Why isn't Barry Bonds productive?

Because of a colossal managerial blunder that has him hitting cleanup instead of leadoff.

By King Kaufman

Oct. 4, 2002 | Two games into all four playoff series, I have lots of questions, but none bigger than this one:

Why on earth is Barry Bonds not hitting leadoff for the Giants?

This occurred to me -- in palm slapping the forehead fashion -- as I discussed the relative merits of Bonds and Albert Pujols of the Cardinals with readers who disagreed with my assertion that Bonds is the hands-down National League Most Valuable Player.

Their argument for Pujols is essentially that he produced more runs than Bonds did, as measured by adding each player's runs scored and RBIs and subtracting home runs (so as not to count them twice, since a homer results in a run scored and an RBI). By this measure, Pujols produced 211 runs (118 scored, 127 driven in, minus 34 home runs) while Bonds produced 181 (117 scored, 110 driven in, 46 homers). Pujols played a little more, but his runs produced per game are still superior. Since the idea of this whole baseball thing is to score more than the other team, the argument goes, Pujols is more valuable than Bonds.

I countered that runs scored and RBIs are stats dependent on the performance of one's teammates. Except for his 34 home runs, every one of Pujols' runs scored required a teammate to drive him in, and every one of his RBIs required a teammate to get on base in front of him. Bonds shouldn't be punished because Pujols has better teammates.

But then I looked at their teammates. Guess what: Subtracting Bonds and Pujols, the Giants' and Cards' offensive numbers are nearly identical. How can it be that the game's greatest slugger is not the game's most productive slugger?

That's when my palm hit my forehead. Bonds is hitting in the wrong spot in the order.

Because opponents flatly refuse to pitch to Bonds with runners on base, his value as an RBI man is severely limited. But: He's on base all the freakin' time! Nobody's ever been on base as often. Nobody's been close. The more good hitters there are behind Bonds, the more likely the Giants will make the other team pay for walking him. With nothing but mediocre hitters behind Bonds -- Benito Santiago, Reggie Sanders, J.T. Snow and David Bell usually hit behind him -- opponents walk him, and the strategy works.

How well does it work? When Bonds was hitting third, ahead of the dangerous Jeff Kent, he scored 30.3 percent of the time he was a baserunner. (That is, 30.3 percent of the time that he reached base but didn't hit a home run.) After Giants manager Dusty Baker switched Bonds and Kent in the order, Bonds scored 16.4 percent of the time that he was on base, an astonishing, pathetic figure.

Some numbers for comparison: Giants leadoff man Kenny Lofton scored 39.1 percent of the time he was a baserunner. Pujols, the Cardinals' cleanup hitter, scored 36.2 percent of the time once he got on base.

What's really amazing about Baker's misuse of Bonds is that he actually got some praise in late June when he switched him in the order with Kent, who had hit fourth for most of the previous five and a half years. The change helped Kent's production, for the obvious reason that he got better pitches while hitting in front of Bonds. But that improvement for Kent wasn't nearly enough to offset the neutralization of the game's best hitter. At the time of the switch, Bonds had 50 RBIs in 71 games while hitting .354, with an on-base percentage of .574. After the switch, Bonds played in 72 games. He hit .385, with an on-base percentage of .588. He drove in 60 runs.

For those extra 10 RBIs, Bonds' run total dropped from 69 in those first 71 games to 48 in the last 72, despite getting on base more often.

If Bonds were hitting first, opponents would still pitch around him, but he'd be likely to score a whole lot more often with Lofton, Rich Aurilia and, especially, Kent behind him. If he scored at Lofton's 39.1 percent rate, he'd have tallied 167 runs this year, 50 more than his actual number, and tied with Lou Gehrig for the second best total of modern times, 10 behind Babe Ruth's record from 1921. We are talking jaw-dropping run-scoring totals here.

But it gets better. Hitting leadoff instead of cleanup would get Bonds an extra plate appearance about once every three games. Bonds played 143 games this year, and remember he hit third in half of them, so let's call it only 35 extra plate appearances. Given Bonds' .582 on-base percentage, that means another 20 times on base, and either two or three home runs if his homer-per-appearance ratio of about 1-per-13 holds. We'll call it two and apply that Loftonian 39.1 percent scoring rate to the other 18 times on base. Bonds scores another nine runs total. So now his run total would be 176, one short of the modern record and 59 -- 59! -- more than he scored this year. Even at that 30.3 percent rate he achieved from the third spot, Bonds still would have scored nearly 150 runs. And because he's rarely pitched to with men on base, his RBI total likely wouldn't suffer much.

It's hard to believe an extra 30 or 40 or 50 or however many runs wouldn't have gotten the Giants four more wins and the Western Division title. The misuse of Bonds hasn't seemed to hurt them in the playoffs, yet. They beat the Braves in Game 1 and lost by a bunch in Game 2, and anyway Bonds has so far looked about as mortal as usual for the postseason, going 2-for-8 with a meaningless solo homer.

Still, the unique combination of Bonds' huge on-base percentage, the unwillingness of opponents to pitch to him and the weak bottom half of the Giants' lineup add up to the obvious conclusion that Bonds should be hitting at the top of the order. I think Baker's failure to realize this -- or his failure to convince Bonds of its necessity, if that's what's preventing it from happening -- is a colossal failure.

Next page: More questions, about those first two games, foul-mouthed hurlers and the insufferable Chris Berman