FIRE JOE MORGAN

We all know Barry Bonds is a bad dude. Does illegal whaling in Japan in the off-season, helps cars hit old ladies crossing the street, has a huge collection of pirated LaserDiscs. Crusty sportswriters -- I'm giving you this one. Not defending Barry's character.

But recently we've had a plethora of "good thing Team X didn't sign Barry!" pieces, culminating in that crazy Tim Kawakami thing that argued that Fred Lewis was better than Bonds. Essentially, these articles all hinge on the same premise: Barry's negative clubhouse presence outweighs what actually does on the field. Sure, they pay lip service to his age, his balky knees, his fielding -- but let's be honest, what they're really saying is that Barry Bonds' confirmed boogeymanness is totally more important than his ability to hit baseballs to Ganymede, Jupiter's sweetest moon.

I present to you Jeff Gordon. Not that one.

Is unemployed outfielder Barry Bonds the victim of collusion among Major League Baseball owners?

Well, probably not organized, premeditated, let's-all-get-in-a-dark-smoky-boardroom-and-place-blackballs-into-a-mahogany-box collusion, no. But I'm starting to wonder what the fuck some of these teams are thinking.

Of course not. Only a blithering idiot would believe such nonsense.

For a guy about to spout nonsense, he's pretty harsh on idiots who believe nonsense.

The major leagues are awash with players mentioned in the Mitchell Report. The Cardinals, like many teams, didn’t hesitate to acquire players implicated in steroid and/or HGH investigations.

Okay, but like Larry Bigbie and Glenallen Hill and Nook Logan didn't break the all-time home run record, sullying one of the most hallowed numbers in sports in the process. Bonds has a little bit more stigma attached, no?

Still, the players' association is gathering information on Bonds’ unemployment. It is reviewing how the free-agent marketplace operated after the 2007 season.

We hope their investigators check this corner of cyberspace to get our take. Bonds isn’t in the big leagues because GMs believe his minuses outweigh his pluses in 2008.

Ways To Tell If Someone Is Both Old In Real Life And New To Cyberspace, #435: Uses the term "cyberspace."

Let's keep track of Mr. Gordon's pluses and minuses, and which are baseball-y and which are boogeyman-y.

Can he still hit? Probably. Last year he hit 28 homers in 340 at-bats. He still has a good eye, and lord knows he hasn’t gotten any smaller. He could still bring presence to a batting order.

Plus plus plus! Big plus. You know how many Cardinals hit 28 home runs last year? One. His name was David Eckstein. ("David Eckstein" is what I call Albert Pujols.)

But let’s walk through all the negatives:

* Bonds will turn 44 years old in July. How many other 44-year-old outfielders are flourishing in the big leagues this season?

How many 43-year-old outfielders OPS-ed 1.045 last year? Or .999 the year before, at age 42?

* The former Gold Glove outfielder is now a defensive liability, due to his bad wheels.

Yes. He is better suited to be a DH. But weighed against his still-crazy offensive prowess, his bad fielding still might be worth it, Manny-style. Baseball Prospectus has Bonds at -12 and -4 Fielding Runs Above Average the last two years. Man-Ram's been clocking figures like -6, -21, -18, -12, and -13 for years. Big huge boulder of salt with these numbers, as fielding science is far from a reliable game, of course.

* Durability is also a major concern, since Barry played just 126 games last season.

True dat.

* His salary expectations are out of whack with his diminished baseball value. At this point in his career, Bonds would put up Chris Duncan power numbers -– maybe a little better, perhaps a little worse. (Duncan had slugging percentages of .589 and .480 the last two seasons. Bonds came in at .545 and .565.)

This is just terrible cherry-picking. Sure, those slugging percentages look similar. But check out their respective OBPs, which is way more important than slugging in the first place:

Duncan 2007: .354
Bonds 2007: .480
Duncan 2006: .363
Bonds 2007: .454

Plus, if you're so concerned with how many games Bonds is going to play, how about Duncan, who basically needs to be platooned since he has a career .598 OPS against lefties?

* Bonds is, by all accounts, a truly horrendous teammate. He has been a disruptive clubhouse presence dating back to his Pirates days.

Boogeyman.

* His unresolved legal issues would create distractions anywhere he went. With Bonds comes a media circus, an army of reporters poking and prodding at his combative and defiant persona.

Boogeyman.

* He relishes the villain role, a posture that kills his marketing value. He wouldn’t generate box office buzz for his new team.

Now suddenly we're worried about marketing? Should we mark down Julian Tavarez for looking like a seventh-level cacodaemon? We probably should. Also, don't you think more people would still like to see aging dickhead Barry Bonds hit than, I don't know, Skip Schumaker?

Given all those factors, big league GMs opted to look elsewhere for offensive help: younger free agents, prime-age trade targets or home-grown players.

Especially for teams with horrible DHs, I find this to be inexplicable GMing.

Instead, the Cards relied on home-grown talent (Rick Ankiel, Chris Duncan. Skip Schumaker), bargain signing Ryan Ludwick and Rule 5 addition Brian Barton to man the outfield.

...

Ludwick has built a .675 slugging percentage as a part-time outfielder. Duncan hasn’t found his power stroke yet, but his .385 on-base percentage tells you he has enough patience enough to relocate his swing.

Something tells me Ryan Ludwick isn't going to keep up a 1.185 OPS all year. He has a career .333 OBP, so let's not all start saying he's better than Fred Lewis just yet.

These are hungry players who bring energy to the group. They help make the Cards a more dynamic offensive and defensive team.

Skip Schumaker has 5 home runs in 178 major league games. Dynamic!

What would Bonds have done? Hit some homers, probably, but otherwise he would have dragged down the group with his egocentric behavior.

Here's where we get to the core of the matter: people life Jeff Gordon truly believe that the scowls outweigh the homers. Bonds' aura saps slugging points away from Ludwick and Duncan. It makes Aaron Miles flub ground balls. Barry's like a baseball dementor. (See, HatGuy? I can do Harry Potter references too!)

Imagine how Bonds would have poisoned the clubhouse, honing in on Pujols and offering advice on how to handle his superstar status. One shudders at the thought of that relationship.

You think...Barry Bonds...would hurt Albert Pujols'...ability to hit baseballs. Me, I don't know, I think it would pretty fucking awesome to see these two guys swap hitting tips. God, that would be amazing.

Jesus, what if Pujols protected Bonds in the lineup or vice-versa? (Note to readers: "protection" is, as far as I understand, a myth.)

The team dealt Scott Rolen to shed his negative clubhouse presence.

And just to prove how nebulous, inconsistent, and scattershot sportswriters are when it comes to gauging "presence," the people in Toronto believed Rolen would have a positive impact on the team's "atmosphere":

"Also, replacing Thomas in the clubhouse with Scott Rolen, who's on track to return mid-May from a spring training finger injury will change the Jays' internal dynamics for the better. Rolen understands how to establish a productive atmosphere."

By moving Rolen and shunning Bonds, the Cards allowed Pujols to become an even stronger leader of his team.

Look at how the less-experienced players feed off him. Look at how Albert feeds off the hustle of all the guys fighting to establish their careers.

Yeah, he really needs Ryan Ludwick to push him. Without him, he was all "Blah, blah blah! 1.102, 1.039, 1.072, 1.106, and shit!" What a layabout!

The Cards’ early success this season underscores the value in assembling the right mix of personalities in addition to the right talent mix. This team isn’t hitting homers yet, but it keeps winning games.

In no small part because their ERA is third in the NL, which they couldn't possibly have done with Barry Bonds in the clubhouse frowning up a storm and repeatedly punching Yadier Molina in the gut, unprovoked.

Would Bonds have furthered their cause this season? Of course not. And that is why he sits home today, playing the role he plays best -- the unloved villain/victim.

The Cards are better off without him. And so is every other team.

Yes, the Mariners are much better off with Jose Vidro and his .546 OPS. OPS? More like OOPS!!!!111!!!ONE11!!!!///

It seems like the Cardinals might be okay in the outfield, so maybe Bonds isn't the best fit for them. But as writers of these pieces always seem to do, Gordon can't help but veer off into "AND NOBODY -- NOBODY -- SHOULD SIGN HIM BECAUSE HE IS TERRIBLE AND EVIL AND VILLAINOUS PURITY OF THE GAME CLUBHOUSE GRUMBLE GRUMBLE MEDIA RABBLE RABBLE CIRCUS!"

Cool. He's a jerk. We get it. Someone should probably sign him, though, because when he plays baseball he's damn good at it.

Labels: barrold bonds, barry bonds, cardinals, jeff gordon

We've come so far, baseball writers. You're citing OPS occasionally, you're learning that wins and losses for pitchers aren't all they're cracked up to be, you're even acknowledging the dubious worth of small sample sizes. It makes me proud, like a mama city raccoon watching her baby eat its first piece of leftover Taco Bell. So please, when you're doing the last of these three things, don't merely pay lip service to sample size and then leap to ridiculous conclusions, like Mr. Timothy Kawakami did today:

1. Barry Bonds is not missed, in part because Fred Lewis is a better player than Bonds was at the end of last year. (italics and insanity his)

In the top of the third inning last night, Macedonian superstar Kevin Kouzmanoff hit a home run off of Jamie Moyer. On Friday, May 20, 1927, Babe Ruth struck out against George Ernest "The Bull" Uhle. Kevin Kouzmanoff is a better player than Babe Ruth was during that at bat. (italics and hamhanded hyperbole mine)

EMPHASIS ON: BONDS AT THE END OF LAST YEAR. I’m of course not saying Lewis is better than Bonds at the height of his power/the injections or when Bonds was 27, as Lewis is now.

EMPHASIS ON: BONDS DURING AN ARBITRARY, TINY SMATTERING OF AT BATS THAT I CHERRY-PICKED COMPARED TO FRED LEWIS' HIGH BABIP-FUELED START THAT HE ALMOST CERTAINLY WILL BE UNABLE TO SUSTAIN.

I’m saying that Lewis is a better producer in LF for the Giants at this moment than Bonds would’ve been if he was currently playing LF for the Giants, or any other team, or DH-ing, or whatever.

Fred Lewis is hot as hell right now. He's got a .952 OPS. I'm sure even Kawakami would admit that he's performing a little over his head.

You know what Bonds' OPS was after the month of April last year?

1.349

That is not a typo. You know what Bonds' OPS for the year was?

1.045

It's early, motherfuckers. Nate McLouth has a 1.083 OPS. Let's keep our heads when comparing 27-year-old virtual rookies with the first- or second-greatest hitter of all time, even the hypothetical 349-year-old version of that hitter who would be playing this year.

(And Bonds would’ve only been worse this year, while Lewis is getting better.)

Probably. Though Barreee did increase his OPS from .999 to the aforementioned 1.045 from 2006 to 2007, at the age of 9,528.

Flash back to early August, when Bonds was a good player.

Something happened between early August and late August that made Bonds not a good player anymore? Did he lose an arm in a lathe accident? I feel like Barry Bonds with one arm in a lathe would still OBP in the high .300s.

He hit HR No. 756 on Aug. 7, to break the all-time record.

Then he hit a few more, then went into a predictable post-record, pre-indictment lull. But there was still more baseball to played and Bonds knew his career was on the line. After the record-gazing, he still needed a big September to prove he could play at age 43. September should be a good barometer for what Bonds has/had left.

YES LET'S JUDGE THE ENTIRETY OF BARRY BONDS' REMAINING BASEBALL ABILITY ON THE BASIS OF ONE MONTH'S WORTH OF AT BATS, NOT THE REAMS AND REAMS AND REAMS OF DATA, INCLUDING THE SEVERAL MILLION RECORDS HE BROKE AND THE KIA SEPHIA HE CLEAN-AND-JERKED OVER HIS HEAD IN LATE OCTOBER 2007.

Here’s what Bonds did last September: 1 HR in 30 at-bats, 7 hits, (.233 batting average), 6 walks (.361 on-base), 1 double (.367 slug). That’s a .738 OPS, way, way under his alleged-steroid totals and career totals.

Did I say one month's worth of at bats? I'm sorry, I meant two weeks' worth. Tim Kawakami is judging Barry Bonds' current baseball-hitting prowess on 12 games' worth of data.

Through 9 games this year, Fred Lewis had a .388 OPS. That's worse than Alicia Silverstone would hit in the majors! Throw him into a viper pit of pit vipers! Through 10 games, it was .654. That's worse than Jennie Garth would hit in the majors! Drop him off of Mount Everest into the Marianas Trench! Through 11 games, it was .761. Eh, okay. That's about average, I guess. Through 12 games, it was .946. HE IS OUR NEW BASEBALL GOD.

The point is, after each one of these games, Fred Lewis seemed to be an entirely different player. The larger point is, you can't judge players after 9 or 10 or 11 or 12 games. What's frustrating is that Kawakami seems to know this (as we'll see from what he writes later), or seems to think he knows this, and yet he still wrote all of this nonsense about Lewis definitely being better than Bonds.

Here’s what Lewis is doing right now, comfortably settled into the lead-off spot at the end of April:

-92 at-bats, .337 batting average, .419 on-base (13 walks, 17 runs), .533 slugging, 4 stolen bases, 7 RBI.

92 at-bats is better than 30, and Lewis appears to be developing into a productive offensive player. Then again, check out this hotshot:

35/104 15 4 26 1 .337 .926

Yeah. That's Xavier Nady. I just made you get a baseball-rection from Xavier Nady, 29 years old, .777 OPS in 551 career games.

-Lewis has the fifth-best OPS (.952) among regular LFs, ahead of Matt Holliday, Johnny Damon, Jason Bay and Carlos Lee, among others.

-That’s much more than Bonds could’ve logically been expected to produce this season, with or without steroid injections, with or without a federal indictment, with or without clogging up the clubhouse with his karma.

Well, there was that whole 1.349 OPS in April of last year. But more importantly, I think we have a new rival to "clogging up the basepaths." "Clogging up the clubhouse with his karma" -- it's delicious, pungent, and utterly nonsensical. Brian Bocock's karma wants to run free with the antelopes. But oh no, here comes Barry's karma (I picture these karmas looking a little like the creatures from Where The Wild Things Are)! It's fat and it's slow, and it's clogging up the clubhouse! Who cares about his karma's karmic OBP (kOBP) when he can't run the karmic basepaths (in the clubhouse)!

-Lewis obviously might and probably will cool down.

Thank you.

His defense isn’t very good (great play here, bad play there) and I’m not volunteering Lewis for Gold Glove consideration at any point. But Bonds was a sieve out there for the last three years. So Lewis is better in the field, too.

Sure. Not helping your point much that Lewis is a butcher in left field, but I'll give you this.

-I realize these are relatively small sampling sizes–September for Bonds, April for Lewis.

Relatively? Relatively?! This is like a dude telling a girl he just slept with, "I realize that I may be relatively chlamydia-y, but..."

You can't just say "Yes-these-are-small-sample-sizes-moving-on-I'm-using-them-anyway." That's, as Buzz Bissinger would say, fucking glib as shitfuck. You didn't even use an entire month for Bonds. You used 30 at bats. That's a fraction of an eye-blink in Barry Bonds' career. I just looked it up. He has 9847 at bats. Some of those could have been incorporated into your evaluation. More than 30 should have been.

But they’re the most legitimate comparable sample sizes.

Infinite monkeys on infinite MacBooks could not construct a more false sentence.

Both players were extremely motivated to do well: Bonds to get another contract, Lewis to stay in the line-up. We’ve seen the results. I’m going with them.

-Therefore: Lewis is better than Bonds, and Lewis is a big reason why the Giants are, so far, out-performing the low expectations.

I'm willing to listen to arguments that a healthy, young, solid-hitting outfielder who plays every day and is far more valuable than Barry in the field might, just might have more value to a team than a gimpy, non-DH-ing Bonds. But what I'm not willing to do is accept 12 games' worth of semi-crappy at bats as ironclad evidence that Markus Winston Barrold Bonds IV is done as a hitter, and that MWBB IV's "karma" is going to "clog" its way to that many losses for whatever team it and he join.

Hey, I looked up Fred Lewis' batting average on balls in play. It's .414. This guy is going to fall off big time. Going out on a limb here, but I'm going to say that I don't think he's actually a better player than Barry Bonds.

Labels: barrold bonds, barry bonds, clogging up the clubhouse with his karma, fred lewis, small sample size, tim kawakami

If you've been reading FJM for awhile, you know all about our unhealthy fascination with the outlandish hitting statistics posted by the Barry Bonds during the hydrocephalic years of approximately 2000 to 2004. Those were heady, undoubtedly drug-addled days for Mr. Bonds, and a large part of his legacy at least to me will be those marvelous, hilarious .600 OBPs and .800 slugging percentages.

It's certainly not a big deal, but Mike Schmidt is now saying that 2006 Ryan Howard is as good as 2001 Barry Bonds at hitting. Don't believe me? It's in cyber-print right here.

"He's every bit as good a hitter as Barry Bonds was in the middle of his 73-home-run season," said Schmidt on Sunday in Miami, standing outside the Phillies' locker room with a small group of reporters. "It'll take the opposition a little longer to be convinced that he is because of Bonds' history of being a great hitter for many, many years."

Well, ah, hm. Hmmm. If we're totally disregarding who was on what pharmaceutical cocktail at what time, as Schmidt seems to be doing, all we can rely on are the results. And the facts show that Schmidt is unequivocally talking out of his ass. Not because of "Bonds' history of being a great hitter" -- I don't care about that at all. Neither do the numbers.

Some of which are here:

Howard 2006:

.316/.413/.682

Bonds 2001:

.329/.515/.863

And here are some more:

Howard 2006:

EqA .340

Bonds 2001:

EqA .427

The season's not over, but still, check these out (thanks to reader Matthew here):

Howard 2006:

84 BB, 156 K

Bonds 2001:

177 BB, 93 K

Satisfied, Mike Schmidt?

Added Schmidt, "Right at this moment in time, he might be more dangerous than Barry Bonds ever was in his prime. I've never seen anyone in the major leagues who is treating the game almost like an oversized kid in the Little League World Series. He is transcending the game."

Urgh. Let me put it this way: no one outside of Babe Ruth has matched what Barry Bonds did to major league pitchers in the early aughts. And even Ruth never posted a .600 OBP or a ludicrous .450 EqA. Ryan Howard, who right now probably isn't even the best hitter in baseball, would need to get bitten by a radioactive baseball while getting struck by lightning and drinking a secret superplayer serum to even approach the levels Barry Bonds was hitting at in 2000 to 2004.

Or maybe take steroids? I don't know, either way.

Labels: barrold bonds, barry bonds, mike schmidt, ryan howard