Creating the Perfect Baseball Player

If you could take the skills of any baseball player in history and combine them into one Frankenstein's monster of a player, who would you take?

First quality: The Vision and Plate Discipline of Barry Bonds

   From the ages of 25-39 Bonds had a .313 batting average with a .468 OBP. From 2001-2004 he hit over .500 OBP each year, and his .609 OBP in 2004 is the highest of all time. His .582 in 2002 is second best all time. The third highest single season OBP is Ted Williams in 1941 who hit .553, 56 points lower than Bond's best. He holds the 3 highest single-season walk totals in MLB history and 6 of the top 20 totals. Rickey Henderson is second in career bases on balls with 2190, Babe Ruth is third with 2062. Bonds is first all time with 2558; 368 more career walks than the second highest total! Despite the fact that he was walked on 21% of his career plate appearances, he still managed to get a lot of hits; his 2935 career hits are good for 33rd all time.

The Glove and Throwing Arm of.... Barry Bonds

   Barry Bonds is mostly known for hitting. However, he also won eight gold gloves in his 22-year career. He is 16th in career double plays turned by a left fielder and second in career defensive WAR by a left fielder. He put up 179 career TZR (total fielding runs above average), good for first all time among left fielders and 45 runs better than the next best left fielder (Carl Yastrzemski at 134)

The Speed of, you guessed it, Barry Bonds

    Bonds is 33rd all time in career steals with 514. This is not overwhelmingly impressive on it's own, until you consider that he hit either a home run or a triple on 839 of his 2935 career hits. Since you can't steal bases when you hit a homer or triple, that drastically lowers his chances to steal bases. Then consider that of the 37 players who have at least 500 career stolen bases, only 5 have over 300 home runs + triples (Rickey Henderson, Ty Cobb, Honus Wagner, Joe Morgan, and Paul Molitor) and none have more than Cobb's 412 (still not even half of Bond's). Bond's career Power-Speed number (a stat that measures the mean of a player's career home runs and stolen bases) is 613, first all time. The second best ever is Henderson at 490.

The Power of Barry Bonds

 The single most valuable thing a player can do on a baseball field is hit home runs. It gives their team automatic points without needing other players to hit in order to score. Barry Bonds hit more home runs than anyone else. His 762 career homers are the most of all time, and his 73 in 2001 is the highest single season total ever. He probably could have hit another 100 homers in his career if he wasn't intentionally walked so often; he was intentionally walked 688 times over his career, 395 more than second place Hank Aaron. In fact, in the five-year span from 2000 to 2004 he was intentionally walked 16 more times than Aaron was in his entire 21 year career. His 120 intentional walks in 2004 are 75 more than anyone other than himself ever got in a season. It is impossible to tell just how many homers he would have hit if pitchers weren't too scared to actually throw the ball to him. He wasn't just a masher though; his 1440 career extra base hits are second only to Aaron's 1477, and he has 63 more extra base hits than Stan Musial who is third all time with 1377.
  Also, he was just outrageously powerful. Remember how he used to routinely smash balls into the ocean in McCovey Cove, to the point where it was pretty much expected that he would do it a few times every week?

The Giants keep track of hits into McCovey Cove, they call them Splash Hits. Bonds made them look incredibly easy, and he hit into the Cove 35 times. This is insane because AT&T park is generally very hard on left handed power hitters due to the right field wall being 24 feet high. The second highest career total for splash hits belongs to Pablo Sandoval with seven.
      It really seems like there is no need to create the perfect baseball player; he already existed. He had great genes; he is cousins with Reggie Jackson and his dad Bobby played 14 seasons in the league and was a 3 time all star who hit 332 career home runs and had 461 career stolen bases.  He was groomed to be a Giants great with his father and godfather (Willie Mays) both playing on the Giants He was born with unbelievable talent and athletic ability and delayed his aging and enhanced his power with PEDs (like every single other player of his era). He was the greatest defensive left fielder ever while also being the greatest power hitter ever and was fast enough to steal over 500 bases. Whatever anyone thinks about Bonds as a person really doesn't impact how good he was as a player, and he certainly isn't the worst person in the top group of baseball players (Ty Cobb, for example, was much worse). Although people outside of San Francisco don't like him, no conversation of who is the greatest baseball player of all time can be complete without Barry Bonds.