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Friday, August 24 Bonds' numbers impossible to ignore By Joe Sheehan Special to ESPN.com | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
It appears we've reached a point where every excuse under the sun is going to be provided to rationalize a vote for anyone other than Barry Bonds as the National League MVP. Despite his having what may end up being the second-best offensive season of all time, and doing so while playing pretty good defense in left field for a contending team, there are people who want to find reasons to vote for someone else.
Bonds .384/.574/.943 in 159 AB Sosa .348/.480/.578 in 209 AB Gonzalez .378/.462/.797 in 222 ABWith runners in scoring position: Bonds .365/.617/.932 in 74 AB Sosa .318/.506/.701 in 107 AB Gonzalez .367/.489/.844 in 109 ABClose and late: Bonds .327/.532/.891 in 55 AB Sosa .333/.459/.710 in 69 AB Gonzalez .250/.388/.469 in 64 ABThe difference is not in the performance, but in the opportunity. Bonds is last of the three in ABs with runners on and with runners in scoring position. That accounts for the difference in RBI, not any shortfall in the work Bonds has done. This doesn't address runs scored, of course. For the most part, each of these players has batted third for their teams all season long, so their runs scored will be impacted by the No. 4 and No. 5 hitters. Here's what those hitters have done, subtracting out these players' performances when batting in those slots: Giants #4: .298/.354/.521 Giants #5: .239/.311/.386 Cubs #4: .240/.326/.378 Cubs #5: .267/.323/.468 D-Backs #4: .312/.377/.503 D-Backs #5: .255/.337/.431While the Giants' cleanup hitters -- mostly Jeff "Team Player" Kent -- have done a good job, their No. 5 batters have been among the worst in the game. That has meant fewer runs scored for Bonds. The guys hitting behind Sammy Sosa have been just as bad in the aggregate, though, while Luis Gonzalez has seen the players behind him perform fairly well. This breakdown doesn't seem to favor any of the three players. One interesting thing I found is that walking Bonds has been a fairly good strategy. I found 25 intentional and 12 semi-intentional walks of Bonds. After an intentional walk, Giants hitters are 10-for-40 in the rest of the inning, scoring 18 runs total. First batters after the free pass are 4-for-19. They've scored on just nine of the 25 occasions, a 36 percent success rate. After a semi-intentional walk (generally, four-ball walks with a base open or a runner on first, a right-hander on the mound, and the game in doubt), the Giants are just 1-for-13, scoring a lone run in the 12 innings. Jeff Kent is 0-for-5 in these situations. These numbers demonstrate that Bonds' lower counting totals have more to do with the players around him than with anything he has done. Relying on RBI and runs scored counts to prove a nebulous point is a bad idea, and certain to lead to erroneous conclusions. Some of Bonds' detractors are fond of saying that while he puts up great numbers, he doesn't do it when the Giants need it the most, padding his stats in blowouts while coming up short with the game on the line. Here is a breakdown of Bonds's numbers by score of the game at the time of his at-bats: Giants ahead by five or more: .154/.313/.308 Giants ahead by four: .100/.308/.400 Giants ahead by three: .429/.652/.857 Giants ahead by two: .400/.554/.825 Giants ahead by one: .333/.534/1.000 Giants tied: .297/.500/.831 Giants trailing by one: .310/.473/.976 Giants trailing by two: .400/.571/1.080 Giants trailing by three: .278/.435/.833 Giants trailing by four: .308/.471/.769 Giants trailing by five: .286/.375/.750 Bonds performs worse in blowouts than at any other time. Grouping some of these categories together yields: Game within one run: .307/.505/.894 Game within two runs: .330/.516/.902 Giants trail or are tied: .307/.485/.869 Giants lead: .302/.476/.744 The argument that the distribution of Bonds' performance works against the Giants is simply false. He plays better when the game is close, better when the Giants are behind, and downright poorly -- by his standards -- when the game is in hand. The final point I want to make is about the notion of "most valuable." There's an argument being made that because the Cubs don't have a hitter the caliber of Jeff Kent or Mark Grace, that somehow Sammy Sosa's performance, while inferior to that of Bonds, is more valuable. I find this notion of "valuable" to be a distortion: it penalizes a player for having good teammates, something over which he has no control, while it ignores the contributions of run prevention to the team's success. The Cubs may not have a Jeff Kent, but their pitching staff has done a lot more for their team than Bonds' staff has for the Giants. Combined with the popular sentiment that a league MVP must come from a successful team, the definition of MVP becomes absurdly narrow. He can't play for a team that has too many good players, because his performance will be dismissed ("they would have done well without him"); he can't play for a team with too few good players, because the team won't contend, and his candidacy will be dismissed on that grounds; he can't play for a team that has other good hitters, because he won't be seen as "carrying" the team. Taken to their logical conclusion, these arguments eliminate everyone but the positive-value players on the team that makes the playoffs by the smallest margin. But that's not really what's being done; the caliber of discussion is far below that. Basically, once things that are out of a player's control -- like the quality of his teammates or the closeness of the playoff race -- are introduced into the discussion, the debate is less about finding the most valuable player and more about arguing for the guy you like best. That's where we are: listening to people devise tortured arguments about "value" to avoid talking about the big elephant in the middle of the room, that the most valuable player in the National League has been Barry Bonds. The team of writers from the Baseball Prospectus (tm) writes twice a week for ESPN.com during the baseball season. You can check out more of their work at their web site at baseballprospectus.com. Joe Sheehan can be reached at jsheehan@baseballprospectus.com |
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