The moral indignation is limited when Manny Alexander wants to become Craig Counsell or JC Romero attempts to be Eddie Guardado; they were meh players just trying to be good, but Bonds was already far better than good. When that wasn't enough for him it reeked of greed and hubris.

moral indignation is limited when Manny Alexander wants to become Craig Counsell or JC Romero attempts to be Eddie Guardado; they were meh players just trying to be good

Bonds was already far better than good. When that wasn't enough for him it reeked of greed and hubris.

If you think Bonds was juicing before 1998, then the addition of steroids cannot be used to explain how he went from a .600 slugger to an .850.

The primary reason weight training was discouraged wasn't that they felt it wore players out, but rather it was thought to reduce bat speed.

Uprecidented levels of performance (for age and compared to established level of talent) aren't evidence of anything unless you can demonstate there's something unique to Bonds.

Not sure what this means.

And in being borderline players trying to be good, they stayed in the major leagues longer and caused other "clean" players to wallow in the minors or have a shorter career - or no career at all. There are a lot more cases of greed and hubris in these mediocre players screwing over players than there are at the top of the food chain.

I compared Bonds through age 33 to Mantle, since with his great walk totals Mick seems a better match than Aaron or Mays. Mantle through the same age has 300 more PA, a better average, OBP, and slugging, and 10 points more in OPS+. Defensively you've got an average to slightly below CF vs a great left fielder. Mantle seems to me a clear cut above steroids-free Bonds.

Oh, and the highest pre-juicing ranking for Bonds? In 1993, his .341 was 62nd. His 1999 .355 was 34th.

moral indignation is limited when Manny Alexander wants to become Craig Counsell or JC Romero attempts to be Eddie Guardado; they were meh players just trying to be good

so why has the MLB r/g done this:
AL:
2009: 4.82
2010: 4.45
2011: 4.34
(lowest since 4.32 in 1992)
NL:
2009: 4.43
2010: 4.33
2011: 4.10
(lowest since 3.88 in 1992)

Not exactly: we only care about Bonds because he was great as he was and he threw away universal praise in pursuit of a mixed adulation over tainted achievement. The moral indignation is limited when Manny Alexander wants to become Craig Counsell or JC Romero attempts to be Eddie Guardado; they were meh players just trying to be good, but Bonds was already far better than good. When that wasn't enough for him it reeked of greed and hubris. It's not fair and it's totally selective, but there it is.

we only care about Bonds because he was great as he was and he threw away universal praise in pursuit of a mixed adulation over tainted achievement. The moral indignation is limited when Manny Alexander wants to become Craig Counsell or JC Romero attempts to be Eddie Guardado;

If Bonds had held a press conference at the end of the 1998 season to announce that he was retiring because he was tired of trying to compete with all these ####### cheaters, he'd be a hero to Bob Costas and Mike Lupica to day. Of course, Lupica and Costas would have torn him to shreds at the time, but nobody would talk about that any more.

Robinred - I'm still more ticked at the Giants and Royals players that did cocaine,

BTW, robin - HA HA HA HHHHHA HA HA HAHHAHA BWAHHHHA HAHHAHAHAHH

What I love about the claims that Bonds was always using is how originally the anti-Bonds contingent used to run around yapping about Bond's hat size increasing in his thirties. It seems they want to have it both ways- claim they were right about Bonds before everyone else (cuz they saw him get bigger and his HRs get longer) - AND also claim he was ALWAYS using

What I had always heard was that you'd get "muscle bound,"

In the absence of clear evidence or honest confession but in the presence of partial evidence indicating chicanery, it's hard to work up much sympathy for someone who "cheats" based on the argument that we don't know the exact duration of the perfidy.

I think the argument is that Bonds had a world class lab designing special drugs, and most of the other guys were getting random crap mailed from Dr. Nick Riviera in the DR.

Well that's all well and good, but that doesn't really address the possibility that Bonds had been using various anabolic agents for his entire career. The 1998 cutoff seems unsupportable.

In the absence of clear evidence or honest confession but in the presence of partial evidence indicating chicanery, it's hard to work up much sympathy for someone who "cheats" based on the argument that we don't know the exact duration of the perfidy.

So what you're saying is that you know you have no basis on which to make your claims, but because Bonds is a bad person anything goes?

Well that's all well and good, but that doesn't really address the possibility that Bonds had been using various anabolic agents for his entire career. The 1998 cutoff seems unsupportable.

There's even less evidence that he was taking them before 1998 than after. And if he were taking them before 1998, then the notion that the improvement in his performance late in his career comes from steroids is even more nonsensical.

Royals' players used coke?!!!???

As Ray might say, never heard a word about it.

League Year-By-Year Batting--Averages
All stats are per game · Totals are Below · Glossary · SHARESHARE [X] · CSV · PRE · LINK · More Tools
Year Tms #Bat BatAge R/G G PA AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI SB CS BB SO BA OBP SLG OPS TB GDP HBP SH SF IBB

We also would much rather hang out with or be Ruth.

Wouldn't be surprised? If you knew anything about baseball you'd know weightlifting was verboten until Frootloops and others in the 80s.
Wait, you were the guy who said that the twig armed Bonds of his teens and twenties must have been on steroids too, right? Ok, that explains it.

But there was no argument for him as the very best. And there is no argument that can be made for him as the very best NOW either without steroids.

Bull-####. You don't top your best previous performance (in a HoF career) at ages 36-39.

There is nothing comparable in the greenies Mays and Aaron took to whatever Bonds was doing in the early 2000's. Every other great player in history was below their peak and in decline in those ages.

And then you've got the degree of the improvement, which nobody who
keeps dragging up these late career Aaron / Bonds comparisons ever seems
to mention. I feel like a Fact Checker in the wake of a Sarah Palin speech
in listing these numbers for the umpteenth time, but WTH maybe at some
point it'll sink in. And remember, these are era-adjusted stats, not raw numbers:

Age 26-30 OPS+
Aaron: 155, 161, 170, 179, 153
Bonds: 160, 205, 204, 183, 168

Age 35-39 OPS+
Aaron: 177, 148, 194, 147, 177
Bonds: 188, 259, 268, 231, 263

And since those OPS+ numbers I listed the first time around
evidently didn't register, here are those same OPS+ numbers averaged
out for your viewing convenience:

Age 26-30
Aaron 164, Bonds 185

Age 35-39
Aaron 169, Bonds 252

Improvement from 26-30 to 35-39: Aaron 3%, Bonds 36%. Those numbers aren't going away.

Babe Ruth took more performance-depressing drugs than Bonds took performance enhancing ones.

It's from the book Game of Shadows

Wait, you were the guy who said that the twig armed Bonds of his teens and twenties must have been on steroids too, right? Ok, that explains it.

Because it's human. Just like all of us show up at work hung over, or not feeling our best, so do our heroes. Guys who have fun with their fame are a lot more appealing than single minded workaholics.

Also, at heart, we care who is the best baseball player, not who puts up the best WAR. If Ruth could top Bonds stats fat and drunk and chasing tail, while Bonds was working out like a madman, and shooting up designer drugs, that says Ruth was better. We also would much rather hang out with or be Ruth.

Finally, there is something psychologically wrong with a person who's response to being one of the 15 greatest players of all time, and a multi-millionaire, is let me shoot up some drugs and spend all day in the gym, rather than have some fun with it. The Barry Bonds mentality is the same one that leads already rich traders and hedgies to insider trading.

Well, Ray, you've certainly proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jimmie Foxx's age 35-39 career went into a tailspin, not unlike the great majority of players who managed to last that long. I'm not sure what that has to do with Bonds vs Aaron, or more pertinently, what it has to do with Bonds's unprecedented improvement over himself during those same years.

All you've shown is that (a) Aaron held up a lot better than most late career superstars, a point nobody disputes;

and that (b) Bonds's late performance made his own earlier performance look almost like that of a 190 lb. weakling. Unfortunately, that's what it is about Bonds that stands out so starkly in comparison to everyone else---including Aaron---and it's Bonds's comparison to himself that you so studiously try to brush aside or ignore.

I just love that we live in a world where this makes Ruth the good guy and Bonds the bad guy.

To follow up on my last point, I believe that if you take the 10 greatest players in history, odds are that one of them is going to do something that blows everyone else away.

But while "boiling it down" to nothing but steroids is crazy, it's also crazy not to acknowledge that they clearly helped, even if you can't quantify how much they helped with any precision.

I was blown away that Barry would expect me to believe he thought he was spending all that money on flaxseed oil.

that still leaves the fact that no "great player" in 135 years worth of Major League history has ever improved at age 35 to anywhere remotely the degree that Bonds did.

WAY beyond the extent that any other player in the history of baseball has ever done before

#165 I'm blown away that you know that Bonds spent a lot of money on what he claimed to believe was flaxseed oil.

Right, Ray, I realize that with you every argument has to be quantified with absolute precision to be acknowledged at all.

Can you quantify how much three square meals a day might add to a player's hitting? Of course not. But can you therefore say that "we don't know" whether or not they "clearly helped" at all?

And when you see a 35 to 39 year old player improve on his previous peak years WAY beyond the extent that any other player in the history of baseball has ever done before**---and when we know he used steroids during that period---you don't need to quantify it with any statistical precision to be able to draw a reasonable conclusion that those steroids were "clearly" part of what led to that improvement.

Sprinter Darwin Chambers said his treatments ran up to $30,000 a year.

True enough I suppose but I thought Ray's point was clear enough -- great players generally do _something_ nobody's done before. No great player was a great hitter and a damn fine, maybe HoF caliber pitcher like Ruth (not to mention all his HRs). Before Bonds, no great player had the late career that Aaron had (although most great players have great late careers -- it's a big part of what makes them great). No great player combined offense and defense and baserunning the way Willie Mays did. No great player had the durability of (Lou Gehrig. I doubt any great player understood hitting better than Ted Williams. No great pitcher, except maybe Walter Johnson, ever dominated the way Pedro did. No great player ever stole bases the way Rickey did. Prior to Eddie Mathews, the career record for HR by a 3B appears to be Al Rosen at 192. Ernie Banks comfortably had the HR record before he moved off of SS after age 30 (by about 90 over Cronin). No C ever lasted as long or had the late career that Fisk had. (Not sure I consider Fisk "great" really.)

Which is a truism, but how many of them have beaten their own best years after turning 35, and done it to the extent that Bonds did, and for five years in a row to boot?

Sprinter Darwin Chambers said his treatments ran up to $30,000 a year.

That's dirt cheap when you're talking professional athlete. If it has a 1% chance of extending a role-players career by a year, its a good value.

And, hell:

Mariano Rivera, ages 25-34: 190 ERA+
Mariano Rivera, ages 35-41: 236 ERA+

Increase: 24%.

Andy?

We can add to that the example of Mariano Rivera. No great pitcher ever outclassed all other pitchers in history on a per-inning basis for 15 years without having even an average year -- until Rivera did it. Is Andy prepared to argue that Rivera is on steroids, or otherwise cheating in some way? Doctoring the ball? After all, no other pitcher has done this.

Except that his "power" after age 35 wasn't anything that he hadn't shown before, as shown by his K/9 rates, which peaked at age 26, and which have remained more or less steady throughout the course of his career.

If steroids help your control, you've got a point. If lowering your walk rate doesn't improve your ERA+, let me know how. And if a pitcher's control is comparable to power spikes a la Bonds, you've got a winner.

Cap Anson from 26 to 30: 162

Cap Anson from 35 to 39: 167

Impressive, but hardly Bondsian in terms of improvement

Except that his "power" after age 35 wasn't anything that he hadn't shown before, as shown by his K/9 rates, which peaked at age 26, and which have remained more or less steady throughout the course of his career.

Anson 26-30: 18.4
Anson 35-39: 26.4
43.5% improvement

Y'know, the fact that the season was roughly twice as long during Anson's latter career might have something to do with this.

acknowledge that I ###### up here.

I think this may be a BTF first.

I think this may be a BTF first.

This is an impressive amount of bullsh!t packed into one sentence.

Hey, everybody! Over here! I think I can see the goalposts!