92%, 99%, and 100% of the Yankees’
games in 1920, 1921, and 1923. - Bonds has grounded into just five double plays all year. Williams
grounded into 10 and 19, respectively; GIDP data isn’t available for Ruth.
With these arguments in hand, I’m quite comfortable placing Bonds’s 2001
season to date ahead of all but Ruth’s 1920 and 1921 campaigns, which are
generally considered to be an inviolable standard as the two best in
history. You can make a strong case that Bonds’s speed and defense makes up
for Ruth’s marginal advantage in terms of offense and playing time in 1921,
but Ruth’s 1920 performance–even in just 142 games–is a tougher nut to
crack.
But there’s more to Bonds’s season than the numbers above. I dare say that
if you wanted to create, on paper, the perfect MVP candidate, you couldn’t
do better than Barry Bonds, v2001. Aside from the sheer greatness of his
performance, consider the context:
- The worst month of his season was April, when he hit .240/.363/.747.
Before the All-Star break, he was hitting .305/.487/.826; since the break,
he has managed to exceed that, hitting .339/.517/.857. Since August 1, he’s
hitting .361/.540/.935. - As mind-boggling as his overall numbers are, they get progressively
better in clutch situations:
Situation AVG OBP SLG
Overall .319 .499 .838 No one on .277 .434 .783 Men on .376 .577 .916 Men in SP .363 .627 .963 Close & Late .328 .538 .844 Bases Loaded .667 .571 2.000
- His team is in the thick of a pennant race. Against the team the Giants
have been chasing all year long, the Diamondbacks, Bonds is hitting
.328/.518/.836, better than he has overall, and that’s against one of the
league’s best pitching staffs. - If you want to throw in intangibles (remember, we’re trying to make a
case that will appeal to the real voters), then you should mention that the
player batting ahead of Bonds all season, Rich Aurilia, is having one
of the great all-time seasons by a shortstop. If Rich Aurilia were having
the same season batting ahead of Sammy Sosa, don’t you think Sosa
would be credited with "protecting" Aurilia by forcing pitchers to
throw him fastballs?
Despite all this, Bonds is still fighting an uphill battle to win an
unprecedented fourth MVP award. Look, Sammy Sosa has an 1146 OPS, which
would rank 41st all-time. Luis Gonzalez‘s 1135 OPS would rank 45th.
Sandwiched between the two, with an 1140 OPS, is Bonds himself–in 1993, the
year he won his last MVP award. Both Sosa and Gonzalez would be worthy MVPs
in most leagues in most seasons, like, say, the AL this year. Bonds clears
both of them by the margin of 191 points of OPS, which is simply
unassailable. Here is a list of every instance in which a first baseman or
outfielder won an MVP award even though another player in the league (that
played in 140+ games) had an OPS at least 170 points higher:
Year Lge MVP Pos OPS Better Player Pos OPS Diff1926 AL George Burns 1B 889 Babe Ruth OF 1283 394 1940 NL Frank McCormick 1B 850 Johnny Mize 1B 1039 189 1941 AL Joe DiMaggio OF 1083 Ted Williams OF 1286 203 1947 AL Joe DiMaggio OF 913 Ted Williams OF 1133 220 1973 NL Pete Rose OF 838 Willie Stargell 1B 1041 203 1998 NL Sammy Sosa OF 1026 Mark McGwire 1B 1225 199
(Ruth’s snub in 1926 should be ignored; the rules for MVP voting were
different back then, as you were only allowed to win the award once, and
Ruth had already won in 1923.)
Bonds has been compared to Ted Williams on many an occasion, and here’s yet
another reason to intertwine the two. If ever there was a comparable
situation to Bonds’s predicament this season, it’s what Williams went
through in 1941, when he had his greatest season (not only did he hit .406,
but he set the all-time record with a .551 OBP) and was still denied the
MVP. DiMaggio was a vastly better defensive player, and the Yankees won the
pennant, or so the argument goes.
No such argument can exist against Bonds–who is at least the defensive
equal of Gonzalez and Sosa–if the Giants make the playoffs. It is quite
unusual for a player having such an outstanding season to find himself
locked in a tight pennant race, which makes Bonds’s effort that much more
meaningful. The highest OPS by any player whose team qualified for the
postseason by the margin of two games or less is 1123, by Jason
Giambi of the 2000 Athletics. If the Giants reach the postseason by the
skin of their teeth, how could anyone argue with the notion that Barry Bonds
did more to take his team to the playoffs than any player in the history of
baseball?
So if you want to tell your children’s children one day that you witnessed
the greatest season of all time, root for the Giants to make the playoffs.
Better still, if you enjoy seeing the members of the Fourth Estate get their
comeuppance, hope that Bonds not only carries the Giants to the postseason,
he finally slays the demons that have gotten hold of him in October, and
takes the Giants to their first World Championship since the team moved to
San Francisco, thus completing perhaps the most perfect season in the
history of team sports.
Then wait until mid-December, when the execs at Sports Illustrated,
who have conducted an ongoing campaign to assassinate Bonds’s character ever
since he failed to show up for a scheduled interview years ago, realize that
they have no choice but to name him their Sportsman of the Year.
Rany Jazayerli is an author of Baseball Prospectus. You can contact him by
clicking here.
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