Barry Bonds, The Greatest Baseball Player We Have Ever Seen?

Barry Bonds is surely one of the most controversial baseball players the game has ever seen, but Barry was in a league of his own when it came to playing the game of baseball. That’s why I’m here to explain why Barry Bonds has a case to be the greatest baseball player to ever grace an MLB diamond. A deep dive into stats and analysis, along with extensive research should give me a great argument of why Bonds is the greatest of all time.

Bonds surely has his incredible share of fans who will argue that he is among the greatest of all time, and I’ve been a firm believer in this opinion for many years now. As a young fan, I never got to see Bonds play in the peak of his career but I don’t need to see him in his prime to establish a fantastic argument of why he’s the best. Bonds was unique like no other, he entered the league in 1986 with the Pittsburgh Pirates as a 21 year old kid after being drafted 6th overall from Arizona State University where he was one of the premier collegiate players of his time.

Nobody was ready for Bonds’ outstanding career as he was a very solid player from 1986-1989, but the very next year, in 1990 was when he took that huge leap from Stardom to an absolute Superstar. Bonds made his first All Star Game in 1990 while also notching his 1st of 7 Most Valuable Player Awards.

Barry never looked back from that point, racking up stats upon stats and established himself as a true 5-Tool Player with his ability to hit for average and power, being one of the league’s best bag stealers, and being an absolutely elite fielder. If you’re still not convinced on how good he was, we can dive into the stats.

Let’s talk about the MLB records that he holds to this day, first, he is the MLB’s Home Run King, plain and simple, Bonds finished his illustrious career with a grand total of 762 home runs. Bonds played 22 seasons in the majors so I calculated his home run average by year, technically 21 years due to his 14 game season in 2005. Bonds averaged 36 home runs per season for 21 years, more than two decades. Not to mention he has the single season home run record that he set in 2001 with 73 bombs. So obviously we can safely say that Bonds is the best home run hitter of all time based on statistics.

Now let’s get into the fear that Bonds brought to opposing teams on a daily basis, Bonds is the MLB’s all time leader in Walks and Intentional Walks, over the course of his career he walked a grand total of 2,558 times with 688 of them being intentional.

Bonds was so feared that he was once walked with bases loaded so pitchers could avoid pitching to him, he led the league in single season walks 12 times in his career which is absolutely absurd, in fact, Bonds has more walks himself than the entire Tampa Bay Rays franchise does in their entire existence. I believe Barry was the most feared player in MLB history and for good reason.

Bonds has his share of total MLB records but has even more records when it comes to single season and has so many accomplishments that it’s truly unbelievable what he was able to do. Something about Bonds that isn’t talked about as much as it should be, was his elite speed and base stealing ability, stealing over 30 bags in a season 9 times, also he is one of only four players to be in the 40/40 club, which is 40 home runs and 40 stolen bases in a single season.

Bonds did this in 1996 with the Giants, mashing 42 bombs and stealing 40 bags, the only other players to ever do this were Jose Canseco (1988), Alex Rodriguez (1998), and Alfonso Soriano (2006). Clearly this is elite company and everyone should be impressed by that feat.

Let’s go through some of his single season accomplishments now, his batting average showed throughout his whole career and even won 2 Batting Titles, one in 2002 where he hit .370, and one in 2004 where he hit .362, clearly an average hitter on top of his unreal power. When it comes to OPS, one of the best stats in baseball, Bonds has 3 of the Top 5 seasons ever in that stat, at number one, two, and four.

The best single season OPS was set by Bonds at 39 Years of age in 2004 at 1.4217, also the second best in 2002 at 1.3807, I truly hope everyone realizes how absurd those OPS numbers are. Bonds also has the top 2 seasons of all time with On Base Percentage, due to his ability to get on base with his bats and his overload of walks that he was so accustomed to. In 2004 Bonds put up the greatest OBP of all time at .6094, and second greatest in 2002 at .5817, that’s right, he got on base 60% of the time in ‘04. Bonds’ career slash line sits at an incredible .298 AVG/.444 OBP/.607 SLG and a career OPS of 1.051.

His slugging numbers are tanked by his first 5 seasons where it wasn’t great but he still has the best season of all time when it comes to slugging percentage as well in 2001 at .8634 SLG. Bonds’ dominance was becoming more clear by the day as his career progressed after 1990 and there is just so much to go through to prove his greatness. So many single season records belong to Bonds and most of them will never be touched, that’s how impressive these seasons really were.

One part of the 5-Tool components we missed so far is the fielding, and surprise surprise, Bonds was incredible at that too notching 8 Gold Gloves throughout his career but the fielding isn’t the aspect we’re here for, but it still shows Barry’s true dominance and natural talent. So, let’s get into the accolades, the first one that jumps off the page at you is the 7 MVP’s, which is by far the most in MLB history.

His MVP wins came in 1990, 1992, 1993, 2001, 2002, 2003, and 2004. A stat that I wanted to go over was OPS+ and what this stat does is measure a player’s OPS based on the average MLB hitter, so an average MLB hitter’s OPS+ is 100, Barry’s OPS+ in 2002 was 268, which was his best OPS+ year and what this means is that Bonds was 168% better than the average hitter…Yep.

However many points your OPS+ is above 100, that’s the percent of how much better you are than the average MLB hitter. Now that I’ve explained that for reference, back to the accolades, we have already went over his 2 Batting Titles, so now let’s talk about All Star Games, Major League Baseball by far has the best setup when it comes to All Star Games, it doesn’t mainly rely on fan votes and truly represents the top players of the league, Barry made 14 All Star Games in 21 Years.

Silver Slugger Awards are given to the best Sluggers at each position every year and Bonds received 12 of those which shouldn’t come as a shock anymore. Bonds was purely an accolade and stat machine who always showed up at the top of the Newspapers every day when he’d grace the headlines on a regular basis.

Unfortunately, at some point, we must address the inevitable about Bonds. He was the MLB’s most notorious steroid user, and it was very obvious as he grew in stature seemingly overnight and his head grew to double the size, now obviously Bonds was playing in the dead center of the steroid era with guys like Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa.

Bonds to this day, is still relentlessly bashed for his use of PED’s and people grew to hate him for it because he wasn’t relying on his natural talent anymore, like it or not, steroids are illegal, and Bonds is forever labeled as a cheater in the MLB and it’s a great shame because Bonds was recently denied Hall of Fame entry on his 10th ballot.

Now I personally believe Bonds should 100% be in the Hall of Fame but we’ll get into that in a bit, nobody is denying that Barry cheated, but if there is any player to lighten up the punishment on for it, it would be Bonds and here’s why. Bonds first partook in steroids somewhere around 1998 and 1999, now of course as we know, Bonds went on an absolute Reign of Terror from 2001-2004 winning four straight MVP awards and surely the steroids enhanced his play.

The frustrating thing about the entire situation is that Bonds never needed steroids and it was mainly a longevity booster for him. Before we go haywire on Bonds for being a juicer, let’s look at his stats from 1986-1998 where he was steroid free. In that time, he was a 8-time All Star and a 3-time MVP, so just by accolades alone, he has an extreme case for being first ballot Hall of Famer and a sure fire Cooperstown enshrinee. But the rebuttal to this is very overwhelming that he cheated and if you put him in the Hall of Fame, it’s a bad example for the league and it may tarnish their reputation.

Many believe Bonds deserves an induction into the Hall of Fame whether people agree or disagree just based on his natural talent alone and it’s very frustrating he got into PED’s.

Now here’s one of the most important points to the argument that votes against Bonds when it comes to him being the greatest player of all time. Barry Bonds never won a World Series Title in his entire 22 Year career which is absolutely shocking to so many people, the teams he was on just never had the full ability or talent around him to get it done, but here’s the most painful part, San Fran’s 2002 World Series loss to the Anaheim Angels in 7 games.

The 2002 Giants were headlined by Barry Bonds, All Star shortstop Rich Aurilia and 2000 NL MVP second baseman Jeff Kent, this was a lineup whose heart of the order could give you nightmares but ultimately the Giants just ran into a much more balanced and star-studded Anaheim Angels lineup.

Anaheim’s bats sparked and really got it done for the World Series win, they had David Eckstein, a 2-time All Star who was speedy and scrappy shortstop with solid contact, WS MVP Troy Glaus who was the superstar of the team and a 4-time All Star Power bat, 3-time All Star Garrett Anderson in the outfield and Silver Slugger Tim Salmon and 2-time All Star Darin Erstad rounding out the Outfield. The Angels were just too good and loaded for the Giants to handle and the inability for Bonds and San Fran to put away the Angels, will forever leave an empty hole in Bonds’ incredible career.

Obviously, steroids ruined Barry Bonds’ reputation and it always will leave that mark on his name but maybe he doesn’t deserve all the backlash he gets for it. After all, even people who took steroids were never able to come close to accomplishing things that Barry Bonds did, and his natural talent was astonishing, and any baseball fan knows this. Many people avidly believe Bonds deserves to be in the Hall of Fame and his statistics show why so many people believe Barry Bonds is the greatest baseball player of all time.

The Home Run King was unique like no other and lots of records that he holds will never be touched. This is not persuading readers to change their mind to Barry Bonds being the best, but it’s more of me giving the case on why I believe the argument is valid and showing the statistics that back it for him. If you love Barry Bonds or if you hate Barry Bonds, you absolutely cannot deny the fact that he is one of the greatest natural talents in MLB history and although he has a tarnished reputation, is still thought to be the greatest baseball player to touch earth, by countless fans around the world.