King Kaufman's Sports Daily

Barry Bonds' "lousy" production goes to show how rare good players are, because he has still been better than most.

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May 19, 2006 | Barry Bonds is illustrative of all kinds of points about baseball, steroids, celebrity, race, the media, personality and psychology.

But there's one thing his tragically bizarre 2006 has illustrated that I haven't seen mentioned: The season Bonds has had shows just how rare really good players are. Because for all his struggles, Barry Bonds is still one of the most productive left fielders in baseball.

Now, before I go any further, I have to say that when I talk about the scarcity of really good, productive players in the major leagues, I'm talking about matters of scale. The worst players in the major leagues are phenomenal ballplayers.

You know that if you've ever seen a journeyman infielder go to Single-A on an injury rehab assignment and hit like Babe Ruth, and then thought about how even most of the best high school players never make it as far as A-ball. But it's good to remind ourselves.

But on that scale, in the context of the major leagues, keeping in mind that even reaching a big-league batter's box once in your life and striking out is a remarkable achievement, it's surprising how little it takes for a player to rise to the top third of players at his position.

Bonds is hitting .233 with five home runs and 14 RBIs in 34 games. And for all the talk that Bonds is a pathetic shadow, that pitchers should go after him because he can't hurt them, in strictly between-the-lines terms, about two-thirds of the teams in the majors would upgrade by trading their left fielder for Bonds.

And yes I'm ignoring defense, but I don't think defense changes the equation much. Bonds is not as bad a left fielder as you probably think he is.

The fielding metrics at Baseball Prospectus have consistently rated him as a below-average left fielder in the later years of his career, including this year, but not disastrously so. "The Fielding Bible" by John Dewan, a book that I think represents a major advance in measuring baseball defense, rates him as a middle-of-the-pack left fielder over the past few years.

A fair amount of Bonds' production comes from walks. He still gets a walk every 3.4 plate appearances, down from his 2004 figure of one every 2.7, but way more than, say, Albert Pujols, the best hitter in the game, who isn't a free swinger and who walks once every five plate appearances.

With all those free passes, Bonds' on-base percentage is .481. He's slugging .467, for an OPS of .948. Among the 30 big-league left fielders -- counting platoon partners in St. Louis, Toronto and Baltimore as single left fielders -- that's the seventh best.

Next page: Guys who are better than two-thirds of the big leagues are still just interchangeable parts