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February 24, 2008

Prospectus Today

Sign Barry Bonds

by Joe Sheehan

A few days ago, in a piece on the free agents still looking for homes, I mentioned Barry Bonds’ name in passing. About that time, it became a story in the mainstream that Bonds is in shape and looking for work. The glee with which some members of the media pounced on this story was embarrassing, even shameful. Stories with a similar theme, that the Giants are a happier bunch with Bonds no longer in the room, also abounded.

These stories all start in the wrong place, which is just one reason why they all end up in the wrong one as well. The notion that Barry Bonds is not a player who can help 30 teams win is deluded. He is still a great player, and the way to reach the conclusion that he is not is to raise things such as baserunning—"clogging the bases"—and defense, calling him a "defensive liabilility," far past their actual importance to a player’s value.

Last year, Bonds batted .276/.480/.565. Had he qualified—he was 25 plate appearances short—he would have the led the NL in OBP by a wide margin and finished in the top ten in slugging. In fact, using the rule that you can add an 0-for-25 to his stats, he actually did lead the NL in OBP. That’s called dominating the category.

Of course, a chunk of Bonds’ OBP comes from the intentional walks he receives: 43 last season. You can argue that this disproportionately inflates his OBP, a function less of Bonds’ abilities and more of Brian Sabean’s inability to find hitters better than Ray Durham and Bengie Molina to hit behind his Hall of Famer. So lop 35 intentional walks off of Bonds’ total, and give him the average performance in his other at-bats in those 35 times up. That makes him a .276/.439/.565 hitter, assuming he drew no walks in that time and saw the same distribution of lefties and righties, both ungenerous assumptions. He’d pick up a couple of homers, and almost certainly a lot of RBI, both of which would inflate his value to the people who seem to think “66 RBI” is an indication of value.

Then again, those intentional walks tell you more about Bonds’ skills than anything else in his stat line. MLB managers all think he’s good enough to not bother trying to get out nearly 10 percent of the time. How can a hitter that good not warrant a spot in someone’s lineup? Bonds produced 86 Equivalent Runs last season, and had a VORP of 55.2, the latter good for 19^th overall in MLB. There is simply no argument that Barry Bonds isn’t a championship-caliber hitter. He remains one of the very best in the game on a per-at-bat basis.