A happy 40th birthday to Barry Bonds. In looking at Bonds career, I can’t find any examples of a bad season. His rookie year of 1986 was his poorest, yet he still showed his great eye for the strikezone, drawing 65 in 413 AB. It’s also the only year he struck out 100 times in a season. A nineteen year career, and his worst season was his first. That’s pretty good.
I sometimes wonder what Bonds’ career would have been like if the Pirates hadn’t taken him to arbitration after the 1989 season. Bonds spent most of his first four seasons as a lead-off man, scoring 72, 99, 97 and 96 runs in those seasons. He was developing into Rickey Henderson with more power. Somehow, the Pirates didn’t realize what they had. Instead of signing him to a long term contract (at the time, they probably could have locked Barry up for 10 years at $10 to $20 million for the length of the contract), they went to arbitration and won after using his lack of RBI against him. (How Bonds’ agent failed to convince an arbitrator that RBI are pretty meaningless to a leadoff hitter is beyond me.) Bonds’ response was to ask to bat in a spot where he could drive in runs. They moved him to 5th, and Bonds had his first Barry Bonds season, driving in 114 runs while scoring 104, batting over .300 with a .406 OBA and a .565 slugging percentage. He’s only had 1 season with his OBA under .400 since, and his slugging has stayed over .500, often way over .500.
But what would have happened if the Pirates had not gone the arbitration route? If Bonds had stayed a leadoff man, would he have concentrated on developing his power? Would he have concentrated on speed, and spent his time going for the steals and runs records? My guess is that at some point, a manager would have realized that Bonds was more valuable in the middle of the order and moved him there. But the Pirates winning three arbitration cases in a row against Barry certainly seemed to drive him, and ultimately it drove him to big money in San Francisco.
David –
Fabulous post. I’d forgotten about Bonds in arbitration with the Pirates. You definitely make some thought provoking points here.
Mike
re: barry and arbitration; barry and 40 years old
(1) barry and 40 years old
Barry Bonds at 40 years old seems to retain at least 80% if not 90% of his peak value. That’s just plain showing off.
(2) From the “moneyball” perspective, they didn’t do the wrong thing – they had a limited budget and they were going to spend it in a wise manner. To flip the question around, the Phillies went and gave Pat Burrell a big contract instead of going to arbitration with him after his big contract year, and we’ve had two years of slump and maybe he’s on the verge of putting it back together again. It is difficult to tell in the beginning of a career whether a player is going to be terrific in the long haul, and it seems wisest from a “moneyball” perspective not to drop the big bucks until the sixth year rolls around.
(3) The phils encountered a similar situation with Scott Rolen. Ok, so we lost him to St. Louis because we kept going to arbitration with him. But until this year, was there any evidence he would be the second coming of Mike Schmidt??? Until this year, he was just the second coming of Al Rosen, and even then, only in spurts. And I wouldn’t sign Al Rosen to a long term contract, knowing what I know about Al Rosen’s career. A lot of good 3d basemen have flamed out at age 30.
(4) The Pirates had other good players on that team they had to pay — van Slyke, Bonilla, Drabek, pitchers, the manager, Jimmy Leyland–I don’t recall the payroll breakout, but Bonds was not the only star. Van Slyke and Bonilla were hitters too on that team, and while Bonilla was gruesome as a fielder, Van Slyke could have been called Van Slick in the outfield. Also, the legendary Sid Bream at 1st, one of those players you had to love based on his name;
it could have been “Sid “Brylcreem” Bream” in an earlier day.
–AJK