Brushbacks and Knockdowns: The Greatest Baseball Debates of Two Centuries

[Senser81]

In the decade of the 90's:

Bonds: .302/.434/.602, 361 HR, 343 SB
Griffey: .302/.384/.581, 382 HR, 151 SB

Conclusion. Barry was simply amazing. The best I have ever seen.

Griffey CF > Bonds LF

[dell71]

Griffey CF > Bonds LF

This is precisely where I was going. Bonds won lots of gold gloves, but most think there is a pretty significant difference between the two on defense in Griffey's favor. Other than stolen bases, the offensive numbers between them are fairly similar. Is that difference big enough to make up for the SBs and 50 pts OBP?

[Warner2BruceTD]

What year did Bonds bulk up? Or was it gradual? I can't remember.

[dell71]

It was sort of gradual, but 2000 is basically the point when he went full-on cyborg.

[Senser81]

It was sort of gradual, but 2000 is basically the point when he went full-on cyborg.

I always thought Bonds' 1999 season was kind of strange, and possibly the starting point of steroid use. In 1998 he hits 37 HRs in 167 hits...roughly 1/6 of his hits are HRS. In 1999 he hits 34 HRs in 93 hits...roughly 1/3 of his hits are HRs.

[dell71]

I always thought Bonds' 1999 season was kind of strange, and possibly the starting point of steroid use. In 1998 he hits 37 HRs in 167 hits...roughly 1/6 of his hits are HRS. In 1999 he hits 34 HRs in 93 hits...roughly 1/3 of his hits are HRs.

Just because of his HR totals, it's possible to say that. The difference is the rest of his game was actually down across the board that year. His average, sb, obp, ops, and ops+ were all down to their lowest points in at least a decade (8 yrs. for ops). Even with that high a percentage of homers, his slg was only up slightly from '98. This is all fairly normal for a guy who was 34 at the time. He had also come close to that fraction of his hits being HRs before, in '94 (37 of 122). In 2000, he was suddenly back to peak performance in all of those categories, except sb, and all of his career highs in all the metrics and many in the counting stats come after age 35. So I'm okay with '99 being the cutoff point.