It’s interesting watching Bonds career — he was very clearly the best player in baseball in the ten year period from 1989-98. I mean if you are being realistic, nobody was even close. And then, right around this time, things shifted. McGwire and Sosa had their home run race. And players like Biggio and Bagwell and Piazza were closing in on Barry’s dominance.
Decisions are always more complicated than we tend to make them, but you could certainly understand Barry right around this time going: “OK, this is ridiculous. I am the best player in baseball. And if people don’t believe me … well, I’ll give them a show they’ll never forget.” And, like him or not, he definitely did that.
Of course I lead with the Bonds note, because there's never enough Bonds. Joe Posnanski's historical survey of Win Shares is an exciting read. The study of statistics can illuminate the past as it does the present, even for outliers such as Bonds, Bagwell, Biggio and Piazza. Here's what he did:
Using Bill James’ Win Shares — I suppose you could use some other statistic, if you like, but I like Win Shares — I added up the best players in baseball for every five year window from 1970 to now... By Win Shares, there have been 11 players who qualify as the best players in baseball. Most of these will ring true to anyone — Bonds, Schmidt, Pujols, etc. — but there are a couple of surprises in the bag... Fun, right? Here then, by my Win Shares calculations, were the best players in baseball the last 30 years … and the players who they beat out...
One of the "surprises" player is a big surprise, a player I wouldn't have guessed, a player I may not have even been able to name given his first name and last initial.
Update: If you simply count each time a player was at least "In the discussion" on Joe's list, here are the best players since 1970: Barry Bonds with 17 mentions, and for several of those years no one was "Close" by Posnanski's measure, Alex Rodriguez, Rickey Henderson and Mike Schmidt with 11, Craig Biggio with 7, Albert Pujols, Frank Thomas, Jeff Bagwell, Joe Morgan, Pete Rose, and Wade Boggs with 6.
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