The Giants With Bonds and Without |

The Giants have opened up a solid lead in the NL West and have the third best record in the NL. It’s been nearly five full seasons since Barry Bonds, the greatest generator of positive sabermetric statistics since Babe Ruth, was left unsigned by the Giants (or anyone else), after an historic 15-year run in San Francisco. As far as winning games is concerned, the Giants have barely lost a beat since Barry left. Some comparative win-loss numbers and other team stats after the jump.

Over all the games in which Barry played for the Giants, regular season and post-season combined, San Francisco put up a record of 1,076 wins and 927 losses. That’s a win-loss percentage of .537. I did not include any Giants games in which Barry did not play, even if he was on the roster.

Beginning with the 2008 season, the Giants have played entirely without Barry Bonds. Over the period from Opening Day 2008 through yesterday’s games, the Giants have won 415 regular season games and lost 368, and have a post season record of 11 wins and 4 losses. That makes for an overall post-Bonds record of 426 wins and 372 losses — which means a post-Bonds win-loss percentage of .534 compared with that .537 in the games in which Bonds played. That’s a tiny, tiny difference. If the post-Bonds Giants had won at exactly the same rate as they did when they had Barry in the game, they would have won 428 or 429 games over the past five years instead of 426. It is fair to say that the Giants (who of course won the World Series without Barry that they never succeeded in winning with him) have successfully moved on.

It’s true that the Giants have been a very different kind of team without Bonds:

1993-2007
Average NL Scoring per Game: 4.66 runs
Average SF Runs Scored Per Game: 4.82
Average SF Runs Allowed Per Game: 4.62

2008-2012
Average NL Scoring per Game: 4.34 runs
Average SF Runs Scored Per Game: 4.03
Average SF Runs Allowed Per Game: 3.93

But although San Francisco has been a different kind of team since the end of the Bonds era, it has been no less successful at winning games.

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mosc

11 years ago

Wait, so you’re saying that offense went down at the end of the steroids era? And that in baseball teams that can spend money tend to compete year to year consistently? Groundbreaking journalism!

kzuke

Reply to mosc

i don’t think this article is saying either one of those things. offense has decreased in the last five years, but that’s hardly the point of this item. and while the giants are in the top half of spenders, they’re generally not usually in the big spender conversation (they’ve only spend $100M twice in that five year period – generally 10th-15th among the 30 teams). what this article is getting at is that the giants have remained successful despite losing arguably the best offensive player of the last 80 years. and they’ve done it by turning from good offense/average defense… Read more »

BIG10INCH

Reply to kzuke

I agree. I figured if you lose 10% of your runs and still maintain that winning percentage they must have improved pitcing and defense etc.

brp

Ask the Mets and Cubs how consistently successful teams that can spend money are…

I could be wrong but it looks to me like with Bonds they scored 3.8% more than the average team and without him they scored 7.1% less than the average. So perhaps can you say he made a net difference of 10.1% in the positive?

Jim Bouldin

Reply to BIG10INCH

You can’t add/subtract percentages unless the denominators are equal, which they aren’t here. And I think you meant 10.9 anyway.

Author

birtelcom

Actually, that’s probably a pretty good estimate of Bonds’ run-scoring impact for his team. It would have taken an increase in team run scoring of about .45 runs the last five years to get the Giants back to the level above the NL average that they were sustaining when he was with the team. Using b-ref’s “Runs Created” formula (a variation on the basic runs created formula of “Total Bases multiplied by On-Base Percentage”), Bonds created 2,149 runs for the Giants in the regular season and played in 1,976 games. That’s about 1.09 runs that Bonds was creating for the… Read more »

Jeff

Reply to birtelcom

1.09 runs per game created…WOW! That’s an amazing stat.

Reply to Jeff

Only three men produced more career RCs (b-ref formula) than Games Played (min. 8 career games played). Bonds doesn’t make that cut when you include his Pirates years as well as his Giants years. The top nine in career Runs Created divided by Games Played:
Ruth 1.086
Ted Williams 1.039
Gehrig 1.032
Bonds .969
Pujols .929
Greenberg .927
Foxx .919
Hornsby .907
DiMaggio .904

The Giants have been good for a long time. They were good before they got Bonds (e.g. 1989 WS) and they’ve been good since. In fairness to Bonds, they did make it to the WS, just did not win it, and winning the WS once you make it there is far from guaranteed, regardless of how good you are.

Reply to Jim Bouldin

Which is why I tried to emphasize the overall winning percentage angle rather than the World Series winning angle.

We all know(at least I do)that if the Giants had this pitching staff, even just one of the big 3(Cain, Bumgarner, Lincecum)on that ’02 team they would’ve won that series. The pitching was awful in that series where as the 2010 series had dominant pitching and not a lot of hitting. Barry was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. I know that’s a big IF but still… To think what the Giants could be post Bonds if Zito wasn’t so awful the last 5 years and Lincecum this year + any sort of run producing lineup not… Read more »

Voomo Zanzibar

The ages and ops+ of the 8 starters on the 2007 Giants:

32 86
36 92
35 64
40 61
32 80
42 169
35 79
33 104

Jameson

Reply to Voomo Zanzibar

For the 2010 Champs:
23 133
33 142
32 102
30 102
23 99
33 136
32 78
26 85

For the ’02 WS Team:
37 103
34 90
34 147
30 92
29 104
37 268
30 78
34 107

It was exciting to watch the Giants in their Bonds-transition, as Lincecum and Cain came of age. But truly maddening to witness, in Bonds’ last few years, the offensive mediocrity that surrounded his juggernaut. Here’s who most frequently batted behind Bonds in those years, and their (lack of) offense: 2007 48g – Ray Durham – .218 .295 .343 .638 64 44g – Ryan Klesko – .260 .344 .401 .744 92 six hr 40g – Bengie Molina- .276 .298 .433 .731 86 Team was 15th in Runs Scored 2006 Ray Durham – .293 .360 .538 .898 127 Okay, career year out… Read more »

kds

There was another famous player who started with one team and spent 15 years with another. Some had problems getting on with him. He set some HR records and retired earlier than Bonds. The first five years after he was gone from that team after 15 years, were much better than the average of his career there, both in w% and WS championships. So that Babe Ruth guy was even easier to replace than BB.

I don’t care what anyone says, I’ve never seen a better, more feared hitter in my life than Bonds.