“I think we should sign him. Yes, he is old, and yes, he is certainly not the hitter that he was three or four years ago. Yes, he is a defensive liability at any position. But after all, the man was the greatest hitter who ever lived just four or five years ago. You would expect a hitter of that calibre, descending at a normal rate, to remain productive to an unusually advanced age, wouldn’t you? And he has—OK, his batting average has slipped a hundred points in the last five years, but because of his walks and power, his OPS remains one of the highest in baseball. And that’s in a pitcher’s park.
“Yes, our manager doesn’t want him. He’s an employee; in the final analysis, he’ll work with what we give him. Yes, the team that has had him for fifteen years, the team for which he has done so much, the team for which he has broken all the home run records and filled all the seats, they no longer want him, after he has carried them on his back for fifteen years and built them a beautiful ballpark, one of the best parks in the majors. They don’t want him any more; they say he’s a distraction in the clubhouse.
“But look; we’ve got a chance to win this year. We were five games over .500 last year. It’s just a few games, just a few runs, separating us from the World Series. We’re talking here about adding a left-handed hitter with a .450 on base percentage and a .550 slugging. We don’t have any hitters like that. He’ll lead our team in both categories. And we need power in the outfield, and we need power at first base. Our corner outfielders and our first baseman are all weak hitters. I just don’t see how we can pass up the opportunity to add one of the best bats in the major leagues—basically for free. It doesn’t make any sense.
“And the ‘distraction’ issue. . .isn’t that really just what you make of it? Yes, we’ll be overrun by media, all writing about him, but is that a bad thing, for a baseball team? We’re trying to put butts in the huts here. This guy can help us win the pennant, and he can help us sell tickets. How can we possibly turn that opportunity down?”
Thus spoke the General Manager of the Boston Braves in the winter of 1934-1935, explaining why they should sign the slugger who was about to be released by the Yankees. OK, he didn’t, but he could have. Ruth at that time had essentially every characteristic that Bonds has now—every single one that doesn’t involve the justice department. He had been the greatest hitter who ever lived. He was old. He couldn’t play defense, and he couldn’t run. He was a left-handed hitter who no longer hit doubles or triples or even a lot of singles, and his batting average had fallen nearly 100 points in a few years, but, because of his walks and his power, he retained an extremely high OPS. Ruth’s OPS in 1934, before the Yankees released him, was the seventh-highest in baseball.
The 1934 Boston Braves were NOT a bad team. They were 78-73, after having gone 83-71 in 1933. They had a strong pitching staff, with two 17-game winners and a 16-game winner. Their center fielder, Wally Berger, hit .298 with 34 homers, 121 RBI. They were an outstanding defensive team, probably the best defensive team in baseball. They were that close to being able to win; they just needed one more big bat to put them over the top.
They signed Babe Ruth. Their manager begged them not to, but they did it anyway.
They lost 115 games. Won 38, lost 115. They had a worse won-lost record than the ’62 Mets.
Ruth, it turned out, was an immense distraction, and was totally finished as a player.
Based on my letters, a great many of you think it is obvious that somebody should sign Bonds, and think that he is being discriminated against because
a) people don’t like him, and
b) there is a fear that he will be a distraction.
I don’t see it that way. I think the problem has many more dimensions than that.
There is a narrowing of skills that occurs across a player’s career. A young player typically has a very broad base of skills, but very limited development of those skills. The young player can run, he can throw, he is quick, he is agile, his eyes are quick and his actions quick, and he comes back quickly from injury. Unfortunately, he doesn’t know how to play baseball well enough to help you win.
The skill set of a 17-year-old player might be represented by a rectangle 20 inches wide at the base, but one inch high—thus, a value of 20 square inches, or 20.
V = B * D
Value equals Base times Development. . .actually, Value equals Base times Development, Minus Replacement, but that’s another issue. As each year passes the base shrinks by let us say 9%, but the development grows by one inch. At age 20, the rectangle is 15.07 inches wide, 4 inches high, and the value is 60 (60.29). At 25, the rectangle is 9.41 by 9, and the value is 85 (84.65). At age 27, the rectangle reaches a peak size of 7.79 by 11, and then it begins to shrink, as the continued refinement of skills no longer keeps pace with the erosion of the base.
The rectangle shrinks slowly at first. After reaching a peak V of 85.7 at age 27, V is still 82.2 at age 30. As the player ages more, the shrinkage accelerates, so that the player loses 2% of his skills at age 30, 4% at age 35, 5% at age 40.
Of course, not all players’ skills have the same initial dimensions or the same rate of change. Some players’ base of skills is 10 inches; some is 30. Some players’ base erodes at 15% per season, because they don’t take care of themselves, while other players work hard, and their base erodes at 4% or 6%. Some players learn quickly, and their development goes up by 2 inches a year, while other players never seem to learn anything, and their careers stall out in A ball. But the same general process, of the narrowing and refining of skills, goes on for all players.
Bonds, in my view—like Ruth in 1934—has reached a point of such extraordinary narrowness of his skills that there is an imminent danger that the structure will simply collapse at any moment—as it did on Ruth in 1935. I think that, if you were to sign Bonds now or if you were to have signed him in February, it is extremely likely that he would hit substantially less than he did last year, and I think that it is not unlikely that he would hit .225 or less. In 2002 and 2004 he .370 and .362. The last two years—despite being given more days off to protect him--he has hit .270 and .276. Where do you think it goes from there? Do you think it goes back to .370?
Yes, Bonds now is willing to sign for a $3 over the minimum, and if he had communicated that message in December, I think that he would be on a roster somewhere. But Bonds now is behind the curve. The players are in mid-season form. He isn’t.
Setting aside the “distraction” issue and the “bad teammate” rap—and I think that the distraction issue and the bad teammate rap are very real and serious issues, but let’s set them aside for a second—there is still the problem of finding the right job for Bonds. There are about 400 jobs for major league hitters—30 teams, 13 jobs a team. There are at least 300 of those jobs that we can say immediately that Bonds couldn’t do. He can’t play shortstop, he can’t play third base, and he can’t catch. He can’t play center field or right field or second base. He can DH, and he can play left field, and maybe he could play first base, who knows. But saying that there are three-plus jobs per team that he could do is awfully generous.
In that pool of the 100 remaining jobs, Bonds is competing with the best hitters in baseball. That’s where David Ortiz is, and Manny Ramirez, and Ryan Howard, and Jim Thome, and Travis Hafner and Albert Pujols and Adam Dunn and Justin Morneau. That’s where the big boys are. Unless you’ve lost your mind, you don’t even talk about eating a $40 million contract on one of those guys so that you can see if maybe Barry Bonds is a little bit better. Take those jobs off the table.
Not everybody has players of that calibre, true. But the teams that don’t have one, in general, aren’t going to win anything this year anyway. It’s just me, but if I’m the General Manager of Kansas City, or Pittsburgh, or even Minnesota or Tampa Bay (which could win their division this year), I don’t want anything to do with Barry Bonds.
Why? Simple: I don’t believe in his future, I’m not convinced of his value in the present, and I’m not interested in the past.
If you’re the GM of Kansas City, do you really want Barry Bonds taking at bats away from Billy Butler? If you’re the GM in Minnesota, do you want Bonds taking at bats away from Jason Kubel? You’re crazy if you do that. Unless you have a 40% or better chance to win this year, you make major decisions based on the long-term interest of the team.
And when you take those jobs out of the picture, what’s left for Bonds?
Look, I like Barry Bonds. I don’t have to deal with him, but I was always on his side, and I still am. I don’t think he belongs in jail; I think he belongs in the Hall of Fame. Ten years ago, he was playing by the rules as they were enforced ten years ago. It seems self-righteous to me to say now that he was cheating.
But. . .it’s over. The end came for Babe Ruth, and the end came for Joe DiMaggio, and the end came for Ted Williams, who had the highest OPS in all of baseball in his last year, and the end came for Stan Musial, who had fifth-highest OPS in baseball in his next-to-last year, and the end came for Mickey Mantle, who had a top-25 OPS in his last year, and the end came for Willie Mays, and the end came for George Brett, and the end came for Mark McGwire, who had the highest OPS in baseball one year before he quit, and the end has come for Barry Bonds. Give the man a round of applause, get off his ass, and let’s move on.