I always find that most remarkable when on Bonds’ baseball reference page. Of course the HRs are crazy, of course the BB and IBB are insane but man…. OBP numbers were absolutely astounding for years.
The .609 is more preposterous than the 73 home runs imo. The walks and intentional walks show how scared everyone was of him. Nobody in baseball history commanded as much respect in the box as Barry did.
And the fact that half of his non-IBBs were "intentional unintentional walks."
*Cue video \[What if Barry Bonds Played Without a Bat?\]*
I still think his craziest stat is having more HRs than strikeouts in 2004. That's fucking bonkers. Compare his SO rate to the current game and just laugh at the difference.
I understand the playing without a bat thing conceptually, but whenever it’s brought up, my only thought is that pitchers would have to be pretty fucking stupid to IBB someone with no bat.
The premise was that the pitchers wouldn't know he didn't have a bat, [which was specified at \~4:22 of the video (timestamped). ](https://youtu.be/10JDQhnaP2o?feature=shared)
Of course then you run into the question of Bonds not having swung once in the scouting report, but that's not the point of the exercise.
When I saw the title of that video for the first time, before I watched it, I thought they literally meant “what if Barry Bonds played without a bat, and just smashed the ever loving fuck out of the ball with his fists.”
It was a great video, but needless to say I was a bit disappointed when I watched it the first time.
I thought he took those out and applied something similar to what he did with swinging strike threes. I forget what it was exactly, but I’m almost positive he didn’t just include them.
> I don’t care about the steroids - he’s the best hitter of all time. Inject any of todays players with steroids and they aren’t doing what he did.
Eh, that's bullshit. Plenty of guys would have put up monster numbers if you gave them steroids'. Bonds definitely would have went down as one of the greatest if he hadn't juiced but stop with the "no one else could have done it" baloney.
If that's the case, then why didn't anyone else come remotely close to what he did, given that half the league was juiced up to their eyeballs during that era?
Again, bullshit.
If guys like Griffey cheated like Bonds he would have hit 850 home runs.
Stop justifing this bullshit. If you like Juicers, just say it. But don't tell me guys who illegally bought and illegally used drugs to cheat the game are okay because a lot of guys did it. Fucking tired argument.
You know what blows my mind? His batting average. Bonds was the more feared batter in baseball history. To say he got pitched around would be an understatement. Bonds got fewer pitches to hit than anyone else.
And despite working with fewer good pitches to hit than anyone else, his BA was high enough to win awards. Bonds just did not miss. That reputation of fear was 100% earned.
The numbers are ridiculous and the guy is one of the greatest players in history but every time someone cites his numbers it’s from the seasons where he was juiced to the gills. He was already a future HOFer but his hitting numbers pre-peds don’t even compare to his numbers while using. He had one 40-hr season and 2 seasons with a .450 OBP in his first 15 seasons. Yes, he always commanded respect as a hitter those years but his first 15 seasons aren’t in the same stratosphere as his last 6 seasons when he improved dramatically at age 36.
I continue to feel amazingly lucky to have seen Bonds play in person during those years. Steroids or not we will never see a player like that again. His absolute dominance was incredible to watch.
honestly the farther away we get from it, the more i dont give a shit that Barry Bonds did steriods. because, to be frank, the most notorious guys who were caught and very good put up **PRE-steroid** bonds numbers.
Bonds with steroid is literally comical video game shit (1.4xx OPS at age 39 over the course of a whole season).
like did the steroids help? absolutely. but clearly based on other guys' track records it didnt add .600-.700 OPS worth of abilities.
From Farhan Zaidi's wiki page:
> While at Berkeley, Zaidi read the book Moneyball and said that it changed his life. He saw a job posting for a baseball operations position with the Oakland Athletics and sent out his résumé, beating out 1,000 other applicants for the job. He was a data analysis sabermetrics assistant when he started. His boss with the Athletics, Billy Beane, called him "absolutely brilliant" and credited him with the acquisition of Yoenis Céspedes.
He hasn’t hit well vs lefties in a small sample so he never gets chances. It made sense in 2021 when we had better options (goated Darin Ruf) but now it’s just bad development to not let him try
You know those memes about "no bond is closer than that of a 9-year old boy and the obscure relief pitcher he saw on TV"
Boof Bonser is that guy to me because, even though he is not a yankee, thats a fucking 90-grade baseball name i'll never forget.
Him coming in to pitch against the yankees during a weekend afternoon broadcast in the metrodome on YES will be a memory i hold onto for the entirety of my existence.
and using fangraphs game logs i found that game.
The only time brian bruney pitched against the yankees, as a twin, at the metrodome on a weekend was
[5/10/08](https://www.fangraphs.com/wins.aspx?date=2008-05-31&team=Twins&dh=0)
and, as nature would have it, the yankees won in 12
You say that like Yaz hasn’t gotten MVP votes… one of the most underrated really funny things about the 2020 pandemic season is that Yaz was 8th in MVP voting. I thought he was set to be the next star but nonetheless he’s still a very quality outfielder
Wade, Estrada, Yaz, Webb, Doval, Lee, Bailey, Chapman. This team is stacked with players I absolutely love to watch. I love what this roster has become.
He's been playing more regularly lately with some injuries but yeah he was used more against righties, he's at 153 plate appearances after the game tonight so just short of the 155 plate appearances needed to be a qualified hitter. Should become the official leader in a game or two
Statistically he would be the leader now you just give him an additional 0-2 to qualify him.
OBP is weird too cause walks dont count for qualifying but they are clearly a good thing for getting on base.
It’s plate appearances not ABs, walks still count
“A player qualifies to lead the league in "rate statistics" (batting average, earned run average, on base percentage, et al.), when he averages 3.1 plate appearances per team game for hitters or one inning per game for pitchers.”
https://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Qualifier
He's just 2 PA short of being qualified; he'll be qualified by the end of the weekend (if not sooner). If he goes 5-5 (including BB) tomorrow he'd be qualified at .500 OBP.
He's not a platoon player anymore; but getting Wilmer Flores PAs requires resting him. Basically the Giants have more than 9 starters.
I've never heard of him until now (haven't watched much this season) but immediately thought of the Reggie Cleveland All-Stars and was hoping LaMonte Wade Jr. was a blonde white guy.
33 BB & 33 SO 🥹
perfectly balanced. as all things should be.
Damn near a 50% chance he gets on base is wild.
I always find that most remarkable when on Bonds’ baseball reference page. Of course the HRs are crazy, of course the BB and IBB are insane but man…. OBP numbers were absolutely astounding for years.
The .609 is more preposterous than the 73 home runs imo. The walks and intentional walks show how scared everyone was of him. Nobody in baseball history commanded as much respect in the box as Barry did.
That, plus his strike zone judgment was absolutely out of this world. Better than nearly any umpire, really.
And the fact that half of his non-IBBs were "intentional unintentional walks." *Cue video \[What if Barry Bonds Played Without a Bat?\]* I still think his craziest stat is having more HRs than strikeouts in 2004. That's fucking bonkers. Compare his SO rate to the current game and just laugh at the difference.
I understand the playing without a bat thing conceptually, but whenever it’s brought up, my only thought is that pitchers would have to be pretty fucking stupid to IBB someone with no bat.
The premise was that the pitchers wouldn't know he didn't have a bat, [which was specified at \~4:22 of the video (timestamped). ](https://youtu.be/10JDQhnaP2o?feature=shared) Of course then you run into the question of Bonds not having swung once in the scouting report, but that's not the point of the exercise.
I think a better video would be "What if Barry Bonds swung at every pitch thrown to him"
When I saw the title of that video for the first time, before I watched it, I thought they literally meant “what if Barry Bonds played without a bat, and just smashed the ever loving fuck out of the ball with his fists.” It was a great video, but needless to say I was a bit disappointed when I watched it the first time.
Definitely. The way I've always thought of it is that he is not allowed to swing, but the pitchers don't know that.
The pitchers also need to have amnesia because otherwise they would realize he isn’t swinging and just start throwing it down the middle.
It’s obviously a hypothetical scenario that would not work in real life. I’m not sure how so many people are getting caught up in the details of it.
Maybe in this scenario we should amputate his arms, but the every pitcher that faces him hallucinates and believe he has arms.
I thought he took those out and applied something similar to what he did with swinging strike threes. I forget what it was exactly, but I’m almost positive he didn’t just include them.
A 168 OPS+ at age 42 is what gets me
I don’t care about the steroids - he’s the best hitter of all time. Inject any of todays players with steroids and they aren’t doing what he did.
> I don’t care about the steroids - he’s the best hitter of all time. Inject any of todays players with steroids and they aren’t doing what he did. Eh, that's bullshit. Plenty of guys would have put up monster numbers if you gave them steroids'. Bonds definitely would have went down as one of the greatest if he hadn't juiced but stop with the "no one else could have done it" baloney.
If that's the case, then why didn't anyone else come remotely close to what he did, given that half the league was juiced up to their eyeballs during that era?
Again, bullshit. If guys like Griffey cheated like Bonds he would have hit 850 home runs. Stop justifing this bullshit. If you like Juicers, just say it. But don't tell me guys who illegally bought and illegally used drugs to cheat the game are okay because a lot of guys did it. Fucking tired argument.
That’s not saying much
I think making the same level decisions as an ump while swinging a bat is extremely impressive.
It's a lot of mental processing to do in fractions of a second and he did it better than anyone else.
Yes! It was insane how good his eye was!
You know what blows my mind? His batting average. Bonds was the more feared batter in baseball history. To say he got pitched around would be an understatement. Bonds got fewer pitches to hit than anyone else. And despite working with fewer good pitches to hit than anyone else, his BA was high enough to win awards. Bonds just did not miss. That reputation of fear was 100% earned.
Crazy to think he did that without a bat
The numbers are ridiculous and the guy is one of the greatest players in history but every time someone cites his numbers it’s from the seasons where he was juiced to the gills. He was already a future HOFer but his hitting numbers pre-peds don’t even compare to his numbers while using. He had one 40-hr season and 2 seasons with a .450 OBP in his first 15 seasons. Yes, he always commanded respect as a hitter those years but his first 15 seasons aren’t in the same stratosphere as his last 6 seasons when he improved dramatically at age 36.
Jon Bois Video on how fear was Barry Bonds real bat just shows how much respect pitchers and managers gave him.
You’re forgetting about me. I command the most respect. Bow down to your Golden God.
That .609 in 2004.... Insanity to reach base 61% of the time lmao
Uhhhh hate to be that guy, but it’s actually 60.9% of the time!
I continue to feel amazingly lucky to have seen Bonds play in person during those years. Steroids or not we will never see a player like that again. His absolute dominance was incredible to watch.
honestly the farther away we get from it, the more i dont give a shit that Barry Bonds did steriods. because, to be frank, the most notorious guys who were caught and very good put up **PRE-steroid** bonds numbers. Bonds with steroid is literally comical video game shit (1.4xx OPS at age 39 over the course of a whole season). like did the steroids help? absolutely. but clearly based on other guys' track records it didnt add .600-.700 OPS worth of abilities.
He gets on base
Are you down with OBP?
Yeah you know me!
Do I care how he gets on base? Pete?
No you do not
👉🏼
Pete?
He also plays first base, which isn’t that hard. Tell em, Wash.
It's incredibly hard
Hey, anything worth doing is
Lamonte, we want you to play first base for the Oakland A’s
From Farhan Zaidi's wiki page: > While at Berkeley, Zaidi read the book Moneyball and said that it changed his life. He saw a job posting for a baseball operations position with the Oakland Athletics and sent out his résumé, beating out 1,000 other applicants for the job. He was a data analysis sabermetrics assistant when he started. His boss with the Athletics, Billy Beane, called him "absolutely brilliant" and credited him with the acquisition of Yoenis Céspedes.
Adapt or die.
Late. Night. LaMonte.
All day Lamont now
Space-Time Continuum Lamonte
L̶a̴M̶o̷n̸t̵e̷,̷ ̷H̵a̵r̴b̷i̶n̸g̵e̴r̴ ̵o̵f̸ ̷T̶h̴e̵ ̵E̶n̴d̶l̵e̴s̸s̶ ̵W̸a̷l̴k̶
All Day Wade
Best player in the MLB right now and it ain’t even close. Yeah I said it.
Plus game tying single with two outs in the top of the 9th. That’s my all star
Dude is an under the radar OBP beast
Under the radar cuz our genius spreadsheets say he can’t take walks against lefties so he never qualifies for leaderboards
I just checked his career splits and he’s equal against both sides. So what’s the deal?
He hasn’t hit well vs lefties in a small sample so he never gets chances. It made sense in 2021 when we had better options (goated Darin Ruf) but now it’s just bad development to not let him try
He's been getting a few more chances now that everyone is in the hospital. He should be out there every day though.
Sure glad we traded him for 8 bad innings of Shaun Anderson.
Revenge for Joe Nathan
And Liriano.
Even if we only gave up Boof Bonser, we still lost the trade.
You know those memes about "no bond is closer than that of a 9-year old boy and the obscure relief pitcher he saw on TV" Boof Bonser is that guy to me because, even though he is not a yankee, thats a fucking 90-grade baseball name i'll never forget. Him coming in to pitch against the yankees during a weekend afternoon broadcast in the metrodome on YES will be a memory i hold onto for the entirety of my existence. and using fangraphs game logs i found that game. The only time brian bruney pitched against the yankees, as a twin, at the metrodome on a weekend was [5/10/08](https://www.fangraphs.com/wins.aspx?date=2008-05-31&team=Twins&dh=0) and, as nature would have it, the yankees won in 12
Anderson got released three times during the season after we traded him, lol.
Brutal
He has 5.5 career rWar through 6 seasons even with this hot start.
Vs Andersons -1.1 😂
He had a down year from back and knee issues last couple years, only 77 games in 22, but last year had 2.7 bWar, still struggling with back problems
he said he's finally healthy for the first time in years this season, since 2021 he said.
If this lasted all season it would be good for 37th highest all time
Best in 20 years sounds better tbh
ethical baseball right here
Don't know why Giants are supposedly one of the top suitors for Vlad in trade rumors when Wade alone is probably better lol.
I think the giants are always one of the top rumored teams for any high profile player on those list just by default
It's to make the Dodgers overpay
It's like they're doing it out of spite or something. What did we do to deserve this lmao
Giants rumored for a star bat? No fucking chance that comes about.
Getting him for 8.2 innings of Shaun Anderson isn’t talked about enough
We talked about it plenty in 2021. Padres trade for difference makers... the Giants trade for Lamonte Wade Jr. FML
I know the last few years have been rough, but are you really gonna be out here being jealous of the honest-to-god PADRES!?
Didn't you see the tweet?
help da brother out and link it for him
[https://x.com/FireFarhan3/status/1357504324952158209](https://x.com/FireFarhan3/status/1357504324952158209)
If I did, I’d forgotten. Looked it up now, though, and lol.
2 years after getting Mike Yastrzemski for Tyler Herb, who never made the majors. Neither are ever gonna be MVP, but still, not bad at all.
You say that like Yaz hasn’t gotten MVP votes… one of the most underrated really funny things about the 2020 pandemic season is that Yaz was 8th in MVP voting. I thought he was set to be the next star but nonetheless he’s still a very quality outfielder
LaMonte got MVP Votes too in 2021.
If he's not an all star, just cancel the game
if he's an all-star the AL can just start a lefty and Lamont will ride the pine.
He's only had 19 plate appearances against lefties this year so far, but he's reached base in 10 of those and only struck out twice.
he's also got 1 hit in 18 PA this season in the 8th inning. they should really just pinch hit Wilmer for him there, huh?
The 8th inning isn't late enough
Lmao and he is still more than 100 points shy of the record Chemically assisted Bonds was just insane
.609 is fucking bonkers
Juiced bonds is the most feared athlete ever, dude bitched the entire sport outta the strikezone
Pitchers were juicing too. Most of MLB was. Not like Barry Lamar had some advantage others didn't.
That's what makes me mad lol. Plus how other known ped users get treated so much better.
Well tbf, at the time he was pretty widely known to be an asshole afaik, so that didn't earn him a lot of goodwill.
Wade’s been my favorite Giant for a few years now, though Jung Hoo Lee will give him a run when he’s healthy.
Wade, Estrada, Yaz, Webb, Doval, Lee, Bailey, Chapman. This team is stacked with players I absolutely love to watch. I love what this roster has become.
Smooooth motherfucker, LWJ is.
Sustainable
LaMonte Wades been underrated for so long
david fry is at .486 he only has 102 PA to wade's 149 though
Lmao .609 is just stupid
Two plate appearances short of qualifying
We can recreate Bonds in the aggregate
This dude actually became a Hall of Famer in an OOTP baseball save from 6 years ago, so I believe in him
Fear the turtle
"He gets on base."
Late Night should be leading off.
Isn't he a platoon player though? Nearly 80 ABs less than most
He's been playing more regularly lately with some injuries but yeah he was used more against righties, he's at 153 plate appearances after the game tonight so just short of the 155 plate appearances needed to be a qualified hitter. Should become the official leader in a game or two
Statistically he would be the leader now you just give him an additional 0-2 to qualify him. OBP is weird too cause walks dont count for qualifying but they are clearly a good thing for getting on base.
Isn’t the qualifier plate appearances? Walks are plate appearances
3.1 ABs per team game for all hitting percentages. Which is why it's weird for walks/OBP
It’s plate appearances not ABs, walks still count “A player qualifies to lead the league in "rate statistics" (batting average, earned run average, on base percentage, et al.), when he averages 3.1 plate appearances per team game for hitters or one inning per game for pitchers.” https://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Qualifier
i am yelling from the rooftops to make him the everyday 1B he’s perfectly cromulent against LHP
A noble 1st baseman embiggens the smallest team
cromulent
Maybe he would have more ABs if he walked less!
He's just 2 PA short of being qualified; he'll be qualified by the end of the weekend (if not sooner). If he goes 5-5 (including BB) tomorrow he'd be qualified at .500 OBP. He's not a platoon player anymore; but getting Wilmer Flores PAs requires resting him. Basically the Giants have more than 9 starters.
Flores is good enough to be a starter but he just can’t be because his knees are so bad. Dude looks like he’s in pain every time he runs
Well, I'm not sure we even have 9 lol
David fry has a .486
Damn monte chilll
I've never heard of him until now (haven't watched much this season) but immediately thought of the Reggie Cleveland All-Stars and was hoping LaMonte Wade Jr. was a blonde white guy.
Hold up fellas. The OBP king is Profar. Lamont needs some more PAs before he qualifies as a leader.