Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 762: The Best Barry Bonds Facts

Episode Date: November 9, 2015

Ben and Sam talk about the best Barry Bonds facts with Jake Mintz and Jordan Shusterman of Cespedes Family Barbecue.

Good morning and welcome to episode 762 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Prospectus, presented by the Play Index at BaseballReference.com. I'm Ben Lindberg of ESPN, joined by Sam Miller of Baseball Prospectus. Hello, Sam. Hello, Ben. All right, so it's episode 762. We are doing a themed episode. This will not be news to anyone who is in our Facebook group where Alex Hume asked me,

can episode 762 be Barry Bonds themed? And the answer is yes, it can. And it is. And another commenter, Andrew, actually guessed that we would have as our guest, the two fine fellows who run the Cespedes family barbacast and the Cespedes family barbecue. And they are Jake Mintz and Jordan Schusterman. Hi, guys. Hi, Ben. Hello, Ben. Should we discern whom is whom? Yeah, I guess we should probably. The loud one is Jake, both in person and on this podcast. Yes,

that's probably a better way to describe me than anything else. and the quieter one is jordan and a commenter responded to the comment about whether we would have the cesspitous boys on this podcast by saying please put it in the description if they are i can safely delete it oh so you may delete this podcast feel free nice but you'll miss out on you know some good conversation can i tell you guys something i i really i recently discovered i think the secret to happiness in life is to hang out with people who are really good at their jobs and yet for some reason some people hate them like it's a good reminder to be around people who you have just tremendous respect for but then also sometimes people say bad like nobody ever says anything bad about ben so there's no you get no benefit there and nobody

like i don't get any benefit from hanging out with ben because i just see a guy who's super good better than me at everything and everybody loves him for it but like if you hung out with joe buck for instance who's also really good and all you see is people hating him, you'd be like, oh, yeah, okay, the world is totally irrelevant. Right, like the mountain peak or the top of the mountain is not great. Yes, exactly. So there was a study in the Pacific Standard magazine recently that looked at the most unbreakable sports records, and Barry Bonds was on top of the list but not for his 762 career home runs but for his 688 intentional walks so really we should have done this in episode 688 yeah I was expecting it then it was weird 688 may be the only I I mean, I remember that number more than most baseball numbers,

but that's probably just me. But it is just as significant for me. I think I've mentioned this maybe too publicly before, but my bike lock combination is 14.22 for his OPS in 2014. 2004, I should say. I'm just going to go around the Bay area, just trying to unlock bike locks. Uh-huh. Yeah. The, the, the, the trick though, is that I always forget my bike lock and never use it anyway. Like I always end up just doing

that thing where like, I, I stand there for long enough at the bike lock at the bike rack that it looks like I'm locking something. Like I'll string my helmet through the thing so it looks like I locked it in case anybody's watching. And then I just have faith. I mean I live in a very affluent area of California and I just have faith that like no one wants my bike. You don't wonder like, oh, did I pick the 2001 OPS? Or you try all the 93.

I mean, you usually figure it out or you just don't even bother. And now you have this podcast to go back and listen to the next time you forget what your bike lock is. Yeah, but which episode was it? I got to remember how many home runs Bonds hit to remember which episode. I'll be listening to 688. So we have you guys on because you are Barry Bonds scholars, and Sam is also a Barry Bonds scholar. I'm more of an appreciator of Barry Bonds fun facts than a generator of them,

so I'm going to serve sort of as the moderator and let you guys have the floor. But I want to ask before we start dispensing Barry Bonds facts, inevitably, whenever you talk about Barry Bonds, you get the one commenter who doesn't get why it's fun, because he's Barry Bonds, and he cheated, and it's not natural, and it's legit. It's not legit. So why is it that we can acknowledge these things, not deny those things, and yet still love the genre of Barry Bonds facts? Jordan? Oh, boy.

I wrote about this at the end of my top 25 favorite Bonds facts. Basically, for us, and we argue this all the time when it comes to just baseball stuff in general, it's just, in the grand scheme of things, like not that important in terms of what he did. And I think looking at just the numbers he put up in the same way that we can look at the numbers that Babe Ruth put up and just kind of laugh because it doesn't look like a real thing. I think it's weird that people are so, they get so angry about it as opposed to just kind of being like, wow, that happened. I was watching it.

And I wish you could just, because there's no other stat that exists now or that any really players are putting up now that make you just completely not understand what's going on the way that looking at Bond's numbers are. not understand what's going on, the way that looking at Bond's numbers are, and the fact that you can picture it because he did it so recently, unlike the roof stats of the crazy Walter Johnson stats. And obviously, as Sam says, Sam, what's your cutoff for when baseball actually starts? It's 1988. Yeah, so that's when baseball starts. So this happened after 1988. So we can accept it as fact and as real things that happened in the video. You can see it as real things. And it's just fun. I just don't understand why people get angry about it.

Whether you agree that it's legitimate or not, it's a game. And it's a fun thing to see someone just dominated to the point where it wasn't. He basically broke it. Right. I think for me it's a little simpler than that. I think I like to live my life, and I think Jordan will, it's a little simpler than that. I think I like to live my life. And I think Jordan will agree, as we do on most things. Kind of a live and let live type attitude. Right. And at the same time, like I watch sports, and mostly baseball, to be amazed

by things to. And I think that's why the two of us enjoy Ioannis Cespedes so much, is because we are amazed by things that he does. Like Matt Carpenter is a fantastic baseball player. He has never amazed me. Barry Bonds amazes me in a way that kind of very few other people or athletes can do. I will just say, I think that it's perfectly reasonable for people to be angry at Barry Bonds. It's reasonable to not be angry at him as well, but it's perfectly reasonable for people to be angry at Barry Bonds. Just don't be angry at, like, Jordan.

Like, Jordan's just... Jordan's just going, look at that thing. It's crazy that thing. Yeah, yeah, that's the other thing. I don't know why, and you could keep directing it at him, I guess. But I don't know why I should be... people get mad at me for enjoying it that's that that is a little a little weird barry buns debuted in 1986 which is two

years before history started so he really has like 720 right runs yeah he hit 16 in his rookie season and 25 in his sophomore season so i guess we have to strike those from the record. A little more than that. That does change a lot. Can I get mad at Jordan if he tests positive for stenozolol? Yes. Yes. Yes, if I test positive and continue to praise Bonds and his numbers,

then by all means, bring it on. Or if you take the pill from Limitless, and that's how you come up with these Barry Bonds facts, then we can get mad at you. Okay. I believe that that is a good reference. So what is the... Wait, wait, wait. One thing, Ben, before we start, we should just note that this is essentially an entire Play Index episode. Almost virtually all of this comes from Play Index. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. So no Play Index segment, but it's all Play Index. So what is the best

genre of Barry Bonds facts? Because there's so many different kinds of Barry Bonds facts. There's the batter pitcher matchups. There's comparing him to teams. There's comparing him to other great players or clubs that he belongs to that no one else belongs to. What is the best kind of Barry Bonds fact? Well, I think before we say what's the best, I think we should take away what the worst is. Okay. And I think the worst type of Barry Bonds fact is what is best about Barry Bonds, in my opinion, and that is the home runs. Right? Like you could be like, here's a good one. He had more home runs than everyone. Right.

Like, no, it's not a good one. Right. Like it's not. There was one I had along those lines. It was like he had more homers than Ortiz and Hank Greenberg combined. Not bad. But like, it's like, yeah, everyone knows he had a lot of home runs. What makes it amazing, right, is all the other stuff.

So let's take out the home run ones. Okay. I think, I'm not sure I have, yeah, that is a funny thing. I don't think I have any home run ones on the list. The other thing is he didn't really, so he hit, he only hit more than 50 once. So I guess it was like 540 home run seasons and then the 73 or whatever. Right, just the fact that he has as many 50 home run seasons as Greg Vaughn and Brady Anderson. Like, that's funny.

Yeah. Right, you would think that just the more home runs than everybody else is enough of a fun fact. But, yeah, I think to answer your question, Ben, the intentional walk ones are, I know the ones that Sam appreciates the most. I've definitely fallen into the looking at bonds against left-handed pitchers compared to all the best right-handed hitters

against left-handed pitchers. So I have a couple of those. But yeah, Sam, do you think the intentional walks are still... I mean, it's the obvious one, but there's just so many that you can dig into. I don't know that I completely believe that they are the ones that best capture his greatness. To me, they're the most interesting because they best capture the insanity that swept the game around him. I mean, I don't, I think you can make a pretty good case that half or more of his intentional walks were insane. Like they were just stupid. They were bad intentional walks. Uh, and, but like the game just like got this

like collective fever for those few years where just all of baseball became irrational. And I, I mean, i've written about how the intentional walk had been on a decline for a long time before bonds and then bonds came and single-handedly created this huge spike and then after he left just immediately declined declined declined further and like nobody's gotten the bonds treatment even though you can find examples where cleanup hitters have been so much better than their, or like, like Stanton, when Stanton was batting in front of Greg Dobbs for that year, for instance, he intentionally walked like five times that year. And there's just something I think that

most appeals to me about Barry Bonds career is this feeling like, do you guys know about that time when there was like a symphony, Somebody like debuted a new symphony in like, I don't know, Prague or Russia or something in like 1918. I'll look this up while you guys are talking. But like they debuted their symphony and the crowd actually rioted. Like hundreds of people like watched this great classical musician riot. Like they rioted. Like they freaked out. They lost their mind.

Like people were like jumping off buildings or something. riot like they uh they rioted like they right they freaked out they lost their mind like people were like jumping off buildings or something and that kind of is what it feels like to me and uh so that's why i appreciate them most i have a question it was the right of spring it was the right of spring by you know by stravinsky and it was when it when first performed uh in i think paris in 1913 the avant-garde nature of the music and choreography caused a sensation and riot in the audience. Because it was good? People just panicked. People didn't know what to do with those sounds?

Yeah, I mean, and it's not like this was like, I mean, these were symphony goers. These are like old people in tails. And they rioted, dude. They rioted. Yeah, yeah. That's right. And they just didn't know how to react. They were like, all right, I guess we'll just do this.

And that's how I kind of imagine. That's what I imagine. Like when I imagine like, you know, Jim Leland or some, you know, like old normal manager just freaking out and intentionally walking him. With nobody on base, they intentionally walked him. Like Buck Showalter did it with the bases loaded in the ninth up two. And he's supposedly this genius tactician, right? The one that I found, the specific intentional walk, and I hope I'm getting these details right,

intentional walk and I hope I'm getting these details right. But I found that in July of 2004, it was a 3-3 tie in the bottom of the fifth with two outs and runners on first and second and Randy Johnson intentionally walked. So I have to go back and look at that because I'm pretty sure that was the situation, but I don't know what the context was and everything. It was a July good but I just that's just completely ludicrous. The one question I have about the intentional walks before we get into just rattling these off I guess is why he didn't

walk intentionally more in 2001. Because when I go back and look at this, his walks Jeff Kent, right? Well I think it's partially Jeff Kent, but I think another part of it, it might be like how you don't see a spike in ticket sales until the year after.

Well, I mean, yeah, we've talked, I know you guys have talked about this on Effective Web before, but like how some things about a player aren't exploited until the next year, which seems strange because you think they could just adjust like, oh, well, nobody's been doing this for two months.

We can do this. So I i assume jeff kind of a big thing a big part of that but it still seems weird that it wasn't more so like his walks went up as the season went on yeah but his intentional walks weren't anything close to what he had from 02 to 04 yeah it yeah you're right i mean he it does seem like they were walking him they were just still in that phase where they thought they would pitch around him. Because he walked. I mean, he set a career high for walks. He walked, you know, not as often, but, you know, at an insane rate,

like probably a record-breaking rate. They just weren't intentional yet. And, yeah. Also, Jeff Kent didn't leave until 03, I don't think. I think his first year in Houston was 03. So he was there for 2002. He was the – yeah, he was, and he was awesome. He was really super-duper awesome in 2002.

I think they might have switched them. Did they switch the batting order? They were – he didn't always bat behind Bonds. Sometimes he batted in front of Bonds. And I'm checking Bonds, Kent, Bonds, Kent. Yeah, Kent batted in front of Bonds for a large part of 2002. Interesting. Well, because really if you think about it.

Because he was the MVP. Well, the thing about it, the thing that you discovered about this situation that I loved learning about baseball kind of, and I've thought about this in various instances since, but the way that you protected Bonds was not to put a good hitter behind him. The way you protected Bonds was to get guys on base in front of him because they couldn't walk like if you had a leadoff man on in front of him or even you know like a guy on first and second with one out in front of him then they wouldn't walk him or if they did walk him it was particularly damaging nobody was going to protect him and so the key was then in that way getting as many guys in front of bonds as you could

instead of in back of bonds i've always thought that that's kind of an interesting concept to think that like for instance when everybody was talking about how albert pool holes would make howie kendrick a superstar because howie kendrick is now going to have pools batting behind him well if you look at it nobody ever pitched the guy in front of pool holes any differently than they did when he wasn't batting in front of pools but i bet if you looked at the guys after him when he's on than they did when he wasn't batting in front of pools. But I bet if you looked at the guys after him when he's on base, they did pitch him differently. That theory you just presented, do you think Dusty Baker thought that out or do you think he just switched them in the

order? I don't know. It's a good question. I think he thought it out. Right. I mean, they didn't have anybody else protecting Bonds and everybody knew that you needed protection. What were you going to do, hit Benito Santiago there? A good stat I think that kind of goes along with what you said about there not being kind of any – like walks declining before Bonds is the one that from 2000 to 2004, Bonds had more intentional walks than Maguire and Sosa did in their entire careers combined. intentional walks than Maguire and Sosa did in their entire careers combined. Which is, I mean, we think of Maguire and Sosa as these, the kind of the first wave of the crazy power guys, I guess, or the kind of maybe the peak of it. And yeah, and they didn't really walk that much. Good fact. All right. So Jordan has a whole list of 25 favorites that he wrote for the occasion of Barry Bonds' 50th birthday. I will link to that. Maybe he'll pull

some from that, but we have new exclusive Barry Bonds facts. New research has come to light about Barry Bonds' career that we will be presenting here. So I don't know how to do this. I guess I'll just go from one of you to the next and you can share your favorite Barry Bonds fact and we'll move on. So Jake just did one. So Jordan, you want to go? This is like a rap battle. We need like that. It is sort of, yes. We need the people that stood in the background of Yo Mama on MTV2.

Oh, that was a great show. They filmed that in some like warehouse and it was the strangest thing. They could have done it in like a public park. That's very, very strange. um all right like a public park that's very very straight um i i will say so obviously so many of these these facts that i've come up with i guess not as many on my list just because i i kept getting carried away but is is prefaced with from 2001 to 2004 i guess my question i i i don't want to keep i i would love to just start rattling these off. I always struggle to decide which season is the most amazing season from 2001 to 2004 because his best OPS plus was in 2002.

In 2001, he had 73 home runs in one season. He had 73 home runs in one season. And then the 120 intentional walks in 2004. So his mediocre 1,200 OPS in 2003 gets kind of lost in the shuffle. I think I like that from 2001 to 2004, his OPS after an 0-2 count or after a 1-2 count was, or after an 0-2 count from 2001 to 2004 was 970. I just closed like seven tabs because the O2, the after an O2 count is probably my favorite non-intentional walk genre. Yeah.

So after, so 2001 to 2004, 970 OPS after O2. Second in that time span was Luis Gonzalez at 790. And I mean, obviously you just look at 970. I mean, and that's a pretty healthy sample size too, but still an obscene on-base percentage for 02. And for his whole career, he had an 889 OPS after 01, which is the same as Willie McCovey for his career. So yeah, it's weird. I mean, that's you think, oh, well, obviously, they they were scared of him so they walked him all the time but it was more than that it was a ridiculous approach mike trout shows up really high on those if you look at them too because i always we always picture

and i i think you guys talk about like he takes a lot of first pitch strikes and and i know he's adjusted and now sometimes attacks first pitches but he just takes a one with no hesitation and it's still mike trout uh but the barry bonds approach beyond just everyone being terrified of him was obviously something pretty special i like that he had 373 at bats in 2004 which is like a better way it's a better way of looking at it than the walks almost because you look at that and it's like oh he must have missed half a season or something no right that's why you gotta he got to remember to do minimum plate appearances and not minimum at-bats. Right. He just walked for half a season. Can I give one little twist on the 0-2-1 just before I close these up? So if you limit it to 2002 to 2004, his OPS after 0-2 would have been

the third best OPS in baseball. Todd Helton had a 1,061 OPS overall, Pujols 1,044, and then Bonds was 1,042. So spot him two strikes and he was the third best hitter in baseball. All right. I guess that counts as your fact. No, no, it doesn't count as your fact. Okay. What's your fact? Is it my turn? Well, yeah. Okay. Go ahead. All right. I will go with – this is two. These are both – I'm lumping them into one genre, which is the Adrian Beltre genre. And so from 2001 to 2004, Barry Bonds' worst OPS in any 20-game stretch was Adrian Beltre's career OPS. So he was never in 20 games worse than Adrian Beltre. All right.

So the second Adrian Beltre genre is that his win probability added on intentional walks is higher than Adrian Beltre's career win probability added. Oh, man. That's a Hall of Famer. Yeah. Barry Bonds intentionally walking's a Hall of Famer. Yeah. Barry Bonds intentionally walking as a Hall of Famer. Wow.

That's great. I had an extremely similar one to the first one you mentioned, which I guess I'm not sure how you did the 20-game stretch, but I just did his worst month, and his worst month was May of 2004 when he hit 250, 532, 542. Yeah. I love the lines because I tweeted that at one point. And multiple people were just like, how does one hit below 260 and have an OBD over 500?

Yeah. Yes, it is very, very hard to understand. So yeah, the Ida Bersin one, that is pretty crazy. All right, Jake, you want to go? Yeah, I'm deciding between two different ones, but I'll go with the club one, which is the one where he's the only member of the 400-400 club and the only member of the 500-500 club.

Yeah. But that one-fourth of the 300-300 club are Bonds. So there are eight people in the 300-300 club. One of them is Barry and one of them is Bobby. That's actually a pretty crazy list. Wait, wait, can we guess? Can we guess? There's six other guys.

Uh, there are six other guys. Okay. So I'm going to guess one. You want me to tell me if any are active or no? No, let me, let me, let me, let me go real quick. Uh, all right. So the bonds bonds, uh, maze Dawson, Alfonso Soriano. No.

Uh, a rod. Yes. I'm out. Ben. Hmm. No, I don't know. Uh, beltron uh-huh right the best the best one is steve finley i well steve finley and then the one that i remember the first time i looked this up is is it would take a long time for either to get reggie sanders i almost guessed i almost guessed reggie sanders just then but uh I would never have gotten Steve Finley.

That one's nuts. That doesn't make any sense. That's crazy. Well, Sanders is also barely over by five home runs. Finley is over by four home runs and 20 steals. That's a great club. That's a great club. Also that he was at, Bonds was at 400-400 by 1998.

Yeah, that's another genre that we'll get into. He still has a mustache in the video of him getting the 400-400. That's a great way to put it. That's another genre which is the Bonds was amazing even before 2001 genre. And my favorite of that genre, if I can, is here we go. By the time Barry Bonds played in his second All-Star game, he had already passed Jim Rice's career war. Oh, yeah. Jim Rice. No, he was more than, he basically

matched Jim Rice just with the pirates. Yeah. Just with the pirates. Exactly. And what people don't really remember is that to some degree, Bonds was, was actually pretty underrated. There's, that's a, there's a little bit of a Harper comparison here where Bonds was just killing it. He was older than Harper because he went to college, but like he was great for three years. His wars were six, six and eight. And he didn't make an all-star team because it was all defense and base running. Like a huge part of it was defense and base running. So those three years, six, six and eight and no all-star game and not a single MVP vote. And then finally, 1990, he got the home runs and the RBIs. And all of a sudden, from no MVP votes to winning the MVP award. And you can sort of see why he would take from that

lesson, hey, I should hit more home runs and do a bunch of steroids. Because that's what got him recognized. So anyway, yeah, he didn't make his second All-Star team until his age 27 season. He finished second in MVP voting in his age 26 season and didn't make the All-Star team that year either. So anyway, he passed Rice by age 27, which was his Pittsburgh career. It's always helpful to have those Hall of Famers who aren't actually very good so that you can use them as a comparison. I mean, yeah, Mike Trout passed Bruce Suter by last year.

So yeah, it doesn't hold that. That doesn't really count, though. No, I know. Mike Trout passed Bruce Suter by last year. That doesn't really count, though. Jim Rice. Jim Rice, he'll probably pass soon. Yeah. Richard Count. And Rice was really good. I mean, Rice has a low war, but he was really good. But the point is just that you can do a whole career's worth of fun facts.

They're not as fun, but you can do a whole... He was better before 2001 and 2004 than pretty much anybody we've ever seen, except maybe Pujols and maybe arguably Trout. Yeah, and that's... I tweeted... I don't know if... I think I tweeted this because it's not really based on anything totally. And maybe Ricky. Maybe Ricky. Oh, and maybe

A-Rod. Those four. Sorry, go ahead. And one stat, but on the topic of the Hall of Fame, we have this insanely loaded Hall of Fame ballot when we're starting to get guys in, but him before 2000 was better than pretty much everybody on the ballot, as you basically just said. So he was at 100 war before 2000. So he just had to tack on another 50.

Really selfish. Terrible. He just hogged all the wars. He did. He did. And he's still behind Babe because Babe pitched for 20 wins or whatever. Alright, you want to go?

Sure. So as I mentioned earlier, I've really appreciated the ones against him against left-handed pitching. So he, of the 50 best career OPSs versus left-handed pitchers, minimum of 1,000 plate appearances, he is the only left-handed hitter, and he's 14th. So he had 986 OPS against lefties who's 15? yeah do you know? is that in front of you?

I don't have it up right now but that's better than A-Rod has been against lefties in his career I guess A-Rod hasn't really shown much of a hey Jordan what's his ERA against lefties in his career. I guess A-Rod hasn't really shown much of a noticeable... Hey, Jordan, what's his ERA against lefties? Yeah, probably significantly higher, but we don't know, I suppose.

And then the second on that list, I think I lowered it to career OPS as a left-hand hitter to like 500 or something, and Votto is second at 905 so solid 80 points of ops there but yeah it's just ridiculous that he was so far ahead of basically any other right-handed hitter he was better than i know edgar martinez he's better than edgar against lefties um and then his numbers against randy johnson are also particularly amusing i need to find that game where randy johnson intentionally walked in with the runner on first and second.

Do you have the Randy Johnson numbers up? Yes. I like those. Give us those. The Randy Johnson numbers. He hit 306, 452, 551. Yep. 62 played appearances. 62 played appearances. Lefties over the course

of Randy Johnson's career hit 199, 278, 294. So basically doubled the OPS. More than that. Almost tripled it. Randy Johnson was so tough against lefties that I once argued that he is the sole reason that Larry Walker is not in the Hall of Fame. And Bonds was essentially better against Randy Johnson than Mike Trout is. Yeah, that's a thing. And I've heard Trout's pretty good. Yeah. All right.

Sam skipped the line, so I don't know whether to skip Sam and go back to Jake or just do two Sam's. Do you want to go, Sam? I can go anytime, and I can wait anytime. All right. Jake. I'm like Barry Bonds. Just like Barry Bonds, Sam. All right.

So let me – so another one that we haven't – that we've kind of gotten into here is Bonds versus particular pitchers. So I will choose the Guillermo Mota one. How he is one for one with eight walks. Yeah. And a 5,000 ops. And five of those eight walks are intentional. Pretty crazy. And Bonds has the same slash line against Chad Bradford in, I think, six at-bats. Homer and five walks, which is crazy. And Bonds is the same slash line against Chad Bradford in, I think, six at-bats,

a homer and five walks, which is crazy. And part of the reason I strayed into this particular one is so that Jordan can tell the Jeremy Gonzalez one. Oh, yes. If Sam can continue his Bonds-esque patience. Yeah, sure. Please, I always want to hear the Jeremy Gonzalez story. The Jeremy Gonzalez one is, you know you should be respectful when talking about this,

but when I figured it out, it was one of the more mind-boggling things I've ever seen. So basically, the fact by itself is amazing. The most times a pitcher faced Barry Bonds without allowing him to reach base with a hit or a walk was six. So no one faced him more than six times and got him to not reach base with hit or walk was six so no one faced him more than six times um and got him to not reach base and the guy that did it was uh jeremy gonzalez who was just like a meh pitcher for a couple seasons 572 career innings and um two years after his final year of the big leagues uh jeremy gonzalez was struck by lightning and died so no wait hang on can you say that again with me and ben not laughing let's let's try that again

i muted my mic because i knew what was gonna happen so when i when i i when i tried to tweet this i to tweet this, I had to type it and said that I think I ended up saying that he died in all caps. I'll find it. I'm going to find it. Which is not good. Yeah, so I mean that's what happens. If you mess with the greatest hitter ever, you are not in good shape. Pretty amazing.

Pretty amazing. Because when I looked it up, I was just – I remember when I found that, I was like, Jeremy Gonzalez, I'd never heard of him. And I just gave him a good Google. And that was the first result before his baseball reference page. And I said, wow, that's what you get. That's like basically the plot of Final Destination 6. It's like, you avoid the worst fate against Barry Bonds, and then you

get struck by lightning several years later. Yeah, you can't have it both ways. Jordan, you did tweet it in all caps. Just want to let you know. Okay. Well, I'm not sure I laughed. I typed it solemnly. Sam and Ben. I mean, it's just

like, it's almost a caricature of the bond stat as a whole yeah that's right right it's uh it's really really something so yes well i'm gonna is it my turn ben yes okay i'm gonna probably i think i'm gonna try to close out the uh the against pitchers category and this the moto one was my favorite for a long time. Then this took over for a while. I think this might be my favorite. I'll have many more, but this might be my favorite. Not the first one I said, but the second one I'm going to say. So I want to use the log five method to figure out what Barry Bonds would have hit against Pedro Martinez if you took Barry Bonds' performance in 2002, which was like Jordan or Jake noted, his highest OPS, plus against Pedro Martinez in 2000,

which was essentially the greatest season a pitcher's ever had. So if you put the greatest hitting season ever against the greatest pitching season ever, and you use the log five method to essentially simulate each of their at-bats based on their true talent level, who would win? What would happen? And it turns out that Barry Bonds against the greatest pitcher ever in his greatest season ever would have hit 274, 418, 584. So a 1002 slash OPS. And so then I thought that cannot be. So that's not my favorite one. But I thought that cannot, absolutely cannot be. So just to sort of test the validity of this,

I looked at from 2001 to 2004, Bonds had 138 plate appearances against pitchers in the same season that those pitchers won Cy Young or got Cy Young votes. So not like Barry Zito five years after he won, but the same year they got Cy Young votes. And remember, this was an era where there were only three men on the ballot. So like five or six guys would get Cy Young votes at most in a league. And against in those 138 plate appearances, 138 plate appearances, Bonds hit 327, 522,

786 for a 1308 OPS. Yeah, it's very hard to get results to end up under a thousand. Like everything you run, it just keeps ending up with four digits. Yeah, that's

true. You're right. So that's my favorite against pitchers fun fact. Right. I guess that brings it back to Jake. Maybe this is straying back into the intentional walk one, but I think it's an even more specific intentional walk one, the category of Barry Bonds having more intentional walks than entire franchises for particular periods. So he still has more than the Rays, which is ludicrous. He still, and then there are the ones where I'm trying to find it now. Oh, here we go.

From 2001 to 2004, he had more intentional walks than every other team in the league. So if you were to rank the teams, he'd be number one. More than, he was 24 more than the second, than the team, the Cardinals were number two. And then from, I think, 93 to 2004, he had more intentional walks than 14 teams did. Most of all of which are AL teams, but still pretty, pretty amazing. Jordan? Oh, boy. All right. I like the one that he struck out 102 times in his rookie year and then never struck out a hundred times again. I didn't even realize that's, I had no idea that he didn't strike out that much. Yeah. And there's a lot of ones I there's, I don't have any specific ones right now or about him never grounding into

double plays either i know he has significantly fewer career grounded in double plays than billy butler and billy butler's like 28 but yeah just never struck out 100 times in the season after his rookie year uh his rookie year where it was it wasn't even a full season just kept him down i mean yeah because he he had more intentional walks than strikeouts from 2001 to 2004. Let me pull up one more. I think I had another 2001 to 2004 one. Oh, well, just 2004 that about half of his plate appearances resulted in an extra base hit or a walk, which is like I always just think about it as as because, again, as people have pointed out to us, like, oh, you guys were like three years old when this was happening. But I think about watching it and I just being in the mindset of watching him in 2004 and thinking, all right, so like 50-50 chance he's, well, first of all, 60% chance of getting on base.

Well, then there's the one that he reached base 96 of the games he played from 0104 oh yeah yeah that's that's a lot of the games my two favorites in that genre by the way are that from 2001 to 2004 his longest streak of starts without reaching base was two and he only did it twice in four years and then that he had he once had a stretch of 20 games in a row in which he reached at least twice, and that's actually five games longer than his career-long hitting streak. I guess it's hard to have a hitting streak when you don't get to hit. Exactly.

Right. I think I jumped the line. No, no, no. We can just go to Jake, I guess. Jake, go ahead. So this next one is probably the most work I jumped the line. No, no, no. We can just go to Jake, I guess. Jake, go ahead. So this next one is probably the most work I've ever done on a Bond stat. I did it on a plane last year, kind of specific. Jordan and I are both Jewish, like many baseball fans.

And I determined that Barry Bonds in his career had a 1,441 ops on Yom Kippur. So yeah, I went through and basically figured out like, because the Hebrew calendar and like the Gregorian calendar are different. So it's a different day every year. So I figured out like what day it was. And then I looked at the stats for those days throughout his career. And it's like, it's not that small of a sample size. It's like 50, maybe 60, 40, 50 at bats, which is obviously small, but yeah, 1400 ops on Yom Kippur. He was always keeping. Yeah. Come on, Jake, you got to regress those numbers to his career numbers. It would really only be

like 1402. I was going to say, it would really be something if it was in the 1700 range. But that's not bad. It would have been perfect if he was exactly 1800. He had a high ops. It's a shame. I'm sure he was shooting

for that. Too all right jordan so i like the uh the barry bonds uh stolen base uh numbers um obviously there were a lot of them but even that late in his career oh yeah this is one of my favorites oh yeah when he was enormous stole bases basically without getting caught so from 2001 to the end of his career, he stole 43 bases and was caught six times and was only caught once from 2003 on. And then I like that I found that the one time he was caught was after Guillermo Mota intentionally walked him

with the bases empty. So, but yeah, he uh from 2003 to 2007 that 21 steals and was not caught once i guess like we see it today sometimes like pool holes will just swipe a bag because no one expects him to go but it still is is pretty pretty awesome that he was every once in a while just like because he was so freaking enormous at that point like and obviously not moving very well and left but he was still still still sw that point. And obviously not moving very well on the left. But he was still swiping a few bags every once in a while without getting caught. Maybe that's what Moda knew.

Maybe Moda knew he had Leduca behind the plate. Maybe he knew that was his best chance to get him out. It was just to let him steal after intentionally walking him. Base is empty, of course. Sam? let him steal after intentionally walking him. Base is empty, of course. Sam?

So this is, that kind of gets to another great genre of Barry Bonds fun facts, although more specifically it's the last season Barry Bonds fun facts because, of course, he was not offered a contract after his last season. And so this goes two ways. One is, holy cow, this guy was insanely old and still really good. And holy cow, this guy was insanely old and still really good and holy cow this guy was insanely good and still so unpopular that nobody would give him a contract and so uh the last season barry bond's fun facts go in all sorts of great directions but my favorite is uh that lance berkman ryan braun vlad guerrero and chris davis never had an ops plus higher than his final season?

Well, he led the league in on base percentage, right? Yeah, it was like 470. 480. 480, yeah. And nobody would sign him. He was better than those guys' best season. And nobody would do it because he was awful. This would be a time where it's probably fair for the guy who always replies to my Barry Bonds fun facts with, you know why, right?

Yeah, I do know that he did the drugs. Got it. Wait, what? Oh, wait. Oh, crap. I don't stand by anything we've said on this podcast anymore. This is something Jordan and I talk about and we asked Grant Brisby about once. People always say, how can I explain this to the kids? It's always about the kids.

But Jordan and I work at a summer camp, a baseball summer camp, where I coach the 8-year-olds and he coaches the 7-year-olds. And we want to praise Barry Bonds for them. And then they boo us. The kids boo us. Bro, you were born in 2008. Come on. I know we're young, but seriously. It's weird.

You wonder. It's like how are you already think who told you to boo him? They should be booing John Rocker. Like, you know, that should be the number one priority of a baseball fan parent. Yeah, it's very strange. That was

dumbfounding when they were booing them. It's like, literally born after he played, and when would he have come up for the parents to tell them that he was bad? Like, that's what's so confusing. It's just the first lesson you learn, I guess. I don't know.

In some households. How many more are we doing? I have one more category. Yeah, let's just, whatever you feel like you need to get into this podcast, you can just say now. The 2002 playoff category um which is is crazy one that kind of comes to mind here is bonds had more walks in the 2002 playoffs than the entire 2014 playoffs wow wait a minute wait a minute say that one again bonds had more intentional walks in the 2002 playoffs oh wait a second this was tweeted on october 8th

that's not true okay oh no this is a new genre of barry bond's fun fact the kind that is not true it is yes i don't know if there are probably good fun facts but it is worth appreciating just how how he was he was 30 what 38 years old and generally 37 and had been in the league for 16 years and was considered to be a postseason choker like that was a fact about barry bonds that everybody knew he could not hit in the postseason and he ended his career with a 9.36 postseason OPS. He actually was 38 by that point. That was his age 37 season, but he had turned 38. So it does give you hope that you can, you know, remake yourself. Like no matter how long you think people have hated you, tomorrow they might not. Although they do still hate him. Especially the six-year-olds in their summer camp.

Boo! All right. Anything else you need to get off your chest before final Jordan and Sam fun facts? Well, these aren't fun facts per se, but they are moments, and the one, I guess it is a fact, you should go look up the video

of Barry Bonds versus Eric Gagne. Oh, yeah. That's probably the best thing on the internet. Yeah. The LT slide. Those are the top two things on the internet and it's it's incredible right because it's these two guys both aided medically which we can you know admit but at the peak of their performance going toe-to-toe and bonds pulls 101 pulls 101-mile-an-hour fastball, foul into the cove, and then hits the next ball out to center.

And it's incredible. That and the home run in Yankee Stadium are the two best Bonds videos. Oh, and the one against the Angels in the World Series where Troy Glass, you can see him mouth, I've never seen a baseball go that far Troy Glass you can see him mouth I've never seen a baseball go that far it's the furthest ball I've ever seen I was at that game that was the only World Series game that I had ever

been to at that point in my life and we were sitting way out in right field and we said before the game like we were joking throughout the game about how dumb it was I brought my glove and like we were like oh here comes the ball right and we were so far the game about how dumb it was I brought my glove. And like we were like, oh, here comes the ball, right? And we were so far behind. And that ball came on an exact line to us and landed about six rows in front of me.

Okay, so this is interesting. Jordan and I have watched that video many times. You don't see the ball land in the video. So how far up was it? Because you cannot tell from the video. Let me see. I'm looking at a picture of our seats. I have a picture here that's taken of us and we're probably 12 to 14 rows in the second tier of outfield stands. There's

probably 20-ish rows before that and a little bit of an aisle. Got it. Yeah. I could probably get you an exact answer. Like I could probably get a seating chart out and figure out exactly where I am and answer for you someday, but I can't live. Okay. Yeah, that's ridiculous because pretty much every home run hit to right field at Angel Stadium is barely over the wall.

Out there, yeah. Once the wall gets, yeah, like the corner, that little corner tuck is easy to the wall. Out there, yeah. Once the wall gets... That little corner tuck is easy to poke one, but once you go out at that angle, yeah, it's a deep wall. I don't know if it was a high wall or not, but it's also a high wall. Alright, Jordan, any last words?

Oh man, I feel like I've really used a lot of them. Just a couple more. 01 to 04, he accounted for 1.2% of all the walks from 2001 to 2004 and 5.1% of the intentional walks in all of baseball, which is pretty cool. I think it's insane that 49.1% of his hits in his career were extra base hits, which when I first looked that up was like, that seems insane, but maybe there's

someone with the higher percentage mcguire does have a higher percentage but it's way more than a rod or griffey or maze and even even ruth because he was really because he also hit triples at one point uh and and a whole lot of whole bunch of doubles too so yeah i i i think i'm out i think i'm out the jeremy g The Jeremy Gonzalez one is my favorite. I did a one-two. The last one that I'll say. Your favorite is so tragic, so dark. I don't believe.

Jordan, you are sick and morbid. Sorry. All due respect to the Gonzalez family. I did tweet this at some point, which I'm looking at, and I don't understand if, if it's, if it's right, but I'm just going to say it because I think I fact checked it at some

point. If, if John Carlos Stanton hit 45 home runs in every season of his 13 year deal, he'd still be 23 home runs behind bonds. That's just very simple math there. But it doesn't look like he's going to be doing that so it's addition i believe yeah there you go there there's there's there's some of my favorites and

now i'm going to go read up on this july 9th game where randy johnson walked in with runners all right sam yeah my uh yeah my quick uh my quick hits uh barry bonds 13th best season was as good as bobby bonds best and bobby bonds was a borderline hall of fame candidate barry bond's 13th best season was as good as bobby bond's best and bobby bond's was a borderline hall of fame candidate barry this one's weird this one's just weird barry bond's ops in the first half of 2004 was 1421 his ops in the second half of 2004 was 1421 i don't i don't whatever but i like that i like the consistency i also like that somehow his OPS for the season was 1422. Because I think that reference rounds, I don't think reference sums the OPS things. I think it sums, do you know what I'm talking about? Like your OBP is like 480.3 and your slugging is like 484.4 and it doesn't add the 0.3 and the 0.4 in the splits but it doesn't never mind go ahead

all right uh and then uh in 2001 he slugged 1556 when he pulled the ball slugged slugged 1556 when he pulled the ball and last last one last one uh against ground ball pitchers in. He hit a home run every six at bats. Oh, I forgot you could do that split. Damn. That's a good one. That's some good play indexing. You've been doing this for a while, Sam.

All right. Well, this was fun. Thank you for sharing your research. And everyone can find Jordan and Jake on Twitter. They're the best on Twitter. So find them at Cespedes BBQ. You can find their website, cespedesfamilybarbecue.com, and the Barbercast is their podcast.

So thanks for joining us, guys. Thanks for having us. I usually fall asleep listening to this, which you should take as a compliment and as an insult. So it will be weird to hear myself as I fall asleep. And we should just plug that Sam is actually on this week's or the latest Barbercast. When does that go up? It's going to be very confusing when I tell you, considering the timing of this podcast.

Is it up now? Shall we say it's up now? It is up. It is up now. Okay, cool. All right. Pre-recorded call-in talk show. Thank you guys so much. This was fun. All right. So you can send us your hate mail about Barry Bonds at podcast at baseballperspectives.com. Join our Facebook group. If you have any Barry Bonds fun facts of baseball prospectus.com join our Facebook group if you have any Barry Bonds

fun facts of your own that you'd like to share with the listeners at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild and rate and review and subscribe to the show on iTunes as we said at the top much of this episode was brought to you by our sponsor the baseball reference.com play index

use the coupon code BP and get the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription. We'll be back tomorrow. Jordan, I just got a text from someone I don't know saying they found my wallet, which I thought was in my pocket. Well, lucky you. Lucky you. That's good.

Where did you almost lose your wallet when I was with you in London? On the train, on the way back from the game. That was a close call. God damn it. Do you need to go get that? Do you need your wallet for recording purposes? No, but I'd like to have it. Jake keeps

all of his bonds facts in his wallet. He can whip them out at any time. Sir, I'm going to need to see some bonds facts in his wallet. He can whip them out at any time. Sir, I'm going to need to see some bonds facts and registration.