Please see my other thread on Bonds and other great HR hitters below this one before reading this.

Ok:

Barry Bonds' best season pre-steroids is 1993: .336 46 HR .458 OBP

His second best pre-steroid year is 1996: .308 42 HR .461 OBP

He also had a great OBP year in 1992: .311 34 HR OBP of .456

I think, again, as I wrote in the other thread, his greatness without steroids should not be in doubt.


Willie Mays' best seasons were:

1965 - in the height of a pitchers' era: .317 52 HR .398 OBP
1955: .319 51 HR .400 OBP
1962: again a pitchers' year - .304 49 HR .384 OBP

all told, Willie Mays has 11 seasons in which he hit between .288 and .345 and had between 34 and 52 Home Runs.

Bonds had 9 similar seasons before steroids. The parity between them holds.

BUT...I wonder how we can really say that the greatest player of all time had his best season when he hit .336 with 46 home runs. It would be a good Babe Ruth season, not one of his best. A good power season for Ted Williams, average on the low side, though Bonds is one of the few who can rank with Ted on OBP numbers over the course of his career.

According to the WIS database, there are 57 player seasons between 1920 and 1994 in which batters hit between .300 and .350 and had 40 to 49 home runs.

Two of the first ten names when sorting by salary are indeed Ted Williams - 1949 right at the top and Barry Bonds in 1993 at number 7.

Al Rosen is in second place by WIS salary, which does not mean anything. But Rosen's numbers for 1953 are .336 43 HR and .422 OBP - Bonds has an edge in OBP for 1993 but otherwise the numbers are almost identical.

That was easily Rosen's best season. Could Al Rosen be the best player ever with that as his best year? I don't think anyone thinks so, though I suspect he is under-rated.

Willie Mays 1954 is third on the list: .345 41 HR .411 OBP - this is not one of Mays' three best seasons. Mays is also on this list for 1961,

Jimmie Foxx in 1934 hit .334 with 44 home runs and a .449 OBP and again this is not nearly his best season, he arguably had 6 or 7 that were better. Foxx again in 1936 as well.

Joe Dimaggio in 1937 hit .346 with 46 HR with a .412 OBP and struck out less than half as often per 100 AB than any of the other first 18 on the list (Mel Ott comes close at number 19 with 6.5 Ks per 100 to Dimaggio's 5.96 per 100).

Duke Snider comes in at 8 and 9 - 1953 and 1954 - imagine if someone told you that there was player that had two seasons in a row equal to Barry Bonds' very best season and his name was not even Ruth or Williams or Mays or Mantle? But it is true:

1953: .336 42 .419
1954: .341 40 ..423

PLUS Snider is also number 13 on the list: his following season 1955: .309 42 :419 - so Duke Snider had three seasons in a row that were as good as Barry Bonds' best season (not counting steroid era ones).

Why doesn't anyone think that Duke Snider was the greatest player ever? Because he did not hit 73 home runs in a season? That was exactly why Barry Bonds took steroids. Remember?

Lou Gehrig 1931 is number 10 on this list: .341 46 .446 OBP

the rest of the list
Hank Greenberg 1937 and 1940
Carl Yastrzemski 1967
Willie McCovey 1969
Ken Griffey Jr. in 1993 AND 1994 (40 home runs in a strike shortened season), and these were not his best years - Griffey hit .304 with 56 home runs in 1997 and hit 56 again in 1998 without any suggestion by anyone that he took steroids - why the hell doesn't anyone say that Griffey was the best player ever? He even hit 630 in his career despite three injury plagued seasons plus a strike - answer: because he did not hit 73 home runs in a single season. Which is why Bonds took steroids.
Hank Aaron 1962 - probably his second best season after 1971 but he had qualifying seasons for this list also in 1957, 1963,and 1973.
Mel Ott 1929
Frank Robinson 1966
Mickey Mantle 1958
Babe Ruth 1929 and 1932 and no one thinks these were his best years.
Jim Rice 1978 - Bill James argues that Roy White was a better player than Rice.
Ralph Kiner 1951
Johnny Mize 1940
Ted Kluszewski 1953 an 1954
Dick Allen 1966
Billy Williams 1970 (very under-rated player)
Jose Canseco 1988 (careful - we are not counting Bonds' steroids seasons, who knows if we can count anything of Canseco's?)
Jim Gentile 1961 (expansion year to be fair about it to Bonds).
Roy Campanella 1953
Ryne Sandberg 1990
Hal Trosky 1936
Rocky Colavito 1958
Ben Oglivie 1980
Tony Perez 1970
Frank Thomas 1993
Roy Sievers 1957
Wally Post 1955
Orlando Cepeda 1961 (expansion year)
Juan Gonzalez 1993
George Bell 1987

So there is a long list of great and good and sometimes not that great players who had one season as good as the best season Barry Bonds ever had if he had not taken steroids. Granted, I am not suggesting that most of these players were as good as Bonds, and have already established a steroid-independent case for his being a great player.

But on the basis of this I can't possible see how he can be considered any better than the equal at most of Ken Griffey Jr. and Willie Mays (which is a LOT after all) and Henry Aaron and Duke Snider who did not have the same longevity as these others however.

In other words, the ENTIRE basis for calling Bonds the greatest player ever rests on his 73 home runs in 2001 which was due to steroids more than mere talent, which he granted had in abundance.

Barry Bonds was a great player. He ranks with Mays, Griffey and a few others. He was not the greatest player ever, he never had a season better than the best season of Wally Post or Roy Sievers.

it must be said that italy is beyond belief prolific and you must type at least 100 wpm. you deserve a meeting with bill james.

But on the basis of this I can't possible see how he can be considered any better than the equal at most of Ken Griffey Jr. and Willie Mays (which is a LOT after all) and Henry Aaron and Duke Snider who did not have the same longevity as these others however.

This is only remotely true if you totally ignore walks and the fact that Bonds played virtually his entire career in pitchers' parks...

Look at it this way. From 1990-1998, the last 9 seasons before Bonds is thought to have started juicing, he had an average OPS+ of 181. Willie Mays had an OPS+ of at least 181 exactly once in his career, in 1965. Aaron did it twice, 1959 and 1971 (an impressive span, no doubt about that). Junior and Duke Snider combine for exactly 0 such seasons. This is especially significant given that while all of those guys could slug similarly to Bonds, nobody on your list got on base nearly as often, and OBP is now generally believed to be about 70% more "valuable" than SLG.

Basically, if you're going on offensive stats alone, I don't think there's any question that Bonds - even pre-steroid Bonds - remains head and shoulders above anybody else on your list. If you include defense, Griffey and Mays certainly make up some of that ground. But I think if you're going to come up with a list of guys who are better hitters than even pre-steroid Bonds, you have to aim much higher - Ruth, Gehrig, Hornsby, Cobb, Williams, maybe Foxx. But all of those guys but Williams played at basically the same time, which suggests a high probability that for some reason OPS+ type numbers may have been inflated at that time. It does seem unlikely that 5 of the 6 or 7 greatest hitters in the history of the game all played at the same time and had their entire careers within one 35-year stretch. Given that, if you just take the best, which I would call Ruth, I'd say there's still a very strong argument that Bonds is one of the 3 best hitters in baseball history. Even before he started juicing.

Without considering any of his seasons after 1998 - effectively counting them as zeroes - he still ranks 8th on this list in career WAR, and dwarfs many of the other names. 25% more WAR than Joe D; 75% more than Greenberg. He's 20% more than Griffey, even considering Griffey's entire career.

Peak seasons? Only Ruth, Mays, Williams, and Gehrig had as many 7 WAR seasons as Bonds. The same 4 are the only players to have as many 8 WAR seasons as Bonds. The same 4 plus Mantle are the only players who had as many 9 WAR seasons as Bonds.

He had as many 7 WAR seasons as....Yaz, Griffey, and McCovey COMBINED had in 67 major league seasons.
He had as many 8 WAR seasons as....DiMaggio, Snider, and Robinson COMBINED had in 52 major league seasons.
He had as many 9 WAR seasons as....Griffey, DiMaggio, Snider, McCovey, Greenberg, Ott, Frank Robinson, and heck lets throw in Roy Sievers and Wally Post...as many as all of those guys combined had in 133 163 major league seasons.

Bonds was an historically great player - better than just about everyone on the above list - and easily in the conversation for greatest of all time long before there is any evidence that he started using anything illegal.

Again, that's highly dependent on ignoring walks. Based on park-adjusted OPS+, Bonds 1992 and 1993 stand out historically.

In fact, at the time 1992 was the 17th-best OBP+ season in the liveball era. And of the 16 ahead of them, 6 were Ted Williams, 2 were Mantle, 3 were Ruth, and 2 were Hornsby. The others were Arky Vaughan, Norm Cash, and Wade Boggs.

I think this is accurate - In the other thread I made clear that without steroids he was indeed one of the very greatest players ever and belonged easily in the top 10 (better than James lists him) and arguably in the top 3-5.

This separate thread merely gives the other side of the argument. That claiming on the basis of his record minus steroids, which I have tried to estimate, he may be up there with the best ever but a weak side, which I believe he himself understood and which was one causal factor in leading him to steroids use was the lack of a single, historic season of epic dimensions. A very great season in 1993, many excellent seasons, but without 73 home runs I think we consider him one of the greats but not the greatest.

Granted, a fine distinction, but perhaps the distinction between Henry Aaron and Babe Ruth.


If we go with what seems the consensus - that Bonds' first steroid year is 1999 and the elbow injury was due to steroid overuse that season, his career stats to that point absolutely entitle him to the Hall of Fame on the first ballot and to be considered one of the very best players ever.

But Jackie Robinson and Manny Ramirez had equal OBPs career-wise to Bonds, and Musial, Mantle, Mays and Aaron had higher slugging percentages. Duke Snider scored 15 more runs that Bonds had at that point. Joe Dimaggio who missed three seasons during the war had only 13 fewer home runs than did Bonds up through 1998 and played in what to right hand hitters might as well have been the Grand Canyon. Yogi Berra had the same number of doubles, and Kirby Puckett had only 9 fewer RBI. His Wins Above Replacement up through 1999 was 0.4 below Frank Robinson's. Bonds was the 12th best player in history by WAR up to 1998 for players aged 34 and under, 19th best overall.

In PA/HR ratio divided by the league PA/HR ratio, Mays' 1965 season was HR+ 372 and Bonds' 2001 ultra-steroid season was HR+ 376. That is, normalized, Willie Mays had a season that was just about the equivalent of Bonds' 73 HR season but without the use of PEDs. Yet that season is all but forgotten, in part because of the effect of the inflated 1998-2001 HR record numbers. Cecil Fielder's 1990 season of 51 homers was HR+ 366, but is barely remembered today.

The all-time HR+ season is Babe Ruth 1920 at ...ready? 1,318
Then comes 1927 Ruth at 899
1921 Ruth at 867
1929 Ruth at 690

Then seven other player seasons - two by Jimmie Foxx and two by Ralph Kiner one each by Greenberg, Mize and Hack Wilson come before Mark McGwire in 1998 at 382, then Bonds 2001. Roger Maris 1961 is 335. Chris Davis' 51 in 2013 is at 321 just to give an additional reference point.

So even if we take 73 homers at face value, forget about steroids, there are a number of more impressive HR+ seasons. I will see if I can find the time to do career HR+ numbers for all-time hitters based on year-by-year comparisons with the league average.

So Bonds belongs with these all-time greats. Not above them. With them ONE of the greats, not THE greatest, especially as his numbers should have declined from that point on, not gone up exponentially. No one can doubt he was one of the greatest, but there is room for doubt that he outshine's baseball's other greats. Take away those years from 1999 on and we consider him great and a hall of famer, not the guy who replaces Ruth, Cobb, Williams, Mays on the throne at the head of the Pantheon.

mike trout has been compared a lot to mickey mantle but he is really extremely comparable to pre steroids barry bonds.