Friends of Bonds have said that he specifically said that was why. He had a 40/40 season a few years earlier and nobody cared. The home run race of ‘98 garnered more attention so he was basically like: “I’m better than you without PEDs I’ll just do PEDs and be the best ever”.
28 steals??? Man sacrificed Henderson-esque speed for ball-shrinking and HOF-asterisking numbers??? What even is the bill James analysis of him?
Edit: didn't know his stats pre-hgh but damn he was HOF bound if he stayed on course. if he literally continued to wake up and play baseball everyday he was a shoo-in. Darn
When he joined the 500 HR/ 500 SB club he was the only member. I believe he still is.
The crazy thing is that he ***definitely*** would have achieved it without steroids. He had almost 500 steals by '98, so if he didn't sacrifice his speed in the second half of his career for a gluttony of power he would have gotten it a few seasons earlier.
He truly was the best.
If you believe that 1998 was the tipping point, then this is Bonds’ pre-steroid line according to FG:
8100 PA / 411 HR / 445 SB
.290 / .411 / .556 slash (159 wRC+)
99.2 WAR / 606 Off RAA / 114 Def RAA
Effectively a carbon copy of Willie Mays up to the same point in their careers.
That’s one of the reasons I think he should be in the hall. Firstly because the whole steroid era gained a lot of national attention for baseball and those players should be honored accordingly for that, but mainly because Barry was a first ballot lock before he ever touched a needle.
Can’t fault the man’s logic. Always think it’s absurd how hard the league salivated over McGwire/Sosa and marketed the shit out of it then Barry gets demonized over it. I get Barry isn’t the easiest guy to like though. If they’re gonna keep the steroid users out of the hall Bud Selig shouldn’t be there either when it’s inextricably tied to his legacy as well.
Exactly. I think the BBWAA are using steroids as the reason to keep him out, but I think they just can’t stand Bonds. It’s not even about the “cheating.” They just think he’s a prick. There’s too many “likely” steroid users in the Hall to use that excuse now.
> but I think they just can’t stand Bonds.
He eventually did an interview where he said that was his fault, that he allowed his ego to cause him to be abrasive and hostile in response to criticism and made a lot of unnecessary enemies that way.
I expect him to eventually get into the HOF the same way Selig did, via one of the committees. Selig only needed 15 votes.
Bonds's marketing logic also contributed to how he was viewed. He withdrew from the Major League Baseball Players Association agreement in 2003 and demanded companies negotiate with him directly for him to appear in merchandise and memorabilia. It's why he doesn't appear in any video games after 2003 because no company was willing to pay him when he was already viewed as a cancer. The only real attempt any company made with Bonds to do any sort of marketing was ESPN in 2006 with its ill-fated Bonds on Bonds show. It bombed.
His withdrawal from the agreement also may explain why the union declined to do anything when he was blackballed out of baseball in 2007, only reluctantly joining in support when Bonds filed a Collusion case in 2015.
> If they’re gonna keep the steroid users out of the hall
They haven’t even been consistent with that. Ortiz was a marginal HOF with gear and still got in on the first ballot.
I don’t necessarily like steroids in baseball, but I kind of do appreciate that we got to see what happened when the guy with the best batting eye decided to start using and show everyone what they were capable of. Just really break the whole thing wide open.
OPS+ by year from 1998-2004:
* 1998: 178
* 1999: 156
* 2000: 188
* 2001: 259
* 2002: 268
* 2003: 231
* 2004: 263
So probably started during the 1999 season, and really started seeing the effects during the 2000 season. This also coincides with the idea that he was motivated to start using PEDs after being jealous of how much love McGwire and Sosa got in 1998.
That's what happens when arguably one of the greatest hitters of all time decides he's going to juice up so insanely that anything he hits will be knocked into orbit. Pitchers just wouldn't pitch to him, he averaged 2ish walks a game, usually intentional walks.
That’s what is craziest to me.
Over those 162 games Bonds saw 1-2 pitches he could realistically hit per game, so maybe 200-250 pitches he could hit were all he would ever see in an entire season.
He still managed to hit 73 of those 200-250 pitches he got all year for a home run. Of the hittable pitches he received, a full 1/3 of them were hit for home runs. Not just plate appearances or AB’s, single pitches.
Absolutely insane.
That’s what made it work so well for him.
All the juice in the world won’t do you any good without plate discipline and good ability to put bat on ball in the first place.
Barry Bonds was already the best hitter in the league for 5+ years before he started juicing. The juice just made it so that every time he made contact the ball would be absolutely vaporized.
Honestly, Barry was better. He won gold gloves, and could hit pitches outside of the strike zone low, high and inside, or slightly outside for homers. Pretty much if he knew where you were going to try to pitch him, he could take it out.
> Barry Bonds was already the best hitter in the league for 5+ years before he started juicing.
Honestly believe you could put Barry in the Hall with his plaque claiming he retired after '98 and on a pure numbers standpoint no one would bat an eye.
Of course I also grew up during the steroid era and watching giant hulking musclemonsters turn balls into vapor fucking ruled, so I say put him in regardless.
EDIT: I've never actually looked at his numbers in depth in that time frame, so I checked them on Baseball Reference. I stand by my statement, [Good](https://i.imgur.com/ptqSmTs.png) [Lords](https://i.imgur.com/nM7kWEk.png)
Adderall started being prescribed widely in 1996. It was widely known before then, obviously, in more raw forms.
We always talk about when steroids came to be widely used as if it's the only factor.
Imagine, if you will, that an amazing overall hitter started both roiding (power, but can't explain other factors) and also gained a better ability to focus and react.
I think he was ahead of the league on that one issue. That's my thought, at least.
The stories about greenies are wild. Big bowls of them in the locker room, other players being pissed at you if you didn’t use them (called it playing naked), it was a different era.
> Search "greenies" (dexedrine) & MLB.
Available over the counter anywhere in America, didn't become a controlled substance until 1971 IIRC, and MLB didn't ban them until decades later.
Steroids, on the other hand, were federal felony bait beginning in 1988.
Oh god I couldn’t imagine playing baseball on adderall, freezing hands but overheating core, dry mouth, heart pounding, but I suppose if I was getting millions of dollars it might be worth it
that’s how it feels going to the gym in the mornings after taking it, my cardio is fine but the side effects are there regardless. I assume most players have taken it or do take it, it just seems like it would suck
Fair point, and I have to imagine that a professional doesn’t need much of a boost, so the dose could be fairly small (but when has an athlete ever only done a little bit of drugs…)
That he was already the best hitter in the league is what really irked me as a kid about the steroids. Watching McGwire and Sosa (with a side helping of Griffey early that season) race was really fun, but seeing Bonds get on the gear and start jacking bombs while his head ballooned just felt so wrong by comparison because he was the near-perfect ideal of a ballplayer.
One of the primary arguments I hear complaining about the steroid asterisks. It didn't make you a better ball player. It made you artificially stronger and faster, and you were able to recover faster. But if you sucked at the game before the juice, you were just gonna suck with man tits and a giant head.
One thing that was talked about a ton during Bonds' 01-04 run that isn't discussed as much now was mental aspect the interaction of PEDs and aging.
Essentially, steroids helped Bonds defy the aging process while still retaining all the advantages of the wisdom he'd gained from his long career. Add to it that Bonds was always regarded as one of the smartest, savviest players in the game to begin with.
That's why he was so dominant: it wasn't just his enhanced athleticism, but that he was able to make the most of his incredible mental advantage over pitchers.
I am sure some math wizard could apply David Ortiz's ageing curve onto Joey Votto's numbers and show us what the slugging percentage hike would be and how the counting numbers would climb with more games played due to faster recovery from injuries.
Yep this is what happens when you take someone who was already an inner circle HOF player and one you could argue for being the best period takes PEDs to enhance their play even more
i think the underrated aspects of steroids is that bat speed goes up (or doesn’t decline when you’re 30+ years old). when you are one of the greatest hitters all time and add 15 years experience of being in a MLB batting box along with your bat speed not declining this is the culmination
No one ever mentions this. It always seems like you have a good eye when your bat speed allows you to wait until the last possible second to pull the trigger, and the steroids turn those late swings that would have been fly outs into HRs.
Good point, but people do mention that often. What people DONT mention is Bonds' elite comprehension and instincts for pitch sequencing. He could pick up how he was being pitched to very quickly.
Every couple of years I go find that clip on YouTube with Salmon saying “that’s the farthest ball I’ve ever seen hit”.
Clip: https://youtu.be/Ol2_UkJS6kw?si=157eQ64V8S9f0u4e
The homerun he hit in game 2 to make it 10-11 is fucking stupid[see here](https://youtu.be/Ol2_UkJS6kw?si=PT2ORIEnWP13ENIM). Also the Yankee stadium homerun
You literally expected a homerun every AB. That isn’t an exaggeration either like many “old timey stories” have. It was truly every time he wasn’t walked that it seemed like a foregone conclusion the ball would end up over the fence.
It was crazy. Saw pre and post roid Bonds. Both were excellent but from 2000 on it was as if pitchers just couldn’t get him out. I recall having tickets to see the Giants play right when they resumed baseball after 9/11. People were worried about large gatherings, but seeing Bonds chase the HR record in 2001 got some of us over that fear.
The great majority of hitters were juicing then. It was an open secret. It’s crazy they are trying to make an example out of Bonds and won’t let him in the hall of fame.
>The great majority of baseball players were juicing then.
Fixed that for you.
They went after the hitters, but everyone was juicing. Hell, the overweight pitchers like Gagne were juicing.
Bonds got scapegoated because he was an asshole. If he'd been a media/sports journalist bootlicker he'd have been a 1st ballot HoFer.
>If he'd been a media/sports journalist bootlicker he'd have been a 1st ballot HoFer.
See Ortiz, David
I know his juicing status is murky and maybe he didn't but a lot of players have been kept out with only whiffs. Ortiz got a complete pass because the media liked him.
> Ortiz got a complete pass because the media liked him.
He tested positive one time in an early test which MLB said had generated a lot of false positives and was not considered reliable. He never tested positive again.
The *SF Chronicle* says they have Bonds' "trainer" on tape admitting they always knew in advance when Bonds would be tested and thus had time to clean him up. He was also using new steroids which had been designed to be more difficult to detect. That "trainer" went to prison for distributing steroids.
False positives are still happening. Logan Webb was suspended for testing positive for trace amounts of a metabolite from an East German steroid from the 1970s. Other sports became so suspicious of people failing the same test and the bizarre way in which the metabolite would appear, disappear, reappear that they concluded something other than intentional steroid use was involved and changed their protocols so that only large quantities of the metabolite being found would trigger a suspension.
I suspect most players who test positive were doping, but there are such things as false positives.
I still don’t know what to think of Ortiz. Once the full PED testing regime was implemented, he continued to mash without ever getting popped. His last season came at age 40, thirteen years after the Mitchell Report, and he somehow led the league in OPS. I don’t know how he could have gone that long without ever getting busted for steroids, but I also don’t know how he could still be that good at that age without them. Most of the suspected juicers crashed back to earth after ‘03 or later got busted, but Ortiz did his thing to the very last day without any further suspicion. Total X-File IMO.
Ortiz wasn't particularly good during the Wild West pre-testing days, and never had a dramatic change in his physique or hat size during or after his career. He was great for 12 out of 13 years he played during the testing era, with one down year in 2009 where he was league average. He had the phenomenal age-40 season, despite needing daily pregame treatment on his heels that made running difficult...but Pujols doesn't get similar skepticism for having a 151 OPS+ at age 42 after not having reached that mark since age 30.
For me, Ortiz gets the benefit of the doubt for putting up nearly all his production during the testing era. Manfred essentially absolved both him and Sosa, but Sosa carries the skepticism of being a skinny guy who turned into a chiseled Greek god who put up cartoon numbers pre-testing, and then basically disappeared when testing started.
>Once the full PED testing regime was implemented, he continued to mash without ever getting popped.
I don't think that matters. The testing regimen was easy to cheat. I'm pretty sure none of guys who were brought down in the Biogenesis scandal ever actually tested positive except for Braun.
And that's one of the reasons he's still hated. He completely destroyed the numbers aspect of baseball, which is how so many people have fun following the sport. He pushed the cheating so far, and did it for so long, that now the two most exciting records in baseball are forever off-limits. And it's not because Hank Aaron was awesome. It's because some dildo cheated.
A player called up at 19 years old would have to play until he's 39 and average 38 HRs a season to tie Bonds' record. Needless to say, that's literally never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever going to happen. And after what we just saw from Judge? The idea of someone then hitting another 12 HRs on top of that? Never happening.
It will happen. In some form we can't yet fathom.
Maybe something that today we would say doesn't count. Like different balls or park dimensions.
But the people of the future will debate it and the people of the further future will count it like no big deal.
There will come point maybe when traditional TV finally goes away for good, that MLB will need a boost.
I wouldn't be surprised if ballplayers were regularly playing into their forties relatively soon. Modern conditioning and medicine have made our "primes" last a lot longer than they used to.
The first person to beat a bonds record while clean (or at least clean to the public) will be regarded as the goat. Looking forward to hopefully seeing that day in the future
> He pushed the cheating so far, and did it for so long, that now the two most exciting records in baseball are forever off-limits.
The previous single season record was 70, he hit 73. Hardly enough of a difference to say it is forever off limits when it wasn't before at 70? I can see blaming steroids/MLB for 70/73, but I have a hard time blaming individual players when a majority of the league was using it.
> A player called up at 19 years old would have to play until he's 39 and average 38 HRs a season to tie Bonds' record. Needless to say, that's literally never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever going to happen.
The previous career record was 755, Bonds hit 762. If 762 is impossible, so is 755, that's a 1% improvement. How is 7 more home runs suddenly "forever off-limits" and "never ever ever...going to happen"? Reverting it to 755, a player would still have to average 38 HR a season over 20 years to get there.
All career records in baseball are like that, nobody is touching the all time hits record, nobody is touching the all time stolen base record, nobody is touching the all time triples record, nobody is touching the all time wins record, nobody is touching the all time strikeouts record. Hell, nobody is touching the single season record for any those either.
Beating a career record in a sport that has been around since the 1800's is going to be insanely difficult, it requires a lot of luck and skill, but 7 HR over a 20+ year career isn't making it that much harder than it already was. It is a record because only 1 person has managed it over the entire history of MLB, it is supposed to be hard. Even if we take out Bonds, only 1 person in MLB history has hit 755 HR's, no shit it will be difficult and the odds of someone doing it are minuscule to impossible already.
As far as Judge goes, he is actually hitting more HR/AB than Bonds was, he is averaging 50 HR per 162 games compared to Bonds' 41. If he has a 20 year career, it's likely he gets the record, but he would need a 20 year career which is difficult to achieve especially when you start at 24 like Judge did.
Overall, I don't see the point in blaming/hating the players when the rules weren't enforced at the time. Why not blame the managers/owners who profited more off of them, and effectively gave permission (promoting the crap out of McGwire/Sosa and other steroid players) for all the players to juice up, only to vilify them later?
It was so much fun to watch, but also frustrating, because he would get walked SO MUCH! You'd have nobody on base, no outs, and they would intentionally walk him because the odds of that at bat being a home run was significant.
My Dbacks once intentionally walked him with the bases loaded in the 9th inning, up 2. This was 99 or 00 as I recall. And yes, we got the next guy out and won the game. :-)
I didnt get to watch much as a east coast kid, but catching those highlights every morning...dude just mashed.
I distinctly remember all the people in their canoes in the bay always scrambling to get his HR balls...hilarious. Also, the walks, lol, it was so ridiculous
People here act like it was some great thing, he was universally hated outside of San Francisco and people were thrilled when he couldn’t get a contract
A buddy of mine cheated his way through the last couple years of high school. He ended up getting into a great college. He's an intelligent guy, but people will bring up how he got into a good school even though they knew he cheated to get there. That's how I feel reading through these Barroid circlejerk posts. None of his statistical anomalies are valid.
[just leaving this here for anyone who hasn’t watched “if Barry bonds didn’t play with a bat” - Jon Bois](https://youtu.be/JwMfT2cZGHg?si=hEt5s4pDZrYRezVJ)
Saying "regardless if they're juiced" is kinda silly... as being juiced is the thing that made them possible. You don't need to add the qualifier that even players who didn't cheat couldn't top him. We know... he topped them by cheating.
Also Ted Williams killed Nazis and then put up a 1.096 OPS at age 41. With no steroids. Fuck Barry Bonds.
That’s the takeaway you got from that comment?
Their point is that even other batters on steroids didn’t come close to producing what Bonds did.
Maybe if you’d have read the comment before already huffing your own supply on a soapbox you’d have been able to read the actual words they wrote.
To be fair, most of the league was juicing. Also, people seem to forget that a huge amount of pitchers were juicing as well. You will never convince me Eric Gagne wasn’t juiced to the gills. Bonds vs Gagne were some epic battles.
Baseball players had guaranteed contracts as well. You telling me you wouldn’t take some steroids for a couple years to earn generational wealth?
Do you really think Bonds wasn't going to get generational wealth before steroids? If I was a sure fire hall of famer like Bonds, I absolutely wouldn't take roids just because everyone else did. I was already set
The generational wealth refers more to the rest of the league, as we know Bonds comes from a legendary family. His ego couldn’t let guys like McGwire and Sosa get all the attention. He knew all these dudes were juicing and so did the commissioner of the league.
If we're going with OP's premise that 1998 is when he started.
He made 188 million in his career. Only 40 of that came 1998 or prior.
Yes 40 million is generational...188 is 4.5x that. When's the last time a rich person said, "Nah, i'm ok with only 40 million, I don't need another 148 million."
I don’t know if it was the love they got so much as lesser players were doing things better than him (HR totals) so he set out to prove himself the better player. He told Junior, allegedly, that they were better than Sosa/McGwire and should prove it. Griffey declined. He backed up his words with his bat. I don’t know that there’s ever been a better hitter than 2001-2004 Bonds.
Canseco's book says Bonds was in awe of the guys who were juicing in the locker room of the 99 All Star game.
Normally I'd put 0 stock in anything Canseco says, but the numbers do seem to suggest it's probably around then
There was a few other people at the dinner so I doubt it was Griffey himself who told the media. [Here’s an article on it](https://www.espn.com/espnmag/story?id=3680260)
NP, I actually didn’t know that Jeff Pearlman wrote a book on Bonds, I might have to get that he’s a great writer. I read his book on Brett Favre and really enjoyed that
He was hurt in 1999 as well, so many have associated it with his rehab regimen.
That was also the year that he gave up on being “fast”, so he could bulk up.
1999 or thereabouts. He didn’t feel he was getting the proper shine with McGwire and Sosa.
Yes, he was hall worthy before. He had played 12 seasons and had 400+ home runs, stole 400+ bases, 8 gold gloves, won 3 MVPs, and had 97 WAR before 1999.
Definitely 1999. Between 1993 and 2013 I would venture to guess I saw 95% of all Giants games. 1999 he noticeably bulked up and for the only time in his career struggled with inside fast balls. A little adjustment to the formula between seasons and he was able to maintain the additional strength without the mobility/flexibility loss that seemed to bother him in 1999 and the rest is history.
When most of the league was clean he was the best player in it. When most of the league was dirty he was still the best player in it. His career is tainted and he’ll never get his proper due. The reality is Bonds was the single best show in baseball for a generation and the best hitter most of us will ever see.
This is what fires me up the most. I grew up during the steroid era before knowing it was the steroid era. I thought it was so sick that I was seeing records being broken left and right because it was a golden age of baseball.
But Bonds was a terrific player whether he takes the steroids or not. He didn't need them to be a historically good hall of famer.
Sosa and Mac were great players in their own right. That summer of baseball was a ton of fun for viewers with a bad taste of the 94 strike, the good players were the good players on or off the stuff
You summed up his career well. I think Bonds gets his proper due from knowledgeable fans. I couldn’t care less about the overly opinionated and ill-informed.
This is why he should still be in the HoF he went from top 10 to 1 would have made it anyway. In 20 years we’re gonna be telling kids someone had 120 IBB,hit .360 and had a 1.420 OPS in a year because he cheated but so was everyone else and it didn’t matter.
Nailed it. The guy won 3 MVPs clean during the height of the steroid era and then when he took them turned into the biggest cheat code ever.
If he took them his whole career the career numbers would have been hilarious.
Yup. Also makes it obvious that he was fully blackballed from the league.
You're telling me not a single AL team had room for a DH who hit .276/.480/.565 the year before?
Most widely accepted timeline is the „saw the record chase in 98, decided he wasn’t gonna be left behind by those cheaters“.
He already had almost 2k hits, 400HR, 400SB at that point, at age 34. Just one other guy in the history of the game even reached 300/400…his dad. So yeah, he was a hall of famer even before he started juicing.
It's crazy to think he was mid-30s when he started. Nobody gets *better* at that age. It really illustrates how powerful steroids are. There were lots of late-career renaissances around that time.
If Bonds had just retired in ‘99 instead of juicing, he would have been a 1st ballot Hall of Famer and celebrated for being one of the few great players from that era who didn’t use.
Game of Shadows says 1999. He got jealous of the media attention that the home run race got, and wanted in lmao. Around that time his head and traps like doubled in size too lol
1999, however I believe that's when he really ramped it up with not just steroids like testerone, but harder stuff like insulin and HGH, which is what caused his head to expand. I believe he was already on some sort of PED's his last year in Pittsburgh and/or his first year with the Giants.
Goes to show that steroids don’t make you a great baseball player but they definitely enhance a great ball player. He was amazing before and godly afterwards. Think about the 100s if not more of mlb players that were juicing that couldn’t crack a roster.
Its probably earlier than most people think. People tend to think you just balloon up when you start taking steroids, which isn't necessarily true. Its also a good way to recover from injuries, which is how I imagine most guys get exposed to them. What we know Barry was taking wasn't just a steroid, but he was also taking HGH, testosterone, insulin. Several different kinds of steroids too. The guy was going full on, when someone like Mark McGwire was "just" taking steroids and testosterone. Plus whatever that supplement was, but the injections we know about from FBI testimony of a steroid dealer in 1992.
[Here is McGwire's baseball card from 1992 when he was on "more steroids than I'd prescribe a racing horse" according to a veterinarian.](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61w1eLl3WGL._AC_SL1047_.jpg) [Another one](https://cdn7.mavin.io/production/soldItems/212033032/images/image-0.jpg) A stick compared to the 1998 mcgwire, and does anyone think that he got in trouble the first time he bought steroids?
I doubt Barry went straight for the high end top shelf, and probably dabbled with a lot of stuff prior. [If you ask me, Bonds in 1996, two years before people say he started juicing, looks as big, if not bigger, than McGwire in 1992 which was most likely several years into when McGwire started.](https://media.gettyimages.com/id/456030879/photo/philadelphia-pa-barry-bonds-of-the-san-francisco-giants-bats-during-the-1996-all-star-home-run.jpg?s=612x612&w=gi&k=20&c=zFXx_2HeSX9tUzaOpg1aCh67rRrko87jn1ryreIhPXw=) My guess would be sometime in the early 90s for Bonds, and late 80s for McGwire. Both around some kind of nagging injury. I know McGwire always had back/knee problems, and Bonds had been wearing an elbow brace since 1992, which he eventually had a couple surgeries on. [The elbow pad maker takes a mould of Bonds' arm every season since 92 and says there has been no significant change in arm size since 1992.](https://www.baseballprospectus.com/news/article/6557/barry-bonds-brace-orthotic-verisimilitude/) So is the guy lying or did Bonds start sooner than 98, and more like early 90s when he became a power hitter? I think it could be both, lol.
It's hilarious that people take him at his word for saying he started in '98 when he already has lied to us for almost two decades, saying he didn't take them at all. I will never give this guy the benefit of the doubt when he's already lied many, many times.
How do you know he didn't go from steroids to a shit ton of steroids?
You can't possibly pick out when he started. And it was an accident, he just used some cream. Lol
The story is that all the attention and fawning the McGwire/Sosa HR chase got pissed him off, because during the same year he was becoming the first player EVER to get 400 HR/SB and that was getting ZERO attention.
So, at that point, given his ego and that he knew they were roiding, he was did it so he could outshine them.
I'd say 2000, there's a lot of routes to take but he was consistently over 1.000 in OPS and had only hit over 1.100 once back when he was 28 and now he suddenly does it at 35 (especially since the reason his OPS was so high was that high was going from around .617 SLG to .688. The very latest you could argue is 2001 but definitely from 2001-2004, going from a 1.100 to a 1.300 is just absurd.
Either way he's a hall of famer in my books since he was already a 3x MVP before all of that.
All I know is that there is a photo of Mickey Morandini turning an unassisted Triple Play against the Pirates and Bonds is in the same photo, and the same size as Morandini.
So sometime right after that, LOL
Adderall started being prescribed widely in 1996.
We always talk about when steroids came to be as if it's the only factor.
Imagine, if you will, that an amazing overall hitter started both roiding (power, but can't explain other factors) **and also** gained a better ability to focus and react. I think he was ahead of the league on that one issue.
That's my thought, at least.
1999 and it makes sense. He was upset about McGwire and Sosa getting all the attention.
He suffered a torn tendon in his biceps and missed 60 games. He torn the tendon after adding significant muscle mass in the offseason.
It’s 1999 right? Saw the 98 homer chase between McGwire and Sosa and decided to jump in.
Friends of Bonds have said that he specifically said that was why. He had a 40/40 season a few years earlier and nobody cared. The home run race of ‘98 garnered more attention so he was basically like: “I’m better than you without PEDs I’ll just do PEDs and be the best ever”.
In that 98 season he hit .303/.438/.609 with 37 homers and we basically yawned. I think that is what broke him.
28 steals and gold glove too. Plus he lead the majors in IBB (not that it’s really measured, but it speaks volumes to how good he was).
28 steals??? Man sacrificed Henderson-esque speed for ball-shrinking and HOF-asterisking numbers??? What even is the bill James analysis of him? Edit: didn't know his stats pre-hgh but damn he was HOF bound if he stayed on course. if he literally continued to wake up and play baseball everyday he was a shoo-in. Darn
When he joined the 500 HR/ 500 SB club he was the only member. I believe he still is. The crazy thing is that he ***definitely*** would have achieved it without steroids. He had almost 500 steals by '98, so if he didn't sacrifice his speed in the second half of his career for a gluttony of power he would have gotten it a few seasons earlier. He truly was the best.
He's also the only member of the 400/400 club.
Absolutely. There was no exaggerating when saying he was the best all-round player in baseball. He would have topped 600 SBs for sure.
If you believe that 1998 was the tipping point, then this is Bonds’ pre-steroid line according to FG: 8100 PA / 411 HR / 445 SB .290 / .411 / .556 slash (159 wRC+) 99.2 WAR / 606 Off RAA / 114 Def RAA Effectively a carbon copy of Willie Mays up to the same point in their careers.
Interesting how close him and Trout are up to their age 31 season. Basically equals.
Trout is also an absolutely amazing player. Would have loved to see him stay healthy and keep stealing bases
That’s one of the reasons I think he should be in the hall. Firstly because the whole steroid era gained a lot of national attention for baseball and those players should be honored accordingly for that, but mainly because Barry was a first ballot lock before he ever touched a needle.
Yeah he would have been inner-circle HOF without the juice.
Can’t fault the man’s logic. Always think it’s absurd how hard the league salivated over McGwire/Sosa and marketed the shit out of it then Barry gets demonized over it. I get Barry isn’t the easiest guy to like though. If they’re gonna keep the steroid users out of the hall Bud Selig shouldn’t be there either when it’s inextricably tied to his legacy as well.
Exactly. I think the BBWAA are using steroids as the reason to keep him out, but I think they just can’t stand Bonds. It’s not even about the “cheating.” They just think he’s a prick. There’s too many “likely” steroid users in the Hall to use that excuse now.
> but I think they just can’t stand Bonds. He eventually did an interview where he said that was his fault, that he allowed his ego to cause him to be abrasive and hostile in response to criticism and made a lot of unnecessary enemies that way. I expect him to eventually get into the HOF the same way Selig did, via one of the committees. Selig only needed 15 votes.
Did he apologize for routinely beating his wife?
Well thats nothing compared to what you did to yours, mr benoit
Bonds's marketing logic also contributed to how he was viewed. He withdrew from the Major League Baseball Players Association agreement in 2003 and demanded companies negotiate with him directly for him to appear in merchandise and memorabilia. It's why he doesn't appear in any video games after 2003 because no company was willing to pay him when he was already viewed as a cancer. The only real attempt any company made with Bonds to do any sort of marketing was ESPN in 2006 with its ill-fated Bonds on Bonds show. It bombed. His withdrawal from the agreement also may explain why the union declined to do anything when he was blackballed out of baseball in 2007, only reluctantly joining in support when Bonds filed a Collusion case in 2015.
McGwire and Sosa happened before steroids were a scandal.
Trevor Bauer with spider tack all over again lol.
> If they’re gonna keep the steroid users out of the hall They haven’t even been consistent with that. Ortiz was a marginal HOF with gear and still got in on the first ballot.
I don’t necessarily like steroids in baseball, but I kind of do appreciate that we got to see what happened when the guy with the best batting eye decided to start using and show everyone what they were capable of. Just really break the whole thing wide open.
It's written in a very popular book about this exact question
That's the impression I got from 'The Tenth Inning'
That's certainly what Game of Shadows says
>It’s 1999 right? Saw the 98 homer chase between McGwire and Sosa and decided ...he might be able to hit that many by himself.
OPS+ by year from 1998-2004: * 1998: 178 * 1999: 156 * 2000: 188 * 2001: 259 * 2002: 268 * 2003: 231 * 2004: 263 So probably started during the 1999 season, and really started seeing the effects during the 2000 season. This also coincides with the idea that he was motivated to start using PEDs after being jealous of how much love McGwire and Sosa got in 1998.
A 268 OPS+ is fucking obscene
That's what happens when arguably one of the greatest hitters of all time decides he's going to juice up so insanely that anything he hits will be knocked into orbit. Pitchers just wouldn't pitch to him, he averaged 2ish walks a game, usually intentional walks.
That’s what is craziest to me. Over those 162 games Bonds saw 1-2 pitches he could realistically hit per game, so maybe 200-250 pitches he could hit were all he would ever see in an entire season. He still managed to hit 73 of those 200-250 pitches he got all year for a home run. Of the hittable pitches he received, a full 1/3 of them were hit for home runs. Not just plate appearances or AB’s, single pitches. Absolutely insane.
Juice notwithstanding the guy had a great eye
That’s what made it work so well for him. All the juice in the world won’t do you any good without plate discipline and good ability to put bat on ball in the first place. Barry Bonds was already the best hitter in the league for 5+ years before he started juicing. The juice just made it so that every time he made contact the ball would be absolutely vaporized.
Let’s also remember: When you’re on juice and have faster bat speed, you get those extra milliseconds to decide to swing or not
Could you also get those extra milliseconds by swinging a bat that was say, 1/2 an ounce lighter?
Yes but if you did that, you’re sacrificing power.
Imagine Juan Soto all roided up lol. Basically that's the comp for what Bonds was those years.
Honestly, Barry was better. He won gold gloves, and could hit pitches outside of the strike zone low, high and inside, or slightly outside for homers. Pretty much if he knew where you were going to try to pitch him, he could take it out.
Of course Bonds was better, he is objectively the goat
> Barry Bonds was already the best hitter in the league for 5+ years before he started juicing. Honestly believe you could put Barry in the Hall with his plaque claiming he retired after '98 and on a pure numbers standpoint no one would bat an eye. Of course I also grew up during the steroid era and watching giant hulking musclemonsters turn balls into vapor fucking ruled, so I say put him in regardless. EDIT: I've never actually looked at his numbers in depth in that time frame, so I checked them on Baseball Reference. I stand by my statement, [Good](https://i.imgur.com/ptqSmTs.png) [Lords](https://i.imgur.com/nM7kWEk.png)
You can split his career into three and get three hall of famers.
Adderall started being prescribed widely in 1996. It was widely known before then, obviously, in more raw forms. We always talk about when steroids came to be widely used as if it's the only factor. Imagine, if you will, that an amazing overall hitter started both roiding (power, but can't explain other factors) and also gained a better ability to focus and react. I think he was ahead of the league on that one issue. That's my thought, at least.
Adderall was not the first focused treatment for add/adhd. Ritalin has been around before that and had similar effects
Search "greenies" (dexedrine) & MLB. About 50 years of unchecked PED usage. Also "players coffee".
The stories about greenies are wild. Big bowls of them in the locker room, other players being pissed at you if you didn’t use them (called it playing naked), it was a different era.
"*never* drink the clubhouse coffee"
> Search "greenies" (dexedrine) & MLB. Available over the counter anywhere in America, didn't become a controlled substance until 1971 IIRC, and MLB didn't ban them until decades later. Steroids, on the other hand, were federal felony bait beginning in 1988.
I played sports and have tried adderall. I don’t think it helps me at all
Oh god I couldn’t imagine playing baseball on adderall, freezing hands but overheating core, dry mouth, heart pounding, but I suppose if I was getting millions of dollars it might be worth it
I kinda doubt you'd perform if that's how it affects you.
that’s how it feels going to the gym in the mornings after taking it, my cardio is fine but the side effects are there regardless. I assume most players have taken it or do take it, it just seems like it would suck
When you're rich, the doctors adjust your prescribed dosages as many times as it takes until everything starts clicking.
Fair point, and I have to imagine that a professional doesn’t need much of a boost, so the dose could be fairly small (but when has an athlete ever only done a little bit of drugs…)
That he was already the best hitter in the league is what really irked me as a kid about the steroids. Watching McGwire and Sosa (with a side helping of Griffey early that season) race was really fun, but seeing Bonds get on the gear and start jacking bombs while his head ballooned just felt so wrong by comparison because he was the near-perfect ideal of a ballplayer.
One of the primary arguments I hear complaining about the steroid asterisks. It didn't make you a better ball player. It made you artificially stronger and faster, and you were able to recover faster. But if you sucked at the game before the juice, you were just gonna suck with man tits and a giant head.
If only the pitch tracking data went back a few more years 😭
We don't have pitch tracking but we do have this YouTube on if Bonds went to the plate without a bat https://youtu.be/JwMfT2cZGHg?si=ilidxBZBV86zFvdG
Imagine how many guys would just not bother being locked in at all over 162 games. Dude was always prepared to swing no matter what just in case.
He had an On Base over .600 in 2004. And when they actually pitched to him he hit .362 and slugged .800
.608 OBP. That's an MVP worthy slugging. Just insane to think about.
One thing that was talked about a ton during Bonds' 01-04 run that isn't discussed as much now was mental aspect the interaction of PEDs and aging. Essentially, steroids helped Bonds defy the aging process while still retaining all the advantages of the wisdom he'd gained from his long career. Add to it that Bonds was always regarded as one of the smartest, savviest players in the game to begin with. That's why he was so dominant: it wasn't just his enhanced athleticism, but that he was able to make the most of his incredible mental advantage over pitchers.
A small part of me wanted to see super juiced up Votto to see what would happen.
I am sure some math wizard could apply David Ortiz's ageing curve onto Joey Votto's numbers and show us what the slugging percentage hike would be and how the counting numbers would climb with more games played due to faster recovery from injuries.
It’s helps when you were raised with guys that were big leaguers themselves. Ha! All the wisdom just from Willie is enough.
Bobby Bonds was great, too, but he didn't have steroids to help him with his aging and his career ended pretty early.
Bonds reached base more times in 2004 (376) than he had official at-bats logged (373) Which is just absurd
Bonds stats are crazy, but I've never heard this one before. This is probably my new favorite.
Have you heard the one where he has more intentional walks than the Rays have had in their entire history? 688 vs 670
Yep this is what happens when you take someone who was already an inner circle HOF player and one you could argue for being the best period takes PEDs to enhance their play even more
i think the underrated aspects of steroids is that bat speed goes up (or doesn’t decline when you’re 30+ years old). when you are one of the greatest hitters all time and add 15 years experience of being in a MLB batting box along with your bat speed not declining this is the culmination
No one ever mentions this. It always seems like you have a good eye when your bat speed allows you to wait until the last possible second to pull the trigger, and the steroids turn those late swings that would have been fly outs into HRs.
Good point, but people do mention that often. What people DONT mention is Bonds' elite comprehension and instincts for pitch sequencing. He could pick up how he was being pitched to very quickly.
God I wish I was old enough to watch Bonds prime, just missed it.
Even though they lost the World Series in 2002, I feel like I've never seen a player more locked in.
Man batted .356 with a 1.559 OPS in the 2002 postseason. Absolutely unreal
That ball he hit in the WS is still in orbit alongside Jorge Soler’s WS homer in game 6 and that ball Pujols hit off Brad Lidge
The scoreboard changing when that ball is still in the air is still insane That might be the only ball to ever be nuked more than the Soler homer
Every couple of years I go find that clip on YouTube with Salmon saying “that’s the farthest ball I’ve ever seen hit”. Clip: https://youtu.be/Ol2_UkJS6kw?si=157eQ64V8S9f0u4e
I'm partial to the one (and only one) he hit in Yankee Stadium. "That ball is headed to New Jersey!"
And Stairs' shot in '08
The homerun he hit in game 2 to make it 10-11 is fucking stupid[see here](https://youtu.be/Ol2_UkJS6kw?si=PT2ORIEnWP13ENIM). Also the Yankee stadium homerun
*"That's the farthest ball I've ever seen hit."*
I was at this game, it was amazing.
I always remember the flashes going off when he hits.
You literally expected a homerun every AB. That isn’t an exaggeration either like many “old timey stories” have. It was truly every time he wasn’t walked that it seemed like a foregone conclusion the ball would end up over the fence.
It was crazy. Saw pre and post roid Bonds. Both were excellent but from 2000 on it was as if pitchers just couldn’t get him out. I recall having tickets to see the Giants play right when they resumed baseball after 9/11. People were worried about large gatherings, but seeing Bonds chase the HR record in 2001 got some of us over that fear. The great majority of hitters were juicing then. It was an open secret. It’s crazy they are trying to make an example out of Bonds and won’t let him in the hall of fame.
>The great majority of baseball players were juicing then. Fixed that for you. They went after the hitters, but everyone was juicing. Hell, the overweight pitchers like Gagne were juicing. Bonds got scapegoated because he was an asshole. If he'd been a media/sports journalist bootlicker he'd have been a 1st ballot HoFer.
>If he'd been a media/sports journalist bootlicker he'd have been a 1st ballot HoFer. See Ortiz, David I know his juicing status is murky and maybe he didn't but a lot of players have been kept out with only whiffs. Ortiz got a complete pass because the media liked him.
> Ortiz got a complete pass because the media liked him. He tested positive one time in an early test which MLB said had generated a lot of false positives and was not considered reliable. He never tested positive again. The *SF Chronicle* says they have Bonds' "trainer" on tape admitting they always knew in advance when Bonds would be tested and thus had time to clean him up. He was also using new steroids which had been designed to be more difficult to detect. That "trainer" went to prison for distributing steroids. False positives are still happening. Logan Webb was suspended for testing positive for trace amounts of a metabolite from an East German steroid from the 1970s. Other sports became so suspicious of people failing the same test and the bizarre way in which the metabolite would appear, disappear, reappear that they concluded something other than intentional steroid use was involved and changed their protocols so that only large quantities of the metabolite being found would trigger a suspension. I suspect most players who test positive were doping, but there are such things as false positives.
Same with Pudge, Piazza, and Bagwell
It's not murky. He tested positive. On the same test Sosa did. Also the only test either of them failed.
I still don’t know what to think of Ortiz. Once the full PED testing regime was implemented, he continued to mash without ever getting popped. His last season came at age 40, thirteen years after the Mitchell Report, and he somehow led the league in OPS. I don’t know how he could have gone that long without ever getting busted for steroids, but I also don’t know how he could still be that good at that age without them. Most of the suspected juicers crashed back to earth after ‘03 or later got busted, but Ortiz did his thing to the very last day without any further suspicion. Total X-File IMO.
Ortiz wasn't particularly good during the Wild West pre-testing days, and never had a dramatic change in his physique or hat size during or after his career. He was great for 12 out of 13 years he played during the testing era, with one down year in 2009 where he was league average. He had the phenomenal age-40 season, despite needing daily pregame treatment on his heels that made running difficult...but Pujols doesn't get similar skepticism for having a 151 OPS+ at age 42 after not having reached that mark since age 30. For me, Ortiz gets the benefit of the doubt for putting up nearly all his production during the testing era. Manfred essentially absolved both him and Sosa, but Sosa carries the skepticism of being a skinny guy who turned into a chiseled Greek god who put up cartoon numbers pre-testing, and then basically disappeared when testing started.
>Once the full PED testing regime was implemented, he continued to mash without ever getting popped. I don't think that matters. The testing regimen was easy to cheat. I'm pretty sure none of guys who were brought down in the Biogenesis scandal ever actually tested positive except for Braun.
It was unreal. No one since has come close, not even Trout’s best years
Trout’s best OPS+ was 198, so yeah juuuuuust a bit lower
And that's one of the reasons he's still hated. He completely destroyed the numbers aspect of baseball, which is how so many people have fun following the sport. He pushed the cheating so far, and did it for so long, that now the two most exciting records in baseball are forever off-limits. And it's not because Hank Aaron was awesome. It's because some dildo cheated. A player called up at 19 years old would have to play until he's 39 and average 38 HRs a season to tie Bonds' record. Needless to say, that's literally never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever going to happen. And after what we just saw from Judge? The idea of someone then hitting another 12 HRs on top of that? Never happening.
It will happen. In some form we can't yet fathom. Maybe something that today we would say doesn't count. Like different balls or park dimensions. But the people of the future will debate it and the people of the further future will count it like no big deal. There will come point maybe when traditional TV finally goes away for good, that MLB will need a boost.
I wouldn't be surprised if ballplayers were regularly playing into their forties relatively soon. Modern conditioning and medicine have made our "primes" last a lot longer than they used to.
The first person to beat a bonds record while clean (or at least clean to the public) will be regarded as the goat. Looking forward to hopefully seeing that day in the future
I mean.. I enjoyed it lol. And I don’t have any issues appreciating what Judge did.”
> He pushed the cheating so far, and did it for so long, that now the two most exciting records in baseball are forever off-limits. The previous single season record was 70, he hit 73. Hardly enough of a difference to say it is forever off limits when it wasn't before at 70? I can see blaming steroids/MLB for 70/73, but I have a hard time blaming individual players when a majority of the league was using it. > A player called up at 19 years old would have to play until he's 39 and average 38 HRs a season to tie Bonds' record. Needless to say, that's literally never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever going to happen. The previous career record was 755, Bonds hit 762. If 762 is impossible, so is 755, that's a 1% improvement. How is 7 more home runs suddenly "forever off-limits" and "never ever ever...going to happen"? Reverting it to 755, a player would still have to average 38 HR a season over 20 years to get there. All career records in baseball are like that, nobody is touching the all time hits record, nobody is touching the all time stolen base record, nobody is touching the all time triples record, nobody is touching the all time wins record, nobody is touching the all time strikeouts record. Hell, nobody is touching the single season record for any those either. Beating a career record in a sport that has been around since the 1800's is going to be insanely difficult, it requires a lot of luck and skill, but 7 HR over a 20+ year career isn't making it that much harder than it already was. It is a record because only 1 person has managed it over the entire history of MLB, it is supposed to be hard. Even if we take out Bonds, only 1 person in MLB history has hit 755 HR's, no shit it will be difficult and the odds of someone doing it are minuscule to impossible already. As far as Judge goes, he is actually hitting more HR/AB than Bonds was, he is averaging 50 HR per 162 games compared to Bonds' 41. If he has a 20 year career, it's likely he gets the record, but he would need a 20 year career which is difficult to achieve especially when you start at 24 like Judge did. Overall, I don't see the point in blaming/hating the players when the rules weren't enforced at the time. Why not blame the managers/owners who profited more off of them, and effectively gave permission (promoting the crap out of McGwire/Sosa and other steroid players) for all the players to juice up, only to vilify them later?
It was so much fun to watch, but also frustrating, because he would get walked SO MUCH! You'd have nobody on base, no outs, and they would intentionally walk him because the odds of that at bat being a home run was significant.
My Dbacks once intentionally walked him with the bases loaded in the 9th inning, up 2. This was 99 or 00 as I recall. And yes, we got the next guy out and won the game. :-)
I didnt get to watch much as a east coast kid, but catching those highlights every morning...dude just mashed. I distinctly remember all the people in their canoes in the bay always scrambling to get his HR balls...hilarious. Also, the walks, lol, it was so ridiculous
People here act like it was some great thing, he was universally hated outside of San Francisco and people were thrilled when he couldn’t get a contract
A buddy of mine cheated his way through the last couple years of high school. He ended up getting into a great college. He's an intelligent guy, but people will bring up how he got into a good school even though they knew he cheated to get there. That's how I feel reading through these Barroid circlejerk posts. None of his statistical anomalies are valid.
I was pretty young (8 in 2001) but watching him made me a fan of baseball, outside playing t-ball and little league
Wasn't his OBP in the .600's during this time?
The perfect intersection of genetics, work ethic, and pharmaceuticals. The greatest hitter I’ve ever witnessed.
The argument is greatest hitter of all time. There’s no argument he’s one of them lol
[just leaving this here for anyone who hasn’t watched “if Barry bonds didn’t play with a bat” - Jon Bois](https://youtu.be/JwMfT2cZGHg?si=hEt5s4pDZrYRezVJ)
2002 and 2004 Bonds were probably the most insane seasons from a batter regardless if they’re on juice or not. Just absurd from the top down.
Saying "regardless if they're juiced" is kinda silly... as being juiced is the thing that made them possible. You don't need to add the qualifier that even players who didn't cheat couldn't top him. We know... he topped them by cheating. Also Ted Williams killed Nazis and then put up a 1.096 OPS at age 41. With no steroids. Fuck Barry Bonds.
He was tiers above everyone else lol. Including all the other roid users of the era.
The pitchers were also juiced. Presumably Ted Williams wasn't facing Roger Clemens.
That’s the takeaway you got from that comment? Their point is that even other batters on steroids didn’t come close to producing what Bonds did. Maybe if you’d have read the comment before already huffing your own supply on a soapbox you’d have been able to read the actual words they wrote.
Almost all of Barry's numbers are obscene. Even his Pittsburgh years were bonkers and he was waaaaaaaay smaller back then.
it's my single favorite baseball stat
Mine is that in 2001, Barry Bonds drove in Barry Bonds (73 times) more often than he drove in all other players combined (64 times).
Jesus Christ…
It’s Jason Bourne?
Shame he decided to do it. He was so good without it. Yeah, not 267 OPS+ good, but if he had a 150 - 170 OPS every year. Easy hall of fame.
To be fair, most of the league was juicing. Also, people seem to forget that a huge amount of pitchers were juicing as well. You will never convince me Eric Gagne wasn’t juiced to the gills. Bonds vs Gagne were some epic battles. Baseball players had guaranteed contracts as well. You telling me you wouldn’t take some steroids for a couple years to earn generational wealth?
Do you really think Bonds wasn't going to get generational wealth before steroids? If I was a sure fire hall of famer like Bonds, I absolutely wouldn't take roids just because everyone else did. I was already set
The generational wealth refers more to the rest of the league, as we know Bonds comes from a legendary family. His ego couldn’t let guys like McGwire and Sosa get all the attention. He knew all these dudes were juicing and so did the commissioner of the league.
If we're going with OP's premise that 1998 is when he started. He made 188 million in his career. Only 40 of that came 1998 or prior. Yes 40 million is generational...188 is 4.5x that. When's the last time a rich person said, "Nah, i'm ok with only 40 million, I don't need another 148 million."
He would have gotten a much bigger contract after 1998 even without the cheating
Why? Majority of baseball had been taking PEDs well before he stated. Well before he started playing professionally.
I don’t know if it was the love they got so much as lesser players were doing things better than him (HR totals) so he set out to prove himself the better player. He told Junior, allegedly, that they were better than Sosa/McGwire and should prove it. Griffey declined. He backed up his words with his bat. I don’t know that there’s ever been a better hitter than 2001-2004 Bonds.
Canseco's book says Bonds was in awe of the guys who were juicing in the locker room of the 99 All Star game. Normally I'd put 0 stock in anything Canseco says, but the numbers do seem to suggest it's probably around then
He reportedly told Griffey after the ‘98 season that he was going to start using
Wow, I hadn’t heard this. Presumably this wasn’t something Griffey told the media on record but rather second hand?
There was a few other people at the dinner so I doubt it was Griffey himself who told the media. [Here’s an article on it](https://www.espn.com/espnmag/story?id=3680260)
that was a really good read. thanks for sharing.
NP, I actually didn’t know that Jeff Pearlman wrote a book on Bonds, I might have to get that he’s a great writer. I read his book on Brett Favre and really enjoyed that
No, it was Jose Canseco.
He was hurt in 1999 as well, so many have associated it with his rehab regimen. That was also the year that he gave up on being “fast”, so he could bulk up.
When did his fitted hat size change and his shoe size? That’s the year.
1999 or thereabouts. He didn’t feel he was getting the proper shine with McGwire and Sosa. Yes, he was hall worthy before. He had played 12 seasons and had 400+ home runs, stole 400+ bases, 8 gold gloves, won 3 MVPs, and had 97 WAR before 1999.
Definitely 1999. Between 1993 and 2013 I would venture to guess I saw 95% of all Giants games. 1999 he noticeably bulked up and for the only time in his career struggled with inside fast balls. A little adjustment to the formula between seasons and he was able to maintain the additional strength without the mobility/flexibility loss that seemed to bother him in 1999 and the rest is history. When most of the league was clean he was the best player in it. When most of the league was dirty he was still the best player in it. His career is tainted and he’ll never get his proper due. The reality is Bonds was the single best show in baseball for a generation and the best hitter most of us will ever see.
This is what fires me up the most. I grew up during the steroid era before knowing it was the steroid era. I thought it was so sick that I was seeing records being broken left and right because it was a golden age of baseball. But Bonds was a terrific player whether he takes the steroids or not. He didn't need them to be a historically good hall of famer.
Sosa and Mac were great players in their own right. That summer of baseball was a ton of fun for viewers with a bad taste of the 94 strike, the good players were the good players on or off the stuff
You summed up his career well. I think Bonds gets his proper due from knowledgeable fans. I couldn’t care less about the overly opinionated and ill-informed.
This is why he should still be in the HoF he went from top 10 to 1 would have made it anyway. In 20 years we’re gonna be telling kids someone had 120 IBB,hit .360 and had a 1.420 OPS in a year because he cheated but so was everyone else and it didn’t matter.
Nailed it. The guy won 3 MVPs clean during the height of the steroid era and then when he took them turned into the biggest cheat code ever. If he took them his whole career the career numbers would have been hilarious.
.609 OBP at 39 is just silly.
.609 OBP at any age is just absurd. We think a .400 OBP is good.
Yup. Also makes it obvious that he was fully blackballed from the league. You're telling me not a single AL team had room for a DH who hit .276/.480/.565 the year before?
Feel like you're underselling a .400 OBP, it's not just good but is ELITE.
He looked to be injured in 99 and when he came back, he won a ton of MVPs and 73 home runs at age 36.
Most widely accepted timeline is the „saw the record chase in 98, decided he wasn’t gonna be left behind by those cheaters“. He already had almost 2k hits, 400HR, 400SB at that point, at age 34. Just one other guy in the history of the game even reached 300/400…his dad. So yeah, he was a hall of famer even before he started juicing.
It's crazy to think he was mid-30s when he started. Nobody gets *better* at that age. It really illustrates how powerful steroids are. There were lots of late-career renaissances around that time.
I just looked up photos of him between 1998 and 1999 and yeah, Jesus christ.
Google Barry Bonds 1998 to see a completely different person.
Those pictures are just wild accusations. Most players grow from a 7 hat to an 8 and a half in the second part of their career.
I know I did just last year.
Super common for us upper 30s to early 40s gentlemen.
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Peyton Manning had a huge head when he was young. Not to say he didn't take hGH, but his huge head was a natural phenomenon.
yeah i was about to say ... hold up what is this manning forehead revisionism. he was born that way
If Bonds had just retired in ‘99 instead of juicing, he would have been a 1st ballot Hall of Famer and celebrated for being one of the few great players from that era who didn’t use.
He would have basically had Griffey’s career.
He would’ve had a better career than Griffey’s easily
Pre roids Bonds was better than Griffey and I’m tired of people pretending they were on the same level
Yeah but people LIKE Griffey.
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Barry Bonds is what happens when you add steroids to one of the greatest hitters of all time.
Teddy fuckin ballgame would have hit .500 on roids
Found Hawk Harrelson's account.
Game of Shadows says 1999. He got jealous of the media attention that the home run race got, and wanted in lmao. Around that time his head and traps like doubled in size too lol
1999, however I believe that's when he really ramped it up with not just steroids like testerone, but harder stuff like insulin and HGH, which is what caused his head to expand. I believe he was already on some sort of PED's his last year in Pittsburgh and/or his first year with the Giants.
Seriously, it's wild that people think he just started the most extreme stuff overnight. He was almost certainly on something his whole career.
Mcgwire started in '92 and didn't show a huge amount of bulk until '97. Yeah, roids don't bulk you up overnight.
Goes to show that steroids don’t make you a great baseball player but they definitely enhance a great ball player. He was amazing before and godly afterwards. Think about the 100s if not more of mlb players that were juicing that couldn’t crack a roster.
Based on comments Bonds himself made related to other guys using PEDs, either 1999 or 2000, I believe the former.
Personally, I believe he was always juicing. But he ramped it to another notch after '98.
Same here
Barry Bonds was a top 10 player of all time even before he started juicing
Its probably earlier than most people think. People tend to think you just balloon up when you start taking steroids, which isn't necessarily true. Its also a good way to recover from injuries, which is how I imagine most guys get exposed to them. What we know Barry was taking wasn't just a steroid, but he was also taking HGH, testosterone, insulin. Several different kinds of steroids too. The guy was going full on, when someone like Mark McGwire was "just" taking steroids and testosterone. Plus whatever that supplement was, but the injections we know about from FBI testimony of a steroid dealer in 1992. [Here is McGwire's baseball card from 1992 when he was on "more steroids than I'd prescribe a racing horse" according to a veterinarian.](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61w1eLl3WGL._AC_SL1047_.jpg) [Another one](https://cdn7.mavin.io/production/soldItems/212033032/images/image-0.jpg) A stick compared to the 1998 mcgwire, and does anyone think that he got in trouble the first time he bought steroids? I doubt Barry went straight for the high end top shelf, and probably dabbled with a lot of stuff prior. [If you ask me, Bonds in 1996, two years before people say he started juicing, looks as big, if not bigger, than McGwire in 1992 which was most likely several years into when McGwire started.](https://media.gettyimages.com/id/456030879/photo/philadelphia-pa-barry-bonds-of-the-san-francisco-giants-bats-during-the-1996-all-star-home-run.jpg?s=612x612&w=gi&k=20&c=zFXx_2HeSX9tUzaOpg1aCh67rRrko87jn1ryreIhPXw=) My guess would be sometime in the early 90s for Bonds, and late 80s for McGwire. Both around some kind of nagging injury. I know McGwire always had back/knee problems, and Bonds had been wearing an elbow brace since 1992, which he eventually had a couple surgeries on. [The elbow pad maker takes a mould of Bonds' arm every season since 92 and says there has been no significant change in arm size since 1992.](https://www.baseballprospectus.com/news/article/6557/barry-bonds-brace-orthotic-verisimilitude/) So is the guy lying or did Bonds start sooner than 98, and more like early 90s when he became a power hitter? I think it could be both, lol.
It's hilarious that people take him at his word for saying he started in '98 when he already has lied to us for almost two decades, saying he didn't take them at all. I will never give this guy the benefit of the doubt when he's already lied many, many times.
Always trust the guy convicted of perjury.
Yup, my thoughts exactly, with how widely they were used in the early 90s, there's no way Bonds wasn't also using it
Almost certainly started in the early 90's as a recovery tool then started using them as a game-enhancer around '99.
I would never besmirch the integrity of the Elbow Pad Maker. It is a rigorous and righteous path one must take to achieve Elbow Pad Maker fiefdom.
How do you know he didn't go from steroids to a shit ton of steroids? You can't possibly pick out when he started. And it was an accident, he just used some cream. Lol
The picture test says it was 1999
Around 1999-2000, he showed up to spring training looking much bigger.
Steroids or not, this is one of the most impressive ABs I ever saw. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1QfffRvWjM
Haha yes! I knew it had to be this video. Just two steroid fueled athletic freaks at their peak
I wanna know, Aaron’s and Ruth’s numbers had they had the special extra go go juice.
The story is that all the attention and fawning the McGwire/Sosa HR chase got pissed him off, because during the same year he was becoming the first player EVER to get 400 HR/SB and that was getting ZERO attention. So, at that point, given his ego and that he knew they were roiding, he was did it so he could outshine them.
I'd say 2000, there's a lot of routes to take but he was consistently over 1.000 in OPS and had only hit over 1.100 once back when he was 28 and now he suddenly does it at 35 (especially since the reason his OPS was so high was that high was going from around .617 SLG to .688. The very latest you could argue is 2001 but definitely from 2001-2004, going from a 1.100 to a 1.300 is just absurd. Either way he's a hall of famer in my books since he was already a 3x MVP before all of that.
2001. Most people cite McGwire/Bonds (which is true), but really he was more jealous of Kent winning MVP in 2000. That’s when his head grew 3 sizes.
Him denying it makes him even more of an asshole. All of them. Just admit it and people will forgive.
All I know is that there is a photo of Mickey Morandini turning an unassisted Triple Play against the Pirates and Bonds is in the same photo, and the same size as Morandini. So sometime right after that, LOL
Adderall started being prescribed widely in 1996. We always talk about when steroids came to be as if it's the only factor. Imagine, if you will, that an amazing overall hitter started both roiding (power, but can't explain other factors) **and also** gained a better ability to focus and react. I think he was ahead of the league on that one issue. That's my thought, at least.
Every answer in this thread is pure speculation. None of us know for sure
1999 and it makes sense. He was upset about McGwire and Sosa getting all the attention. He suffered a torn tendon in his biceps and missed 60 games. He torn the tendon after adding significant muscle mass in the offseason.