Baseball Musings: Bonds and BALCO

July 15, 2005

Bonds and BALCO

Two stories of interest involving the BALCO scandal and Barry's knee. Reports are that Victor Conte is copping a plea. My guess is that others will follow, which means we're not likely to see ballplayers testify publicly about what Conte did or didn't give them.

Meanwhile Bonds seems pretty pessimistic about returning to action this season (you can find video of an interview with him at the link as well). I'm going to go out on a limb and say that if Bonds doesn't return this season he's not going to break Aaron's record. I know Bonds has incredible skills, but a year away from baseball at his age is going to erode those skills. Does anyone believe he'll be able to play the outfield again? Is he even going to be able to run the bases?

His knees are bad. That is going to hurt every aspect of his game. He's a DH at best from here on out. I'm sure some AL team will be willing to pay him to hit home runs and walk to first, but it's not clear he'll be able to do the first part of that. How are fans going to react when he can't run fast enough to get a double on a ball in the gap? Or score from second on a single?

It's amazing. After 1998, McGwire looked like he had a good shot at Aaron. He never got to 600. After four straight 60+ seasons, Sosa looked like he'd catch Aaron. Now he's unproductive and is having problems reaching 600. Bonds put together an unbelievable end to his career, and Aaron seemed like just a matter of time. Now Barry may not even catch Ruth. I'm pretty sure that someone playing today will top 755, but it's an awfully steep mountain to climb.

Posted by David Pinto at 11:52 AM | Cheating | TrackBack (0)

Comments

To point out the elephant in the room, Barry would also return steroid-less, since MLB would be testing the bejesus out of him. We can argue all day long as to how much steroids affected Bonds' performance after he hooked up with BALCO in the late nineties.

But say Bonds comes back next year (or even late this year) and gets off to a bad start. In fact, that's the most likely scenario due to age, rust, and the lack of better living thorough chemistry.

Everybody in the media (and I mean that almost literally) would be hooting over the roid-less Bonds, the "real" Bonds we would have seen long before except for the drugs. Bonds might well start doubting himself. The combination of media pressure and self-doubt could turn a bad start into a complete disaster.

Is Bonds staying away from the game because he's thinking through the same scenario? I don't know, but he sure doesn't seem in a hurry to come back.

Posted by: Casey Abell at July 15, 2005 12:33 PM

It just goes to show you why records are records. If they were easy to reach, they would have been broken by now.

Posted by: sabernar at July 15, 2005 12:48 PM

BTW, Jason Giambi's bad start this year - and the reaction it provoked from the media and the fans - might really have given Bonds the jitters.

I'm sure Barry thinks he's light-years ahead of Giambi as a player, even now. But Bonds' Everest-sized ego might still let through a little whisper of doubt. "Could the same thing happen to me when I come back without the drugs? And what if I can't pull out of the slump the way Giambi did?"

Posted by: Casey Abell at July 15, 2005 12:54 PM

I would think that, given Bonds' past performance, we'd want to take a "wait and see" approach to his future performance, rather than coming up with every reason he won't do this or that.

All the reasons do make some sense: possible regression due to age, injury, steroid regression...whatever.

But a couple of other things pop out -- Bonds is still the best hitter almost all of us have seen in our lives, and there was absolutely no sign of his slowing down the last time we all saw him swing a bat.

I think that deserves a benefit of the doubt.

Posted by: Daniel at July 15, 2005 04:47 PM

I agree about Bonds being the best hitter any of us have seen.

That being said, aren't all the "questionable players" - Bonds, Sheffield, Giambi, I-Rod, Palmeiro, Sosa - doing worse this year than ever before?

Obviously it's pure speculation, but I find it at least slightly questionable that the same year the steroids story broke, the entire "roid-pack" of players either missed the season or performed sub-par in it.

It's just like it was a couple of years ago - there is no evidence, but we all know; Sammy can't hit, Barry can't even seem to get on the field.

Posted by: JC at July 16, 2005 12:43 AM

Sheff is having a pretty normal season, but he does seem to be the exception.
At least Palmiero can say that he's old, and he's been slowly deterioriating over the past 3 years. So has Sosa for that matter. So their performances, although Raffy hasn't been bad, honestly, aren't totally unexpected.

Posted by: James at July 16, 2005 07:29 AM

Giambi's slugging is down even after his recent hot streak, but I think we can't really make a judgement on Giambi until the season is over. The rest, besides Sheffield and Bonds (who by not playing can't really qualify for this point), are having down years. And also Bret Boone, who Canseco accused, is down massively this year.

Posted by: Adam B. at July 18, 2005 01:26 AM

JC: Sosa is old, Palmeiro is old, Giambi was sick for a while with what many thought was cancer...

There can easily be excuses on either side of the coin in this. This is the problem with nailing Bonds to the wall -- his age is a plenty good excuse to "lose it" as much as any steroid regression.

Also, including Bonds in the "questionable players having worse years than ever before" is suspect -- the man hasn't swung a bat this year, so I'm not sure what he's doing worse in -- yet.

2006 will tell all.

Posted by: Daniel at July 19, 2005 08:48 PM

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