an analysis of Barry Bonds' 700 plus career home runs: were they produced naturally or has there been a late-career enchancement?

To The Sports Editor:

RE: an analysis of Barry Bonds' 700 plus career home runs: were they produced naturally or has there been a late-career enhancement?

If you carefully examine the full-season careers of major league baseball sluggers who have hit over 500 home runs in their careers, a couple of interesting things stand out.

(Note: in this analysis, player's seasons with less than 100 total at-bats have been dropped from these calculations to count only full seasons).

First, these top home run sluggers typically peak out in home run production in their 8th full major league season. There is quite a range in the best homering season: Eddie Mathews hit his highest number of home runs in his 2nd full season, while Mel Ott and Reggie Jackson hit their best in their 3rd full season, while at the other end of the spectrum, Hammerin' Hank Aaron hit his highest number of homers in his 18th season.

Almost all baseball sluggers have a productivity distribution curve that starts initially low, climbs for several years, peaks about the 8th season and then declines to end of their careers. This information can be easily displayed on a simple graph that charts the number of home runs against the years played in the majors.

Another interesting point is that if you examine the 16th season of all the sluggers that his more than 500 career home runs, you will find that they average hitting about 27 home runs.

With this information in hand, examine the home run production of Barry Bonds. If you graph his home run production from 1986 through 1999, he started low with 16 home runs in 1986, climbed for several years and peaked at 46 homers in 1993. Then he basically went on a slow decline, with annual homer totals of 37, 33, 42, 40, 37 and 34. If you plot these numbers on a graph and draw a smooth averaging curve through them and then project for homer totals in 2000 and beyond, the curve would suggest outputs of about 32 homers in 2000, 27 homers in 2001, 25 homers in 2002, 22 homers in 2003 and about 18 homers in 2004.

But instead of this gradual natural decline in home run production, Bonds' late career production (his 17th through 20th year) skyrocketed to 49 homers in 2000, the record 73 homers in 2001, 46 homers in 2002, 45 homers in 2003 and 45 homers in 2004.

I would suggest that in his last five seasons (2000 through 2004) Bonds has produced an unnatural excess of about 134 home runs. If you compare his actual production with his projected natural late-career production, he produced 17 excess home runs in 2000, 46 excess home runs in 2001, 21 excess home runs in 2002, 21 excess home runs in 2003 and 28 excess home runs in 2004. This totals to about 130 excess home runs in the last five seasons. So his natural home run career production total should be about 570, which would put him in 7th place overall, behind Aaron at 755, Ruth at 714, Mays at 660, Robinson at 586, McGuire at 583 and Killibrew at 573. Obviously, Bonds is certainly one of the all time great home run hitters in Major League Baseball, however there is much evidence to cast doubt on the naturalness and legitimacy of his late-career upsurge in home runs.

References:

Barry Bonds' baseball statistics may be viewed at http:www.baseball-reference.com.

James, Bill. The Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract, 1988. New York: Villard Books.

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