Crazy Barry Bonds stat

[Mithrandir]

It's just so so unfortunate that Bonds was/is such a giant ASSHOLE.

[TranaGreg]

It's just so so unfortunate that Bonds was/is such a giant ASSHOLE.

Hey, nobody is saying these were good guys. Often their assholeness that contributed to them being awesome players.

While some of these Bonds stats are truly amazing (more IBB's than the Rays ever!?!?), I like to point out the most HRs in the early 1900's to show how much of a game-changer Ruth was ...

1910 - 10
1911 - 21
1912 - 14
1913 - 19
1914 - 19
1915 - 24
1916 - 12
1917 - 12
1918 - 11
1919 - 29 (Ruth)
1920 - 54 (Ruth)
1921 - 59 (Ruth)

[Bob Kohm]

On the topic of contextualizing... Ruth was a fat drunk whose drugs of preference were rye whiskey and high fat foods, both of which had diminishing effects on his performance. Bonds was the best player that chemistry could make, whose drugs of preference were anabolic steroids and human growth hormone, which were responsible for a good (arguably huge) portion of the stats he put up in his last seven or eight seasons. So there's that...

[revo]

Barry Bonds' dad had much better stats than Babe Ruth's dad.

[The Dane]

On the topic of contextualizing... Ruth was a fat drunk whose drugs of preference were rye whiskey and high fat foods, both of which had diminishing effects on his performance. Bonds was the best player that chemistry could make, whose drugs of preference were anabolic steroids and human growth hormone, which were responsible for a good (arguably huge) portion of the stats he put up in his last seven or eight seasons. So there's that...

True, but Ruth was playing against players who had the same habits and diets as he did. Bonds played against players who took the same drugs. So, if we're looking at how well they stacked up against their contemporaries, then there really isn't that...

Ruth did not eat ALL of the high fat foods and drink ALL of the whiskey, and Bonds did not do ALL of the steroids. The players belong to their era and you can certainly prefer one era over another, but you can't blame the era on the player (as people often do with Bonds). You can't argue that Bonds wasn't enhanced, but so were many of the pitchers he faced, and hitters whom he could be compared against. Ruth faced zero steroid-infused pitchers and had no steroid using hitters to compete against, and also no black or latino or asian players, but many many more players with his same consumption habits. Bonds faced far fewer cigar-smoking fat guys, true, but tons of medicinally enhanced supermen from all over the globe.

Again, exercise in futility...

[madducks]

I agree to a certain extent that Babe Ruth was a game changer. But, he may have had some help.
Here's an interesting article about the changes in the manufacturing of baseballs at the end of the "deadball" era.

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1...-through-today

"According to a 1946 New York Times article, a bit of Australia started going into baseballs in 1920 when Spalding started using Australian wool on the insides. William McNeil wrote in The Evolution of Pitching in Major League Baseball that the new yarn was stronger and allowed for a more tightly wound ball.
The new ball proved to be a lively one. So the players thought, anyway."


"Also working against pitchers were new rules put in place in 1920 that outlawed spitballs and regulated intentional walks, and Professor Fales also highlighted another newer rule as a factor. Before the 1920s, the baseballs in play in a given game were rarely changed and the balls were thus allowed to become dirtier and softer throughout the course of a game. Balls were exchanged much more frequently starting in 1920, and that benefited the hitters."

[hacko]

I have to go with the Dane - trying to compare 2 players from different era's is a waste of time. True Ruth never had to play against anyone but the white players but back in those days there were fewer teams and fewer major leagues - so he was playing against the crème of the player pool of athletics. No Nfl(to speak of, no NBA to pull players from.... Baseball was king.

Equipment is so much better today. Juicer balls - better bats but also better gloves.

They both were the king of their time and put on some great show/ drama.

I know from just going to the park and watching Albert Belle play where every time he came up you were on the edge of your seat. Times that by thousand I am guessing when Ruth or Bonds came to the plate.

I must say tho it must have been mind boggling for the era those first coupe of years when the HR mark for the season jumped from teens to 50. Think of it this way what we think today if next year HR leader would have 10 for the season. We would be stunned. Growing up in the 20's - Ruth must have had the same effect on those fans.

[Fresno Bob]

Nope. Babe Ruth is and it's not really that close. Bonds is truly great but Babe Ruth hit more HRs in 1920 than every other TEAM in the league, bar two. How many would Bonds had to have hit in order to make the same claim? 200? After Ruth set the HR career record (when he hit #139, lol) he went on to hit nearly 600 additional HRs. Bonds would have to have hit over 1,300 HRs to make the same claim. Ruth hit 575 HRs AFTER he set the HR record. Only 9 players have ever hit that many. Ruth more than doubled the HR record of the previous record holder. Bonds would have had to hit 140+ HRs to say the same. There are plenty more reasons beyond just those involving HRs, but Ruth's excellence was so incredibly far beyond his peers as to totally annihilate the records books in transformative ways. Bonds was great, but he was no Babe Ruth.

Edit: I'd probably buy Bonds as the second greatest hitter....maybe third.

Bonds had to face the greatest pitching talent in the world, Ruth faced the greatest whiteboys of the US....(and it appears I'm not the first to make the arguement)

[Sour Masher]

I think it really depends on how you define the question. I agree with Eld that if you are going to define who the GOAT is by comparing him to his contemporaries, it has to be Ruth. If you are using that as your argument, you also get to side step the other issues raised here--segregation, PEDs etc.

If you are going to go purely on how, theoretically, one player would play in the others time and place, I think it has to be Bonds as the GOAT. That is to say, that if you took the chemically enhanced Barry Bonds from his prime and plopped him down in any era against any other set of players, he would hit better than anyone else ever. He represented the pinnacle confluence of human development, god given talent, and every possible advantage that science could legally and illegally give him. Of course, there is a lot that can be argued against looking at it that way. The two main arguments against deciding who the GOAT is based on objectively comparing ability are

1. That sports science and nutrition (everything from corrective eye surgery, to computer simulations to break down swings, to colored contacts, to shin pads, to diet, exercise regime, dedicate staff of doctors and trainers etc) have evolved light years in between their eras. Taking a finely tuned machine of an athlete today and transporting him back 60 years would be like that old commercial where Scottie Pippen went back and time and dunked over all those sad, pale 6 feet white guys.
2. Barry Bonds had an additional benefit of going above and beyond legal, accepted means of improving his performance (even if many of his peers did so as well).

I am greatly swayed by the two points above, so Ruth will always be the first face on my mount Rushmore (followed by Bonds and Williams, and there would be a 4th, but Bonds' head is so damn big, a 4th won't fit). But it would be hard for anyone who was alive and watching baseball when Bonds played to argue against the notion that if one is deciding the GOAT based solely on an objective comparison, as if you had a time machine, went and collected all of the greats, and were going to start a draft, and had the first pick, that Bonds wouldn't be that pick. Bonds is the only pick in that fictitious scenario, assuming, of course, you were going to be playing in a league without drug testing .

[onejayhawk]

Hornsby paralleled a lot of Ruth's stats, though not as much power. Later, you have Gehrig and Foxx. Ruth was the trail breaker of the post Black Sox rules, but others could follow. What makes Ruth scary is the consistency and longevity.

BTW, where is the Big Hurt in all this? Like Ruth, Bonds has longevity, and consistency up to age 35 or so. I do not believe he doped before age 30, but he hit 46 HR at age 29.

J