re: Barry Bonds is the GOAT Baseball Player

I would let the people from the Wild West era in because everybody was looking the other way and nobody had clean hands … including the fans who got off on all the homers. I would not let anyone in who was stupid enough to juice after the Wild West era ended and people stopped looking the other way. So sorry, ARod and Manny Ramirez.

Baseball HOF voters are the biggest holier than thou dweebs on the planet.

Idk if Bonds is the GOAT without roids but he’s still way up there and absolutely should be in the HOF

so should Sosa and McGuire

quote:

---

so should Sosa and McGuire

---

meh. Sosa was no where near a HOF trajectory until he started juicing. Over his first 9 seasons, Sosa made 1 AS game and was a career .257 hitter with 207 HRs and 642 RBIs.

He starts juicing, and his numbers from 1998-2004 jump to 5 AS games, an MVP, a .296 BA, 367 HRs, and 888 RBIs over 7 seasons.

I can't say for certain when McGuire started juicing, but I can say that he was a perennial AS for basically his entire career outside a couple of year where he was hurt

If Bonds gets the HOF, then so does Rose and SJ Jackson

quote:

---

It’s laughable to mention rings in an argument for how great a baseball player is. It’s the ultimate team game...

---

Rings / Championships most certainly IS one argument or metric for "Greatness".

As already mentioned, the "Greatness" metric is as a Team LEADER -- not only elevating themselves in big / clutch moments, but helping creating team chemistry.

Guys like Mickey Mantle inspired their teammates to elevate *their* level of play so that THE TEAM WON CHAMPIONSHIPS (No silly Bill James stat for all this). The Yanks knew it; other teams felt the vibe. It was palpable.

Nobody did this better than All-Time Ultimate Greats: Mantle. Joe D. Gehrig.

Bonds -- for all his great skill level (Juiced or un-Juiced) brought a palpable negativity to his team; It hurt on teams good enough to have won a Series.

quote:

---

Mickey Mantle is the greatest player of all time.

---

Agree — and Casey Stengel said he “would be the greatest of all time, if he put in the effort to do so” and that was Mantle’s manager!

Plus, Mantle did it from BOTH sides of the plate — not Bonds

Mantle also had degenerative leg problems - which were never 100% — cutting his playing career short…..yet he was one of the fastest in the game, during his “healthy years”

Shoot, might as well throw nine Lou Gehrig to this discussion…as he played 5 less years than Bonds and was more reliable & just as productive w/o steroids (created by the Nazis in 1935)

quote:

---

Barry Bonds never won because it was all about him. So laugh all you want but I have history on my side...and the terrible stories of him being a Cancer in the locker room....that's no GOAT.

---

Yup. That was the buzz -- from Pittsburgh to SF.

Bill James hasn't come up was a "Clubhouse Cancer" stat, but it still exists (and if there were, Alex Rodriguez and Ted Williams would rank HIGH).

I’m a Bonds guy. He deserves the HOF. He was exciting to watch during all phases of his career. You can’t have a conversation about the greatest position players of all time without including Bonds in the conversation. Baseball is a team sport, one player can’t carry a team to a championship but you have to consider championships into the equation when considering the best ever.

Look at Ruth’s counting stats in the dead ball era, nobody came close to his dominance. Bonds was the best in the steroid era but he didn’t dominate in the same manner as Ruth. Throw in Babe’s early years as a dominant pitcher and that his career counting stats are skewed because he did not get full time at bats his first 5 years and that makes him the GOAT in my opinion.

quote:

---

would love to see his career numbers if he didn't lose his age 24-26 and age 33-34 seasons to the military.

---

If just took an average of Williams stats in the seasons prior to the ones he missed, Williams likely would have had over 140 or so more HR and over 500 more RBI had he not missed time for military service. That would have pushed him to around 650 HR and 2400 RBI with a lifetime BA of between .340 and .350. Just ridiculous numbers.

quote:

---

but you have to consider championships into the equation when considering the best ever.

---

No you don't, not in baseball. One guy in a 9 man lineup cannot single-handedly elevate a bad team to being a champion. Baseball just isn't like that

Ken Griffey, Jr.
Ted Williams
Ty Cobb
Tony Gwynn
Ernie Banks
Carl Yastrzemski
Rod Carew
Harmon Killebrew
Ichiro
etc

Never won a world series. Hell, Willie Mayes only won one.

Just because the Yankees had stacked lineups full of HOFers every year for decades doesn't give their individual players a leg-up on their value as individual players.

Baseball is probably the only sport where one player cannot just take over and turn a team around. One player only bats 4-5 times a game. He doesn't pitch, and the ball doesn't get hit to him but a few times a game on average. One player just does not and cannot affect the outcome of a game like a quarterback can in football or a basketball player can. That's why the "how many championships does he have" is rarely discussed with baseball players' greatness because it's largely irrelevant