Barry Bonds will soon be the all-time MLB home run leader. With all the steroids controversy and the focus on the home run record itself, people forget how good this guy is as an all-around baseball player - he’s much more than a home run hitter. If you look closely, we may be watching baseball’s best - or at the very least top-3 - players of all time.
Barry Bonds has won an unprecedented SEVEN MVP awards (which could have been nine if he were better liked by the media). Bonds is one of only eight major-leaguers to have won more than two MVPs but all the others won only THREE.
Currently Bonds has a .299 career batting average and ranks in the top five all-time in several major offensive categories: Home Runs (2 soon to be 1), RBI (5), Runs (3), Total Bases (5), Walks (1), On Base % (3), Slugging % (5). He has accomplished these feats while the league has pitched around him for the past five years. Surely many of these numbers would be even higher, including Bonds passing the 3,000 hit plateau (he’s currently over 2,900) if teams did not walk Bonds an average of 174 times per season over the past five full seasons (excludes 2005 when he played in only 14 games).
Highlighting his versatility, Bonds is also one of four players to record 40 home runs and 40 steals in the same season, and is the only member of the 500 HR / 500 steal club. In addition to his gaudy offensive numbers, Bonds has amassed eight Gold Glove awards for his defense in left field. The only knock on Barry Bonds is his lack of post-season success. Bonds’s teams have never won a championship. He has been in the playoffs seven times, reaching the World Series once - losing to the Angels in 2002. Except for his magical run in 2002 (.356 BA; 8 HR; 16 RBI; .581 OB%; .978 SLG % in 17 games), Bonds has had miserable post-seasons. He batted .198 with 1 HR and 8 RBI in the 31 playoff games excluding the 2002 season.
The only player who comes close to Barry’s numbers is Babe Ruth, who is probably still the best baseball player of all time. You might add Bonds’ godfather, Willie Mays, with his impact both offensively and defensively, to the discussion of top all-time players, but that’s about it.
So until and unless there is definitive evidence that Bonds used illegal performance-enhancing substances, baseball, starting with Commissioner Selig, should celebrate the new home run record and the fantastic career of one of baseballs top-3 players of all time.
2 comments:
Yah but...he did all this in the steroids era. Everyone who played from the late 1980s until the middle of the 2000s has to looked upon with a lot of scepticism.
I almost wish he was doing "that stuff" now, so he would play more often and get this home run chase over with.
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