Brushbacks and Knockdowns: The Greatest Baseball Debates of Two Centuries

[Senser81]

That's always been my stance. Now that we have testing guys that test positive are out, but I'm not going to hold the guys in the unregulated, unchecked 90s to the same level. Maybe 'roids were illegal but head was inserted into sand for a number of years.

Or in Selig's case, ass.

I don't think you can erase just the enormity of history by keeping the steroid guys out. I don't know what baseball gains by that. Even in instances of isolated careers, people still remember Pete Rose and Joe Jackson (in fact, perhaps their banning has made them more relevent over the years). I think MLB's attempt to erase an entire era from people's memories is a mixture of foolishness and unfairness. 30 years from now people will still remember Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds, regardless of HOF enshrinement.

 

[dell71]

I thought you wanted us to leave out anybody with reasonable steroid suspicions.

I think Bagwell is a borderline top five all time 1B. Also, while common sense tells me he used PED's, he's never been on any lists or been a part of any suspicions. I'd vote for him without a second thought.

This is the key part. With the other guys (Clemens, Bonds, Sosa, Palmeiro, McGwire), suspicions brought them in front of a grand jury, and either failed tests or assertions by shady characters, or even admissions, are all there. We don't have any of that with Bagwell and Piazza. All we really have on them is that they were muscular for baseball players and, in Piazza's case, one writer saying he's definitely a user because he was in the Mets lockerroom and saw that Piazza has "backne". With such flimsy assertions, I feel comfortable leaving them in the conversation.

 

[dell71]

Still some interesting stuff in this book to discuss.

Since we've already talked about HoF and PEDs, why not swing the conversation into the poster-boy? Yup, let's talk Barry Bonds.

The chapter is actually titled "The Strange Case of Barry Bonds." It essentially becomes a discussion between Michael Humphries of SABR (Society for American Baseball Research) and the legendary Bill James about whether Barry was using steroids or not. A lot of the argument centered around the age at which Bonds suddenly became a HR machine. Neither would say one way or the other with any conviction, but surprisingly, Bill James leaned towards Barry being a clean player. Again, this book is almost a decade old, so I'm curious as to what Mr. James says now.

However, we're not going to discuss whether he did, or didn't and what impact it did or didn't have. Instead, the author raises another question:

If Barry Bonds had been killed in a plane crash after the 1999 season, would he have been regarded as the greatest ballplayer of his era?

Hmmm...The only other name that usually comes into the discussion of who was the best player of the 90s is Ken Griffey Jr. So was Bonds already better than any of his contemporaries before 2000?

 

[Warner2BruceTD]

The thing about Bill James, is he is obsessed with proof, almost to a fault. That's what makes him so good at what he does, because he approaches each question with no bias and just looks to either prove or disprove the question. Many times he'll write long essays, pages long, and not even draw a conclusion in the end.

If you recall, James defended the idea that Pete Rose was innocent until basically the day Rose confessed. The long essay on the topic is in all editions of his Historical Abstract, and even now that we know the truth, he still builds a pretty convincing case that Rose didn't bet on baseball. For James, slips of paper that said things like "Montreal 50x" Or "4/5/88 BOS" meant nothing to him without dates, more context, opponents, etc. He combed through the evidence and deducted that there just wasn't enough proof to pin Pete down. Of course he was wrong in the end, but that's just how James operates.

So I don't find it odd at all that James was not ready to brand Bonds a PED user. His mind doesn't work on assumptions, no matter how obvious they appear. He isn't wired that way.

 

[Goober]

Still some interesting stuff in this book to discuss.

Since we've already talked about HoF and PEDs, why not swing the conversation into the poster-boy? Yup, let's talk Barry Bonds.

The chapter is actually titled "The Strange Case of Barry Bonds." It essentially becomes a discussion between Michael Humphries of SABR (Society for American Baseball Research) and the legendary Bill James about whether Barry was using steroids or not. A lot of the argument centered around the age at which Bonds suddenly became a HR machine. Neither would say one way or the other with any conviction, but surprisingly, Bill James leaned towards Barry being a clean player. Again, this book is almost a decade old, so I'm curious as to what Mr. James says now.

However, we're not going to discuss whether he did, or didn't and what impact it did or didn't have. Instead, the author raises another question:



Hmmm...The only other name that usually comes into the discussion of who was the best player of the 90s is Ken Griffey Jr. So was Bonds already better than any of his contemporaries before 2000?

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.

 

[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.