The first is about Mike Schmidt's Howard-Bonds comparison. And as reader Robert acknowledges, it reflects a frightening willingness to pour minutes upon minutes of research into refuting Schmidt's totally offhand comment.
I just spent the last 40 minutes or so manipulating data in Excel to give you a touch more unnecessary fodder. I analyzed every two week period of Barry Bonds' 2002 and 2003 seasons (I couldn't find game by game data for 2001, but it won't matter) and Ryan Howard's 2006 season. If we can all agree that a serviceable way to measure a players' "Good" level at this moment in time, or "Dangerous" level at this moment in time is that players' OPS in any two week period, then I have some fun results:
The best two week period Howard has had this season was from 8/3 to 8/17, when he OPS'd a fantastic *1.713(!)*. The next few best periods were (the date given is the start date of the two week period):
DATE OPS
Aug. 31 1.674
Aug. 7 1.665
Aug. 30 1.655
Aug. 4 1.631
Aug. 25 1.619
Aug. 24 1.552
Aug. 22 1.500
Mr Bonds is better. His best from 2002:
DATE OPS
Aug. 23 2.220
Aug. 27 2.167
Aug. 24 2.164
Aug. 25 2.117
Aug. 26 2.083
Aug. 22 2.000
Aug. 20 1.803
and 2003:
DATE OPS
Jun. 7 1.958
Aug. 12 1.858
Jun. 6 1.856
Aug. 10 1.852
Jul. 17 1.793
Jul. 11 1.782
Jul. 7 1.774
Jul. 12 1.767
In fact, between those 2 years, there have been at least 25 individual two week periods where Bonds has been better than Howard at Howard's prime. This doesn't even include 2001 data (or any other year). Got a link to game-by-game data for Bonds in 2001? If you get it to me I will go farther with this colossal waste of time.
Sorry those charts are so ugly. I'm not currently interested in fixing that. Instead let's move on to a more personal, humorous email from Brad:
Love the FJM Website and read it everyday. Just thought I would let you know that I work at Wrigley Field almost every home game as a security guard and I can say I rarely if ever see Rogers at the ballpark. I find it funny that he insinuates in that paragraph you shared that he spends every waking moment at one of the two ball yards in Chicago.
Hurray for the Internet!
Labels: barry bonds, ryan howard
