He's the best hitter ever. No doubt.
Like you say, all were loaded, including some already in the HOF.
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Bonds hit 28 at age 42 and struck out 54 times! While being tested and investigated. We all know he wasn't loaded then.
We all know he saw some lesser players breaking records and he said watch this, i'll do the same shit and show you what I can do.
Agree. It?s why I edited to add the caveat- in the modern era. Still, if you look at how difficult it was to strike Gwynn out, it?s staggering to think about. Averaged like 22 strike outs a year for his 20 season career. He had more 4 hit games than multiple strikeout games, I believe. He was a hitting machine against some all time great pitchers.
"Sometimes hitters can pick up differences in spin. They can identify pitches if there are different release points or if a curveball starts with an upward hump as it leaves the pitcher?s hand. But if a pitcher can change speeds, every hitter is helpless, limited by human vision. Except for that (expletive) Tony Gwynn." -Greg Maddux
Gotcha. Sorry I didn't see the edit. Teddy Ballgame didn't strike out very much either and considering he was a power hitter even more impressive. He averaged 37 strikeouts per season and the year he hit 406 he struckout 27 times that's insane! He was the best and knew more about hitting than anyone.
Ted was the complete hitter. High average, power, didn't strikeout much, walked a lot. Crazy what he was able to do.
He was well before my time, but still highly regarded. One of the most impressive videos I?ve ever seen of someone hitting was of him. Ball had 4 numbers on it. Bat had dye of some sort. He would hit the pitched ball and tell them what number he hit, and when they checked, he was right. The ink proved him true. It was awesome.
Of course, he and Gwynn were said to be great friends and Tony always said Ted was the greatest. Gwynn was so unbelievably good, though.
When he was a manager of the senators so the story goes one day in spring training he chalked his bat and told his players he could tell them which seam on the ball he hit as he took bp. Sure enough he would hit and call out the seam and they'd check the ball and he was right. Dude had crazy eye sight.
Context in each era matters. This is part of the problem with the writers. They rely on stats too much and they want stats to be the same across the board. Why? Because they truly don't understand the game and the talent of those who play it. Hence a guy like Don Sutton is automatically in because "Well, he won 300 games". And he should be in. My point is the writers rely way too much on the "magic numbers" 300 wins, 3K strikeouts, 500 home runs, 3K hits, and etc.
At the same time Sandy Koufax is the best pitcher I have ever seen. Period. But because he only played 12 years and then retired at 30 he was only able to get 150 wins, and about 24K strike outs. But he is a no doubt HOF player. I'm 100% sure that there were people who didn't vote for him because his career was "too short".
You can't compare Bonds and Aaron to Ruth. Different eras. Ruth outhomered entire TEAMS. He basically invented tape measure home runs. If he played today he would be Shohei Ohtani with Mark McGwire power and would probably be a front line starter. There were different rules and bigger ball parks. If you hit the foul pole in Ruth's day it was ruled a foul ball. Someone went back and adjusted what Ruth would have done in 1990's/2000's baseball conditions with the current rules for that time and found that he would have hit 104 home runs one season when I think he only hit 54 that season.
That's not entirely true. He was an older player who was essentially a DH only at that time and wanted a ton of money and would have been a major distraction. He wasn't a fit for any MLB team. It's similar to Albert Pujols now and why he will have trouble finding a team. Minus the major distraction part.
Believe me- if he was blackballed from MLB he wouldn't have been able to come back as a hitting coach for the Marlins.
Exactly. You have to compare players against the era they played in. Every era is different whether it's the dead ball era, live ball era, era before the mound was lowered by 6 inches, steroid era, etc. Its why the players need to do the voting not the dang writers.
They hired him 8 years later. He was blackballed 100% from playing. The OBP league leader was still worth the money. They stopped him from becoming a 3K hitter, the runs king, the XBH king, among many others. Pujols is a funny comparison. He had 0 seasons with a higher OBP than 2007 Bond's .480
In fact, let's look at 2007 Bonds vs. 2007 Pujols:
BA .276 vs. .329
OBP .480 vs. .429
SLG .565 vs. .568
HR 28 vs. 32
Pujols is in no way comparable now to Bonds at 42. His peak was comparable to bonds. Bonds absolutely was worth being paid a top 10 hitter in the league. No one signing him is 10X worse than kaepernick.
they might be worried about space if they put Portrait Bust of Bond's head.
This guy's gotta interesting take; good read and not long.
https://townhall.com/columnists/dere...-joke-n2602398
All they have to do to fix it is let the all living HOFers vote for induction and eliminate the writers. Peer voting would be the most accurate and equitable way to do it.