Maybe I have too much time on my hands, or maybe this proves I should really be in another line of
work, but here is my exhaustive research on Barry Bonds' career:
For a good comparison of statistics I took his average per 162 games.
In his first four years in the league (1986-1989) Bonds averaged 33.47 homers per 162 games, with
88.84 RBIs and 46.61 stolen bases. In his next eleven years (1990-2000), Bonds averaged 38.25
homers per 162 games, with 110.26 RBIs and 33.02 stolen bases. In 2001, he averaged 77.66 homers
per 162 games, with 145.74 RBIs and 13.83 stolen bases.
I broke it down into those three time periods because there seemed to be a distinct change in 1990 when
he started hitting for more power and getting more RBIs. Looking at it that way, Bonds averaged over
39 more homers per 162 games last year than he had during the eleven prime production years of his
career prior to that. That seems to indicate that there was some kind of change in the game, or in Bonds,
to create such a huge difference. That is a 103% increase in homeruns from his previous average.
If I include his whole career before 2001 and compare the averages to his averages in 2001, the
difference is even more stark. Prior to last year, Bonds averaged 37.34 homers per 162, with 106.20
RBIs and 35.60 stolen bases. That means in 2001 his average homers per 162 games jumped by over
40 dingers. Even if you include 2001 in his averages, he still "only" averages 40 homers a year.
I also looked at his career since 1995, thinking that maybe he found his stroke after he turned thirty years
old. His averages were higher during this post-30 (and pre-2001) period. He averaged 44.17 homers
per 162 games during that period, with 121.24 RBIs and 32.89 SBs. While higher, and tending to show
that Bonds was becoming more of a homerun hitter, and less of a base stealer, the jump to a 77.66
homerun average is still incongruous.
Am I a little bitter? Perhaps. Do I love baseball statistics too much? Probably. But the numbers don't
lie. There is something fishy about Bonds' production since 2001 when compared with the rest of his
career.
As a side note, his career post-season numbers are: .196 1 6 over 97 at bats in 27 games. If you are
curious as to how that averages out, it is 6 homers and 36 rbis per 162 games, although the bulk of these
numbers came in the early 1990s with Pittsburgh.
In conclusion, Bonds is certainly a Hall of Famer and probably one of the top 10 or so ballplayers of all
time. But I think that the jump in his statistics over the last two years will always cause people to question
whether he was using some kind of performance enhancing drugs.