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Congratulations to Barry Bonds on 589 Career Home Runs!

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by Philosopher, Aug 8, 2007.

  1. Philosopher

    Philosopher Member

    ESPN now has a fantastic tool that uses Bill James' career projection formula to project a player's career based upon age and past performance.

    So I went in and inputted the data for Barry Bonds at age 34, his last season before he started taking the Clear. Go see the results yourself. The bottom line is:

    I personally think Bonds would have broken 600 even without the Clear. (Of course with enhancement, he's a good bet to break 800.) He would have been a first-ballot HOFer either way.

    But is this sort of exercise worth doing for other, more marginal candidates ... like, say, Sammy Sosa? If we look back to 1997, he doesn't project to hit 500, much less 600. Results:

    Personally I wouldn't vote for Sosa but would vote for Bonds, largely for the reasons in this post. Sosa wasn't a HOFer without enhancement. Bonds clearly was.
     
  2. Joe Williams

    Joe Williams Well-Known Member

    Great post, Phil. But Bonds invalidated himself and cost himself any vote I would cast for the HOF. You can't say, well, I'm going to get voted in anyway, so from this day forward I'm going to cheat, I'm going to use illegal substances, I'm going to swipe the game's most hallowed record and drive fans away from the sport by tainting its integrity (after I've already alienated plenty by being rude and unapproachable). There's a character component to the Hall.

    And, as others have said, just because a guy is already rich doesn't mean he gets to rob the bank.
     
  3. spnited

    spnited Active Member

    Total bullshit, philospher. More mathetical masturbation.

    Why was it determined that Bonds, at age 34, would play only 4 more years? What was 36 HRs a year based on, his past, which does not predict the future.


    BTW: At age 34, Tom Glavine was going to pitch for only 4 more seasons (all players aged 34 get 4 more years according to James' BS formula) and was projected to finish with 282 wins. Yup, that works for me.
     
  4. spnited

    spnited Active Member

    Hank Aaron at age 34 was projected to play 4 more years and finish with 656 HRs.

    Damn, this is a great formula.
     
  5. dooley_womack1

    dooley_womack1 Well-Known Member

    Could you tell us the Pythagorean World Series champions for the next 10 years while we're at it. And more saber bullshit. How long players played 60-80 years ago has nothing to do with how long players in an era with the world's greatest fitness and dietary technology would be expected to play.
     
  6. beefncheddar

    beefncheddar Guest

    You left out "and chemical" after dietary.
     
  7. Tom Petty

    Tom Petty Guest

    SP, easy there big fella. i hate fat bill as much as the next guy, but the original message of this thread was pretty cool.
     
  8. Philosopher

    Philosopher Member

    Obviously, it's impossible to know for sure how Bonds' career would have unfolded if he hadn't taken the Clear. Ditto with Sosa.

    I think we're going to be asking ourselves the "what would he have done without enhancement?" question a lot in upcoming years, as we have to vote on the likes of McGwire, Sosa, Palmeiro, etc. Obviously James' formula is just a formula, nothing more and nothing less, but it's better than pure guesswork.

    I think the real issues I'm trying to bring up with this thread are --

    1) Should we consider what the player would have achieved without enhancement when evaluating a player for whom there is significant evidence that he used performance-enhancing drugs?

    2) If so, how do we measure that? What's the cut-off? For me, the question is whether the player would have been a HOFer anyway. Bonds would have made it into the Hall if he dropped dead in 1997. Sosa wouldn't have made it if he wasn't enhanced.
     
  9. Mizzougrad96

    Mizzougrad96 Active Member

    The biggest problem with this system is that a lot of athletes are playing well into their 40s.
     
  10. IGotQuestions

    IGotQuestions Member

    Ditto, true, impossible to know how Bonds would've fared, but it's a pretty darn safe bet to predict that, based on his yearly average of 31.8 home runs from years 1986-99, he would NOT average 51.6 home runs from 2001-04 before suddenly taking off 2005 "to let his bad knee recuperate."
     
  11. spnited

    spnited Active Member


    James' formula is just guesswork.
    The formula presumes that a player has (42 - age)/2 seasons remaining, but not less than 1.5 seasons, and it is determined using the player's age on June 30 of the previous year.

    Why? That means every 34 year old player and 4 years left, every 36 year old has 3 years left, etc. But all players (even Barroid at age 43) have 1.5 seasons left.
    What?
    Total bullshit. An arbitrary guess by the man who invented mathmatical masturbation as it applies to baseball.
    You call it a great tool... that's close James is a huge tool.
     
  12. Tom Petty

    Tom Petty Guest

    yes, james is a tool.

    and yes, hitters peak at 27 years of age, period. bonds was no where close to 27 when he peaked. i call it PEDs.
     
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