I love The Hardball Times (need to talk about the THT 2007 Baseball Annual sometime soon). The recently ran a great article on Bonds and his quest to break the HR record.
“Assuming Bonds sees a 20% attrition in plate appearances, that gives him about 410 opportunities, which means he needs a HR/PA rate of 5.4% to sneak over the Hammer Line, which is marginally above his 2006 pace of 5.3%. If he were to repeat his 2006 long ball rate he’d only need an extra six plate appearances (416) to beat the record. If he were to attain 450 plate appearances, then his home run rate only needs to be 4.9%, which is above what all the projections estimate. One thing is clear: The margin for error in our aging analysis is thin!”
I think it is unfortunate that we are going to have to talk about drugs all summer, but it will be interesting drama. I am a Braves fan, so I am biased, but I do not want to see Bonds break Aaron’s record. Bonds was a great player long before he started (allegedly) taking the juice, so it is regrettable that Bonds saw fit to tarnish his legacy.
