Ken Griffey Jr. goes into the Hall of Fame today. I had him number 4 on my list of favorite post-Cold War players (by the way, Kershaw has definitely jumped to number 1 since I wrote that in 2012). He's also starting in center on the All-Jim Team. So yeah, I'm a fan of Ken Griffey Jr. I am not a fan of Barry Bonds. Griffey got the highest percentage of Hall of Fame votes ever at 99.3%. I would say that it's deserved, but really it isn't. Why didn't Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Walter Johnson, Willie Mays, Sandy Koufax, or Hank Aaron get 100%? (And I realize you could possibly make the argument for Sandy Koufax not getting 100% because of his short career, but he's the greatest left-handed pitcher of all time and the second greatest pitcher ever so he deserved 100%.) This year Barry Bonds got 44.3% of Hall of Fame votes. That's 44.3% more than he should have gotten.
Anyway, this post was inspired by ESPN ranking the greatest 100 players of all time. They had Barry Bonds number 5 and Ken Griffey Jr. number 14. As much as I like Griffey, I think that might be a little high. I'd have really dig into the numbers, but I wouldn't immediately put him ahead of Joe DiMaggio, Sandy Koufax (DiMaggio and Koufax are 15 and 16 on their list, I probably would have had them in the top 10), Cy Young, Randy Johnson, Rogers Hornsby, Christy Mathewson, and Johnny Bench. But the idea of Barry Bonds being number 5 is completely absurd, especially because Ken Griffey Jr. was better than he was (and so was Mickey Mantle, Lou Gehrig, Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, Stan Musial and lots of other players).
I know Barry Bonds has better numbers than Griffey. Of course he does. He has better numbers because he was the biggest cheater in the history of baseball. Bonds would have been a Hall of Famer without steroids, but the cheating disqualifies him.
But just for fun, let's consider Bonds without steroids. I grew up in the 1990s. Ken Griffey Jr. was the best position player in baseball and there was no debate about that. Bonds started taking steroids after the 1998 season because he was jealous of Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa. Barry Bonds was 33 in 1998. So let's compare them through their age 33 seasons (it's worth nothing that Griffey's decline started at age 30, which sounds about right for a guy that wasn't cheating):
Bonds: .290/.411/.556, 411 home runs, 403 doubles, 63 triples, 3679 total bases, 1216 RBIs, 445 stolen bases
Griffey: .294/.379/.562, 481 home runs, 382 doubles, 36 triples, 3977 total bases, 1256 RBIs, 177 stolen bases
Now Griffey played in 16 more games and had 69 more plate appearances. Not much of a difference, and certainly not enough to account for and extra 70 home runs. But it is fairly close. Bonds has him beat in on base percentage, doubles, triples (by a pretty good amount), and stolen bases (by a lot). But 70 more home runs for Griffey is pretty important. Griffey has a pretty good lead in total bases also. If you want to give Bonds credit for stolen bases and add his stolen bases minus caught stealing to total bases, you end up with Griffey leading 4088-3994. So it's close in terms of hitting, but Griffey was better. And Griffey was a great center fielder. Bonds was a mediocre left fielder. Griffey was definitely better up to age 33.
If we look at age 23-29, you know, about the seven years when a baseball player should be at his best, it's not close:
Bonds: .296/.410/.557, 218 home runs, 216 doubles, 29 triples, 1979 total bases, 653 RBIs, 241 stolen bases
Griffey: .297/.387/.613, 311 home runs, 188 doubles, 18 triples, 2247 total bases, 808 RBIs, 107 stolen bases
Bonds still has him beat in some categories, but Griffey has a big lead in sluggling percentage, home runs, total bases, and RBIs. Any argument for Bonds being better than Griffey depends entirely on what he did after age 33, you know, when he went crazy cheating. Before turning 34, he had one season with more than 42 home runs. Then he hit at least 45 home runs every year from age 35-39 (for comparison, Griffey hit more than 30 once after turning 34, 35 when he was 35, and he was nowhere close to what he once was by age 38). Bonds does not deserve credit for that. That was the steroids. And before you tell me that pitchers were using steroids too, I know that. And it helped them, but it clearly helped hitters more. Pitchers didn't suddenly striking out 400 batters in a season. But you did have hitters suddenly hitting 60+ homeruns (something that's been done twice all time by guys who weren't cheating).
Before I finish, I have a quick tangent. I've heard people say that Mike Trout is the greatest hitter of the last 50 years. If you compare Trout to the rest of the league, what he's doing is pretty impressive. Obviously it's more impressive than what Griffey did compared to the rest of the league because the rest of the league was using steroids when Griffey was playing. But in fairness, Trout's numbers are better than Griffey's through their age 23 seasons (Trout is 24 right now, I used 23 since he hasn't finished his age 24 season yet). I'll just say let's see if Trout can keep playing at this level. He definitely has a chance to be better than Griffey, but he's got a lot of work to do (he has 158 home runs in his career, which is a great start, but again, he has a lot of work to do).
So congratulations to Ken Griffey Jr. He was the greatest hitter that I ever saw. Barry Bonds was just a cheating scumbag.
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