Home Run Derby

Back in early May, Barry Bonds was going nuts. He was hitting the cover off the ball and had moved to within 11 Home Runs of the Career HR record held by Hank Aaron.

During April and early May, you couldn’t escape pictures of Bonds rounding the bases at AT&T Park underneath a giant 3-digit number beginning with 7. It looked like Bonds was going send ESPN into “All Barry All the Time” mode in June, when he was projected to break the record.

But since then something’s happened … or more truthfully … hasn’t happened. Barry Bonds has stopped hitting Home Runs. ESPN doesn’t even cut away during other baseball games to show his at-bats anymore. Bud Selig has surely been doing the “happy dance” in his office since he’s not worrying about players with big heads as much as players with big mouths (Sheff and Giambi).

How big of a slump is Bonds in right now? Let’s compare …

Wow. Not only does Bonds have no power lately, he’s been hitting the ball at Mario Mendoza levels. He’s also being walked slightly more often, but that’s probably due to teams adjusting to his Apr/May stats.

Let’s split up that slump and see if there’s any trends within it.

Bonds’ hitting stats have improved recently, but not by a lot. And even though he was being walked a LOT during the first half of the slump, his walks are down significantly in the second half of the slump. Teams backed off him in the first part of the slump – are teams challenging him more since he’s been in the slump? Looks like it.

The Giants have been on the road most of for most of Bonds’ slump and are about to finish a ten-day ten-game road trip. Has it affected Old Man Bonds?

Bonds’ one Home Run came in San Fran (skewing his home power stats) – but he’s actually hit better while on the road (other than the strikeouts). He’s been walked more often on the road, which one might expect – as other teams fans’ (and possibly MLB) might not want to see Bonds break the HR record in their park.

Also – it’s been published that Bonds has been plagued by some shin splints and fatigue lately. Bonds started 20 of the 23 games he played in during the slump. He didn’t miss many games during the early season … perhaps his 42 year old body needs a break.

By the way, Baseball Prospectus now projects Bonds to break the record in Mid-July, either at home against the Dodgers or against the Cubs at Wrigley.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 7th, 2007 at 1:53 pm and is filed under Milestone Home Runs, Stats, Steroids. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.