THE GREATEST OFFENSIVE SEASON IN MAJOR LEAGUE HISTORY

Barry Bonds has been called many things over the years--a "choker" for some less than brilliant postseason play; Rick Reilly described him as virtually subhuman in a recent Sports Illustrated column.  The typical expression has followed along the lines of "he's a great player, but..."

I don't know Barry Bonds and the odds are exceptionally good that I never will.  I tend to take the personal observations and shrug; about all I got out of the Reilly column, for instance, was confirmation of something I already knew--that Bonds and Jeff Kent aren't best friends.  When a letter written by Bonds' former teammate, Todd Benzinger, appeared in a subsequent issue of SI, stating that the Reilly column was a hatchet job and a misrepresentation of the Barry Bonds that Benzinger knew, I nodded to myself.  Benzinger didn't extol Bonds as some kind of saint, but did say that the truth was a whole lot more gray than Reilly's column acknowledged.

All of this "what Barry's really like" talk has distracted attention, however, from what Bonds is doing on the field this season and I'm here to tell you that Barry Bonds is having--and as of this writing has nearly completed--the greatest offensive season in the history of Major League Baseball.  Yes, that's right:  the greatest season.

There are some other ballplayers having marvelous years with the bat in 2001:  Sammy Sosa, Luis Gonzalez, Jason Giambi, Jim Thome, Todd Helton, Larry Walker (ah, Coors Field), Albert Pujols, Lance Berkman (ah, Enron Field), Chipper Jones, Alex Rodriguez, Brian Giles...but even the best of these are having seasons a clear cut below that of Bonds.  Let's take a look at some key stats (through Tuesday night) for the players in the above list:

Clearly all of these guys are having wonderful years, but Bonds is in another category, more than 200 OPS points (the single best measure of offensive performance easily available to us) ahead of the next highest member on the list.  These numbers are not park-adjusted--the park factors themselves are in a state of flux (and aren't published anywhere) as the season goes on, but suffice to say several things:  first, park adjustments aren't going to bridge a 200-point OPS gap; second, the guy immediately behind Bonds, Larry Walker, is going to see that gap widen, not shrink, when the numbers are adjusted for park effects; third, Pacific Bell Park, Bonds' home field, was a lousy hitter's park in its first year of existence (2000), in virtually every offensive category (run factor:  84; HR factor:  91, HR factor for LH batters:  77) and whether the magnitude of that distinction will hold up in 2001 is unknown, the park isn't going to be a great hitter's park this season.  Bonds himself has hit one more home run to date on the road this season than at home and has managed to put up modestly better overall numbers at home this season based on six more home doubles than road two-baggers.  (Last season's PacBell double factor was 93.)  The point is, Bonds is not massively benefiting from playing half his games at Pacific Bell Park.

So Bonds is having the best year of any hitter in 2001.  So what, you say?  There's been a lot of big league ball played prior to 2001.  True enough.  So let's take a look at the top ten big league OPS seasons from 1876, the National League's first season, through 2000:

A couple of asides:  1) This Ruth guy was pretty good.  Not only does he dominate this list, his 1930 season ranks 11th all-time, giving him seven of the top 11 seasons all-time.  He also has the 18th (1932) and 25th (1928) ranked seasons.  Sheesh.  2) Note that not a single post-expansion (after 1960) season appears on the list.  Mark McGwire's 1998 season ranks 12th, and is the highest ranked season of the expansion era.  3) The highest ranked pre-modern season is Hugh Duffy's 1894 season, which ranks 17th.

Bonds' stats for 2001 aren't final, of course, and he's liable to go up or down slightly, but he's essentially guaranteed to move into third place on this list and he has an excellent chance to claim the second spot, with an outside shot at claiming the all-time mark.

OPS is a useful piece of information, but it's problematic as a single tool for comparing players across eras because, beyond the lack of ballpark adjustment (a relatively minor problem), it makes no allowances for overall offensive proclivities of different leagues, seasons and eras.  A 1.000 mark in the 1930 NL is regarded as equivalent to a 1.000 mark in the 1968 AL.  (Carl Yastrzemski led the '68 AL with a .922 mark...so there wasn't a 1.000 mark in the league that year; 17 different players managed a 1.000 mark in the '30 NL, paced by Hack Wilson's 1.177.)  This, of course, is a problem, so for the sake of comparison we should use a measure that's adjusted for everything...and that's where Offensive Winning Percentage comes in.

Briefly, OW%, which has been reported on a weekly basis for the Orioles this season courtesy of Bob, tells you what percentage of games a team could expect to win if it had nine of a given player offensively with a league average defense, league average pitching staff and played all its games in a neutral ballpark.  In other words, it removes the effects of all potential confounding variables, which is what makes it so appropriate for this kind of analysis.  (The formula for calculating OW%, which I have spelled out once on this site in the past, is lengthy; in the unlikely event that someone wants to see it, let me know.)  As an example, if Player X has an OW% of .650, it means that a lineup full of Player X's would be expected to win 65% of its games with an average defense and pitching staff, playing in a neutral park.  This, obviously, is a good mark.

Let's take another look at that list of 2001 players and check the OW% numbers:

Once again Bonds is clearly the top guy.  And, in fact, the difference is arguably more stark than the raw numbers would suggest.  Bonds is currently 63 percentage points (.063) ahead of Sosa and Walker...over a 162-game season that amounts to ten wins...which is a lot.  A teamful of offensive Bondses could expect to win 10 more games over the course of a season than a teamful of offensive Sosas or Walkers.  But because our scale has an upper limit--you can't win more than 100% of your games after all--the measures are clearly compressed at the top.  This is simply an inherent mathematical property of upper-limit scales, but it can have the effect of crowding and limiting distinctions.  (A note:  the differences would be a lot more stark using another measure--Runs Created per Game, for instance, but that measure isn't adjusted for eras, parks or anything else...it can be so adjusted, but it's a real hassle.  Even I have limits as to how far I'll go to make a point. <g>  I thought about running OW% on a logarithmic scale but decided that this was just going to inspire more questions than it was worth.)  And let's appreciate for a moment what Bonds' mark means--a lineup of offensive Bondses could be expected to win 93.6% of its games, assuming an average pitching staff, average defense and a neutral ballpark.  (Kind of makes me wonder how many games such a lineup could be expected to win assuming a top-rated defense and pitching staff.)  For what it's worth, this projects to a 162-game record of 152-10.

Now, where does this mark rank all-time?  That's the big question in an attempt to categorize Bonds' 2001 year as the greatest in big league history.  Here's the all-time top 10 heading into the 2001 season.

A few asides...note the fact that of the 11 spots on the list (there's a tie for tenth place), 10 are represented by three names--Ruth, Mantle and Williams.  Also note that only Mickey Mantle's 1962 season is representative of the post-expansion era and that no post-divisional play seasons appear.  In fact, through the 2000 season, the highest ranking season from the era of divisional play is George Brett's 1980 season (.864) which is slotted 24th.  Rickey Henderson's 1990 year (.863) is immediately behind at 25th.  McGwire's 1998 is tied for 41st place (.856).  As an illustration of how out-of-context a raw statistical mark can be, remember our pal Hugh Duffy, whose 1894 OPS mark ranked 17th all-time?  His OW% that season was .791, which is tied for 208th place on the all-time list.

Back to the main point.  As you can see, Bonds is set to blow the lid off this list.  If his current mark holds up he will be the new all-time single-season OW% pacesetter by a huge margin, much larger than Mantle's lead over Ruth. 

Say what you want about Barry Bonds, but be sure to include the part about the best offensive season in big league history.  It's wrapping up as we speak.

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