Of Inhuman Bondsage...

Dave Paisley

Well, nine days to go to a potential strike, but things keep rolling right along without any clue of progress. Never mind. I’m not optimistic about the chances of averting a stoppage, especially when knuckleheads are involved on both sides of the table.

Meanwhile, there’s the curious tale of Barry Bonds season. With the kind of numbers he’s putting up, you’d expect he’d be a lock for MVP. The fact is, though, that without the gaudy home run tally, his other numbers just look well, relatively good. So how is it that a guy with an OPS almost 300 points better than the next highest player in the league isn’t a shoo in?

Well, the fact is that Bonds isn’t appearing to generate an exceptional amount of runs for his team. Fact is, he’s 20 RBI and 15 runs off Sammy Sosa’s totals. How can this happen?

The answer isn’t easy, but it isn’t that complex, either. Bonds OPS is made up of two components, just like anyone else’s. The first component is on bas percentage, and he leads that category with a stunning .569, 150 points ahead of Sosa and 140 ahead of Giles and Walker. But a great deal of that OBP advantage comes from walks — 140 for Bonds vs. 82 for Sosa and 92 for Giles. Now, in general, walks are a good thing for a hitter, but for Bonds they are potentially excessive, and tend to come in situations where he could potentially do the most damage by swinging the bat.

It’s been noted that Bonds makes few outs — something that’s definitely true. With only 294 at bats and 105 hits, that’s only 189 outs, compared with Sosa’s 299, Walker’s 249 and Giles’ 276. So, on a per out basis, Bonds stats are easily the gaudiest. By not making outs, Bonds extends innings for other players to get hits to drive in the runs. The problem is that instead of extending the inning so hitter like Bonds can hit, he extends the inning so that players like David Bell and Reggie Sanders can hit. To a large extent this wastes a lot of scoring opportunities.

You may or may not agree with looking at runs scored and RBI as useful stats. I tend to find them informative about what’s actually going on with scoring. After all, all the fancy algorithms in the world are only trying to predict or allocate the credit for runs scored in a game. Typically, the #1 and #2 guys in the batting order score more runs than they get RBIs, while the #3 guy is about even. The #4 through #6 guys tend to have more RBI than runs scored while the lower order guys are pretty random.

If Bonds is being "robbed" of RBI opportunities by all these walks, you’d expect to see him bucking the general trend by scoring tons of runs, being driven in by the guys behind him. Somehow, though, that just isn’t happening. For those people that just hate to believe that Bonds is being neutralized, there’s the theory that Bonds’ getting on base allows the runners ahead of him to score, while he gets stranded on base. Thus, he doesn’t get many RBIs, because he’s being walked in critical situations, but he’s also not scoring because the batters behind him are good enough to drive in the runners ahead of him, but not him.

Now that’s what I call an elaborate house of cards. Still, let’s take a look at some numbers. Here’s a look at Runs Generated (Runs scored plus RBI, all divided by 2, to give an idea of actual run scoring contribution), versus Runs Created, the Bill James stat based primarily on correlating OBP*SLG with historical run scoring.

I’ve shown the curve fit both with the intercept through zero (blue line) and allowing the intercept to float (red line). The fact that the red line tends to want to be flatter indicates that the "real" more complex curve is non-linear and tends to bend down at the higher RC values. This implies that higher RC becomes incrementally less valuable in actually scoring runs on the field.

Points of note: The three blue point way in the top right are Babe Ruth’s 1920 and 1923 seasons, and Ted Williams 1941 season. The red diamond is Bonds’ 2001 season.

The large orange diamond in the center of the chart is Bonds 2002 season. It’s pretty obvious that he’s just not getting the mileage out of his raw numbers that he should, even by the standards of the best historical years. The large white diamonds scattered in the lower left are the remainder of the Giants regular lineup. Jeff Kent’s point is hidden behind the two lines at the 100, 80 point, but the rest are all way down and to the left. Only two points are well above the line — the aforementioned David Bell and Reggie Sanders. They’re maybe 10 runs apiece above the mean line, counteracting Bonds 20 below, so maybe there is something in that "Bonds defers scoring to other players" line.

Anyway, it’s a fascinating topic and one that might merit a more in depth look after the season is over. Which could, of course, be as soon as next week.

about the author

Poor Barry. Doesn't get any respect. Dave Paisley says "Don't cry for me Argrentina," though, as Barry will soon have plenty of time to figure out how to spend all his moolah. And work on the golf game. Send estimates of Barry's handicap to drdjp@strikethree.com. And no, Jeff Kent doesn't count as the answer.