A Season Like No Other

With current Giants lineup

No Outs

1 Out

2 Outs

With Vladimir Guerrero and Ivan Rodriguez batting behind Bonds

No Outs

1 Out

2 Outs

P

W

P

W

P

W

P

W

P

W

P

W

Bases empty

0.62*

0.86*

0.39*

0.53*

0.20**

0.20**

Bases empty

0.70*

0.98*

0.47*

0.64*

0.24**

0.30**

Runner on 1st

1.15*

1.53*

0.73*

0.97*

0.41**

0.43**

Runner on 1st

1.27*

1.68*

0.89*

1.17*

0.48*

0.59*

Runner on 2nd

1.26*

1.53*

0.85*

0.97*

0.48#

0.43#

Runner on 2nd

1.38*

1.68*

0.98*

1.17*

0.54**

0.59**

Runner on 3rd

1.45*

1.75*

1.06*

1.29*

0.52#

0.45#

Runner on 3rd

1.56*

1.88*

1.16*

1.41*

0.58**

0.61**

Runners on 1st and 2nd

1.91*

2.62*

1.38*

2.03*

0.73**

0.76**

Runners on 1st and 2nd

2.06*

2.75*

1.51*

2.17*

0.82*

0.97*

Runners on 1st and 3rd

2.09*

2.62*

1.57*

2.03*

0.75**

0.76**

Runners on 1st and 3rd

2.31*

2.75*

1.76*

2.17*

0.90**

0.97**

Runners on 2nd and 3rd

2.18*

2.62*

1.63*

2.03*

0.83#

0.76#

Runners on 2nd and 3rd

2.31*

2.75*

1.76*

2.17*

0.90**

0.97**

Bases loaded

2.98*

3.62*

2.38*

3.03*

1.23*

1.76*

Bases loaded

3.12*

3.75*

2.52*

3.17*

1.31*

1.97*

P = Run expectancy when a team pitches to Bonds

W = Run expectancy when a team walks Bonds

*PITCH TO HIM

#WALK HIM

**CLOSE CALL

Compiled by Baseball Prospectus

Just as he was about to speak, centerfielder Marquis Grissom looked warily out of the corner of his eye around the San Francisco Giants clubhouse. Was Barry Bonds within earshot? No? Good. But still....

"I probably shouldn't," Grissom said last week. "He probably wouldn't want me to.... "He had the look of a man who'd peeked inside David Copperfield's prop trunk or seen the secret recipe for Coca-Cola. Grissom smiled.

"O.K.," he said. He had to tell the story. "It was in spring training. Barry got a pitch to hit. He just missed it. It was the third out. When we were walking to the outfield, I said, 'B, what happened? What was that pitch?' And he home runs in 2001. His 50 bases on balls said, 'Man, I don't know. I missed it because my feet weren't set.' He didn't know, didn't even care what the pitch was. What matters to him is what he does."

Bonds is more than the center of the baseball universe. He is a universe unto himself. And sweet Lord have mercy on those who dare enter it, be they witless managers who fail to pitch around him with a game in the balance, the few pitchers proud or dumb enough to challenge him, or the sportswriting Hydra that sometimes, just for the dark pleasure of it, he allows close enough to simultaneously amuse and torment.

Two months shy of turning 40, Bonds has never been bigger, and not in a BALCO kind of way. Never before have baseball teams—probably teams in any sport—avoided one man the way they do Bonds, not even when he smacked 73 home runs in 2001. His 50 bases on balls (26 of them intentional) in San Francisco's 32 games through Sunday put him on pace to draw 253 walks this season, which would break the major league record of 198 he set in '02.

Consider the calculus of his performance this season: At week's end, of the 444 pitches thrown to Bonds this season, he deemed only 107 good enough to swing at. He put 59 of those into play, 10 for home runs—an alarming rate of solid, square contact by a rounded bat on a round ball. No manager worth his postgame press conference wants to fly in the face of those numbers, especially not when the rest of the Giants' lineup is so lame that San Francisco's act has become known as Barry and the Seven Dwarfs.

"It's become such a big deal," Giants general manager Brian Sabean says about every Bonds at bat, "that no manager wants to be the ESPN highlight [after which] everybody asks, 'Why did you pitch to him?' [Walking Bonds has] become an easy way to cover your ass.

"We're all going to go a long time in our lives before we see anything like this again, if we ever do. But this deprives people of watching Barry hit. And that's the ultimate insult."

Such an avoidance factor may actually improve Bonds's chance of hitting .400, something no hitter has done since Ted Williams batted .406 in 1941. At the rate he's going, Bonds, who ended last week on an 0-for-15 slide to fall from .490 to .379, will get only 334 at bats this season. If so, he would need only 134 hits to bat .400. Williams had 185 hits (and 147 walks) in 1941. (Official qualification is based not on at bats but on plate appearances; a player must have 3.1 for every game played by his team, and Bonds had 3.6 at week's end.)

Asked last week if he could hit .400, Bonds said, "No. Too many pitching changes.... I'm not trying to hit .400. I'm just trying to hit. There are two records that will probably last forever: the 56-game hitting streak and hitting .400."