Butting Heads
An MVP Race of Mammoth Proportions
By Matt Stroup
When I was a sophomore in high school, there was a fellow on the baseball team named Alistair, a goofy sort of chap who was blessed with neither speed nor strength nor baseball skill. Alistair did have one characteristic that set him apart from the pack, though. As Dirk Diggler says in Boogie Nights, "Everyone's blessed with one special thing..."
For Alistair, that special thing was his head.
Alistair's head was its own voting district; a bulbous mass of skull and brain that threatened to topple him over at all times. There was only one helmet in our equipment bag that would fit him, and there is really no telling why such a large helmet had been purchased in the first place, as there couldn't have possibly been another human with a head as large as Alistair's.
One day, Alistair was called upon to pinch-hit (this, I suppose, is a story in and of itself). Once called to duty, Alistair searched through the equipment bag and realized that he couldn't find his helmet. The umpire began to get impatient and said he needed a batter, at which time Alistair, having no other recourse, was forced to commandeer a helmet from one of us earthlings. He set the helmet atop his dome and strode up to the plate.
Upon Alistair's arrival at home plate, it immediately became apparent that the helmet was only staying on his head because the earflaps were cinched to the top of his head like a vice. It appeared as though one wrong move in any direction would cause it to pop off his head like a champagne cork. Only the very top of his giant cranium was protected, leaving most of his forehead and ears exposed. Upon seeing this atrocity, the umpire said that Alistair would have to wear a different helmet.
At this point our coach, knowing that there was no helmet in our dugout that could come close to fitting Alistair, came trotting down the third base line and attempted to solve the problem by pushing the helmet further down onto Alistair's head. The head resisted the attack and managed to keep the helmet on top of the mountain. After another minute's struggle, our coach, in a moment of exasperated desperation, took the bat out of Alistair's hand and started hammering it on top of Alistair's helmet as if he were delicately hammering in a nail.
When the helmet still wouldn't take its rightful place on Alistair's head, the umpire seemed to realize that we were dealing with something otherworldly. He acquiesced, allowing Alistair to hit, most likely realizing that such a head could not possibly be damaged by a baseball.
* * *
Now, as we reach the stretch drive of the 2003 baseball season and I find myself wrapped up in one of the greatest National League MVP races I can remember, with each titanic blast I see Barry Bonds hit, I am wondering more and more whether Giants' manager Felipe Alou is going to have to come waddling out of the dugout one day and go "Alistair" on Barry because there is no longer a helmet in the Giants' equipment arsenal that can fit his burly dome.
All Alistair jokes aside, take a good look at Barry now and then think back to what he looked like when he first came up with the Pirates. Even think back to what he looked like in '93 when he signed with the Giants. What has happened to this man is not natural. I'm actually waiting for Barry's head to explode like the guy in The Running Man who leaves the electric perimeter with his neck collar still attached. Granted, people do tend to get bigger as they get older, but it's not like their heads just start inflating along with their bodies. Barry does lift weights, which could, theoretically, explain his insane physique, but does lifting weights religiously make your head get bigger?
To my knowledge it doesn't, but steroids or human growth hormone do, and, as great as Barry is, you'd be hard pressed to convince me that he's not actively taking one of the two, or some other bizarre supplement that has turned him into something almost inhuman from an athletic standpoint.
Even though it almost makes me sick to look at the guy, I have to give him his due. There are a lot of players in baseball who are taking substances that should be illegal if they aren't already, but none of them are as good as Barry. When the man gets his pitch, he does not miss it. That's called being clutch, and all of the steroids in the world can't give you that edge (see Canseco, Jose). Since Barry hasn't been caught yet, and since baseball's rules are as lenient as they are, you can't really fault him for taking advantage, if that's what he's doing.
The fact that Barry Bonds, all questions about supplements and one gigantic head included, is the most dangerous hitter in the National League on one of the best teams in the league, makes him the frontrunner for a very tightly contested MVP award. The fact that Barry isn't a sure thing with 39 homers and a .519 OBP shows what an amazing race this is. Here's who Barry has to contend with:
Albert
All you need to know about the season that Albert Pujols is having is that after a recent 1- for-14 slide during which he had no homers and no RBIs, he was still hitting .362 with 34 homers, 108 rbis, 43 doubles and a .672 slugging percentage. Put quite simply, the man is a monster.
His definitive MVP moment may have been on August 10, when he crushed a go-ahead and eventual game-winning homer with 2 outs in the bottom of the 8th inning, effortlessly turning a John Smoltz heater into a titanic blast to left center field. It was only the second home run Smoltz had given up all year, and Pujols made it look frighteningly easy, just as he does with the entire science of hitting as a whole.
The great thing about Pujols is, watching him play, you really don't get the sense that he spends most of his free time jabbing steroid needles into his buttocks. Granted, he is a huge guy, but it doesn't look unnatural -- there is no giant Pokemon head attached to his shoulders. In fact, I saw a feature on Pujols that showed photographs of him in high school, and he was ridiculously big then, as well. The guys you have to worry about are the ones who, like Bonds, transform their bodies in such a fashion that you can't even recognize them from what they looked like several years before. Pujols is huge, but doesn't seem to be inflating with each passing year.
If there is one lingering question about Pujols, it's the question of his age. In the photograph of him in high school, he looked like he was about 10 years older than all of his teammates. Could this guy really be only 23 years old? It seems hard to believe, but perhaps that's just because everything about Pujols as a player is so amazing and so flawless that, in this era of tainted sports heroes, it's hard to accept that there's not something wrong with Pujols.
Fortunately, even if we do find out one day that he's actually 29 or 31 or 35, what he's doing this season is anything but a forgery.
Gary
Much like Pujols, Gary Sheffield is having a season that would make him a sure thing for MVP in a universe where there was no Barry Bonds. A quick look at Gary's numbers -- a .331 average, 33 homers, 105 RBIs and 106 runs scored -- show that Gary is right on the same level with Bonds and Pujols. Some of his numbers aren't quite on the same caliber (his batting average is over 30 points lower than that of Pujols, and his on-base percentage can't touch Bonds' insane .519), but Sheffield sets himself apart in two other ways: his baserunning and defense.
A fast runner throughout his career, Sheffield lost a significant part of last year's unnecessary bulk (no comment on where that bulk came from) and, as a result, has been much more fleet on the bases, having swiped 16 bases in 19 tries. These are not meaningless steals, either. Sheffield moves himself into scoring position when his team most needs it. He also burns down the line (a foreign concept to Bonds) and has turned many a slow roller or weak chop into an infield hit.
Furthermore, having made only 2 errors in the outfield this year and a slew of outstanding plays, Sheffield stands out from Bonds and Pujols by being a very good defensive outfielder, even if he does use a glove that's bigger than an Easter basket.
The interesting thing about these two areas of Sheffield's game is that they illustrate the glaring weaknesses in Bonds' game. Always overrated as a defensive player (his throwing arm has been terrible for years), Bonds has taken a huge step back defensively since he became Captain Universe. It is, of course, a figurative step back, because he can barely even move enough in the outfield to literally go back on the ball. Essentially, all he can do is lumber around out there, his bulging hamstrings threatening to snap like overstressed rubber bands at any moment.
This lack of mobility has also made Bonds, once a 52 steal man in 1990, one of the most stationary runners in baseball. Having reached base 230 times this year by hits and walks alone, he has stolen only 7 bases. In fact, since 1999, Bonds has stolen only 55 bases total. In my opinion, this is the biggest hole in Bonds' candidacy for the MVP award. He is pitched around constantly and because of this he reaches base at an insane clip, yet he has only scored 92 runs, an impressive total until you think about the fact that Rafael Furcal of the Braves has scored 106 runs this season with a .348 on base percentage. Granted, Furcal has a better lineup around him, but regardless of who is hitting behind Bonds, it is his responsibility to do his part to make teams pay for putting him on base, and he doesn't do it. Instead, he just stands on first base and waits for a homer, because that's basically the only thing he'll score on from first base. Interestingly enough, Bonds has not been caught stealing once this year, so why doesn't he steal more bases? Is he lazy? Scared his juiced-up body can't handle the strain of running a 90-foot sprint? Has he simply lost that much speed?
Here's an illuminating fact: in back to back games on June 22 and June 23, Bonds stole a base, giving him 500 for his career and making him the only player in history to have hit 500 homers and steal 500 bases. In 42 games since then, he has reached base 98 times by a hit or a walk and has not attempted to steal a single base. Already conservative on the bases, Barry has completely shut it down since he stole his 500th base. Could it be that he cares more about personal stats than about winning?
The Verdict
There are other players in the National League other than Bonds, Pujols and Sheffield who are having great years, but these three have set themselves apart throughout the course of the 2003 season.
Ultimately, picking between these three is virtually impossible. While it's not fair to detract from Bonds just because he appears to be on steroids or something similar when he hasn't been caught yet, it is fair to realize the effect that it has had on his body. There's no overlooking his declining speed and mobility, two key elements that separate a lumberjack from a complete baseball player.
Another thing to consider about Bonds is this: I recently heard Jeff Bagwell on the radio discussing whether or not 500 home runs should automatically put someone in the Hall of Fame. He said that, in his mind, homers weren't really the key statistic in measuring a player's value. Instead he believes that runs produced, meaning the total of runs scored and runs driven in, are the most important measure of a player's value. In this era where stats such as OPS and isolated power have entered the baseball vernacular, you may think that Bagwell's argument is a bit simplistic. Regardless, he does have a point. If a player hits 500 homers in his career but only drives in 1,000 runs, then those home runs are pretty overrated. Isn't the key to the game who scores the most runs? If you look at Bonds this season, his runs produced are impressive but not incredible -- a total of 171 (92 runs scored, 79 driven in). By comparison, Pujols has produced 217 runs, Sheffield 211. Eight players in the National League alone have produced more runs than Bonds this season, and a number of other players are not so far off. Hey, Orlando Cabrera has produced 150 runs all by himself. Where's his MVP buzz?
Granted, it's not really Barry's fault that his RBI total is so relatively low since he rarely gets to hit with runners on base, but aren't we supposed to be looking at the bottom line here? Don't we care about production? It seems that in a strange way, we celebrate Barry for what he doesn't do, lauding him for how often he gets pitched around and the awesome respect he commands. The fact is, if a guy always gets intentionally walked and then just stands on first base waiting to be driven in, how valuable is he really? There's no questioning that, if given the opportunity, Barry will absolutely come through, but the fact is, he is rarely given the opportunity to win a game for his team in a clutch situation. Does that make him the most valuable player in the league, or is the most valuable player in the league the guy who actually drives in and scores the most runs, as Bagwell suggested?
Barry, Albert or Gary? It's honestly too close for me to call.
And now, in a bitter twist of fate, I'm starting to get a headache.
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