was kinda hoping for a scientific examination of how far barry bonds could punch a baseball pitched at him, but this is even more amazing. the menacing aura of barry bonds... amazing.
I love how you used Barry in regular clothes just smiling as if to say: oh hey guys, I was just walking through the neighborhood and noticed you were playing a baseball game."
@@tybrown2889 Barry was a HOFer before he ever decided to start taking steroids. shame that the greatest slugger in history irreparably tarnished his legacy like that.
@@Cynsham People don't get how he was maybe the greatest player in MLB since Mays (whom some consider the greatest ever), and 100% an inner circle Hall of Famer. Pre-steroids Bonds is Mike Trout before Mike Trout and sabermetrics. Anyway, the only thing greater than Barry Bonds' talent was his ego, and he just couldn't stomach all the praise lavished on inferiors who were roided up like McGwire and Sosa. So he decided to show everyone what you could truly do if baseball wanted chemically-enhanced He-men. How he could have the best seasons ever at an age when all-time great players begin to retire. Definitely a shame he tarnished his legacy.
May I suggest “What if 1999 Pedro Martinez pitched without any fielders?” He already has the highest FIP of any pitcher since 1945 and the 4th highest all time. Would be cool to see a chart about this.
One statistical caveat: you based the pitches he was thrown on his entire career. However, he would likely have been thrown a far higher proportion of strikes earlier in his career. In other words, pitchers would be much less intimidated by rookie Barry Bonds than by 2004 Barry, so if anything, he would be thrown an even higher percentage of bad pitches than you included. This means his OBP, properly speaking, would be even greater than .608
Dario Colon I think he’s saying that they would throw less strikes. If they throw in the strike zone, he’s going to hit it, so they want to get him to swing at balls, which doesn’t actually work out
@@georgebishop4627 I'm super late but yes you can prove it. Use the amount of balls to strikes for just 2004 instead of the amount for his career and the numbers would change and hed actually be getting thrown more balls. It's easily provable
And when you were watching, it ALWAYS felt like a mistake to pitch to him. As a giants fan, I remember how excited the whole stadium would get whenever he came up in a situation they had to pitch to him, but even then he would often get 4 consecutive pitches out of the zone and take his free pass.
@@abbajabba7 Baseball has never had a presence at the plate like Barry Bonds, at least in my life time. Must see TV, you literally got excited just because they decided to pitch to the man. Best ever.
Skrt Reynolds the early 2000’s was the era of baseball I grew up on, and it felt like almost every team had a player that was exciting to see, and Bonds was the best player of the era.
So, you probably won't see this, but it's worth pointing out: what you're doing is essentially a Monte Carlo simulation. But, at least as far as I can tell, you've only run the simulation once. You can't really infer anything from a sample of one simulation; you'd be at the mercy of variance. That's why Monte Carlo simulations involve hundreds, or thousands, of trials. By running lots of trials and then taking the average, you end up closer to the expected value of the situation - i.e., what an average 2004 season for Barry Bonds with no bat would look like. If you run the simulation through more trials, you probably end up with something a bit lower. Still insanely high, but not necessarily as .608.
Also it would make sense to assume that plate appearances that ended as a strike out would have featured more pitches thrown for a strike, again the number might not drop much, but the likelyhood of a strike probably would change from pitcher to pitcher and plate appearance to plate appearance.
As a fan of the game during that 2000 - 2004 stretch, I honestly wondered why pitchers ever threw him strikes...like ever. He was murdering the ball at an inhuman rate. It was like playing baseball against a superhero. If I was the opposing manager, I'd walk him every single time and hold his ops to 1.000, because he's actually less of a threat if you just give him a walk every single time. Unreal greatness.
@@zebrain2330 barry was the best, then others started to juice, then he started to juice, and barry became the best again. he just evened the playing field imo
Holding a bat is a intentional restraint to prevent Barry Bonds from unleashing his true power on innocent civilians, kinda like Shadow The Hedgehog’s inhibitor rings
@@leetorry Shooting Ken Griffey Jr. in the back with a handheld weaponized pitching machine and standing over his lifeless body as fire surrounds the two
Cheese in my pockets Velveeta “full of crap” is that an aggressive way of saying “selectively shares statistics in a compelling narrative backed by wonderfully composed graphics and music”?
it's actually higher since you didn't simulate the small possibility he was hit by a pitch in each of those simulated pitches. Since a hit by pitch would never be worse than a walk and it is better than a strike out it would only improve his odds. other than that cool vid.
Jon, we're forgetting Hit by Pitches in the 335 in play balls you simulated. So rough calculations, he was HBP 9 times in his 617 AB's in the 2004 season. That comes out to about 1.5%, and given there were 335 plate appearances Jon had to simulate. Of the 335 Jon simulated, Barry walked on 133 anyways, so we're left with 102 plate appearances where he "struck out" according to the simulation. Given that he had roughly a 1.5% chance to get hit on any given at bat, odds are he would have gotten at least one HBP according to that estimate. Plus of the actual 34 strikeouts he did have, subtracting the 7 walks Jon got anyways, gives us 136 AB's to simulate. Also, because I'm only going to count balls as potential HBP's, and Barry got 58.7% of pitches outside the strike zone, that gives us 80 at bats where he could have gotten hit. considering that 1.5% chance we only need, on average, 67 at bats for Barry to get hit. I generated 67 random numbers, and got 2 under 15 from 1 to 1000, for that 1.5% chance. GIVING BARRY AN OBP OF .611, MAKING HIM BETTER WITHOUT A BAT THAN WITH ONE IN 2004.
This is probably the most important sports video I’ve ever seen. I don’t think a week goes by without me thinking about it. It essentially and fundamentally puts out there that having a player who performs gets a bonus in their ability just from reputation. It’s true in football and American football, cricket everything. As soon as teams start fearing a player that player just gets more chance to do what they’re good at.
Another good example of someone like that is Deion Sanders, who played in the NFL from 1989 to 2005 (14 seasons), and he primarily played as a cornerback. His defense was so dominant that teams would straight-up not send the ball anywhere near his direction; he shut down an entire half of the field. Just in case that isn't enough to show what an athlete he was, he played baseball from 1989 to 2001 (9 seasons). Learned all about him from the Dorktown Atlanta Falcons documentary.
yeah, i've seen PSG collapse against Barcelona in the Champions League (no not that one, the one before that). Messi started warming up to get subbed in and PSG immediately panicked and conceded a goal. They were scared of the idea of Messi.
Man, I remember when I was a little kid going to Giants games with my Dad and seeing the chickens they'd put up by the strikeout tally every time a pitcher walked Barry. Great times.
1) You should run the full simulation multiple times; it isn't impossible for a single run to be particularly lucky or unlucky even with the number of pitches you had to simulate. 2) You left out possibilities on the newly created pitches; the pitcher could hit Bonds with the ball. Or other mistakes could be made. (Though these would help Bonds.) 3) The general percentages don't necessarily translate to specific moments. The situations where you need to simulate new results may be weighted towards less general figures. 4) It isn't actually impossible that Bonds could theoretically be the same or even better without a bat.
5) the test is about fear from his reputation but his strike/ball stats are from his entire career. It's reasonable to think 2004 barry would get a higher proportion of balls than barry in his first few years in the majors. Using numbers from before he built his reputation defeats the point of testing how his reputation affected the game. Shouldve used his 2004 ball/strike numbers.
#3 is absolutely correct. A lot of the pitches he had to simulate came late in the at-bat, where the distribution of strikes to balls would be very different than Bonds' career average.
@@techpriestsalok8119 Given the large number of intentional walks, that number sounds totally correct. The bigger question is: Is it fair to assume that these made up pitches would have included intentional walks?
I always watch this video every few months when I feel down and the sheer joy and awe I feel when the final number is revealed makes me giggle like a child
This and Foolish Bailey's 'Bonds in 4' are GREAT indepth dives to the absolute terror that was Barry Bonds from 00-04.. I really wish he'd be the hitting coach for seattle right now.. those dudes swing at EVERYTHING
Listening to Jon is like being told a story in bed when you're a kid, the feel of all of his videos is something that lots of people have tried to emulate but nobody does it quite like him. Thank you Jon you make UA-cam a great place
Funny thing about this, is that Jon may have actually shortchanged Barry here. Because he should have also used the 19% ball randomizer for swinging strikes, not just foul balls.
This experiment makes me think of the naval warfare strategy of a "fleet in being", defined by Wikipedia as "a naval force that extends a controlling influence without ever leaving port." Thus, Barry Bonds was considered a threat just by literally standing in the batter's box, not even having to take a swing - in effect, just from his mere existence. That is hilarious. Of course, to reach that pinnacle required illustrating his dominance at the plate before that season.
The baseball gods: no Barry, you can’t have a bat this year. Barry: why? Baseball gods: it’s not fair, Barry Barry: Ok... Also Barry: *begins staring at the pitchers so menacingly they walk him* Baseball gods: NO! THIS ISN’T HOW YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO PLAY THE GAME!
@@jaydenpreston6102 I think what he means is that in this scenario, with the extra pitches that are thrown to him (some of which were balls), some were bound to hit him.
@@sportsjoe17 ye but most of the extra pitches were probably ball four anyways. I guess there could be the possibility of it but probably at a chance where it wouldn't happen in most seasons
Barry bonds was his by 106 pitches in his 12606 plate appearances. If I did my math right, if you multiply this percentage by 335 (2004 plate appearances not yet counted), he would have been hit by 2.8 more pitches, which would put his OBP at 0.612, making him more dangerous without a bat than with one. Here's the math I used if anyone cares to look ((106/12606)(335)+366+9)/617=0.6123450771
@@KDogg_96 Actually it WAS proven and that's why his name is striken from his HR record. Granted, he was skilled, but the power spike came from the juice. This is indisputable and with factual evidence.
We're talking about a prediction the pitcher makes: they know Bonds will get on base, so they choose to limit the damage of that happening. When you look at it that way, it makes perfect sense for the OBP to stay the same. If anything, it shows how accurate the pitchers are in assessing their own and Bonds capabilities
Based on the conditions of the experiment, it seems like this could be real. The only argument I could've pondered was satisfied when it was stated that the pitcher has no idea Barry doesn't have a bat. Its such a silly and absurd thought, but at that time Barry Bonds commanded respect with his power and discipline. I'm also glad you did this, because had this experiment ever ran across my mind, there's no way I follow through. Though, looking at some of the other Chart Party episodes, this seems tame. Your drive is admirable.
@@Meganarb i think it's more he has a bat that is visible but insubstantial so that he swings like usual but if the pitcher pitched a strike he'd strike out (and if he didn't swing then he still wouldn't swing). But obviously this is pretending that pitchers would still have the same pitch selection for a guy who has made zero contact with the ball all season long.
The percent of strikes Bonds received was probably a function of the count. I imagine he'd be more likely to see a strike in a 3-2 count than a 3-1 count. Using count based ball/strike odds might affect the results a bit, but I don't know if that stat existed at the time. Because of the virtually extended counts, there's increased odds that he'd have reached via HBP. This would increase his OBP, but it'd likely be a very small increase. The random number generation might have affected the result too, running the simulating more than once and taking the average would help with that. This was absolutely fantastic to watch though, it must have taken forever to work all this out.
ZebraCakes running the number generator more than once and taking an average would badly screw up the probabilities. The more times it is used, the more likely it is that the average comes close to 500. If he averaged thousands of numbers for each pitch, there would not be a single ball thrown.
Several years later, I've been thinking about how the end of this video -- the no, no!-- is a clear demonstration of the limitations of imputation. The video serves both as an explainer and a cautionary tale.
At first I thought this video would be totally stupid for many reason. However, GREAT work! You, my friend, are a fantastic stat freak! And, baseball, as we know, is a stat freaks Heaven.
That's it. I know what it is now, Jon. If you did your videos without the music, your likeability would STILL be off the charts. But it's the music... wind jazz... that feeling of the stark loneliness of stats, of reasearching and accumulating them is usually done alone. The wailing sax... lost, searching... Oh no. You'll have to stretch it out even further. And then you do reach the end. You're done. It's over. No more stats to get. It's presentation time and the music perks up. (Usually. Depending on the outcome.) *Your stories, with or without the music, just like Barry with or without his bat would still be freakishly good* Better than "Pretty Good." So the word I found to describe the deep down feeling of mellow, even safe, familiar, a happy-sad (if that's possible) feeling by your fans when we watch until the end and then it's gone... and probably to you when you finish them and release them into the internet wild. The word is... *forlorn* Thank you for reading. ~D.
The real question here should be "What if Barry Bonds had never walked?" In other words, opposing pitchers all had the cojones to pitch to him. He would have hit more home runs, probably would have ended his career in the mid 800s, BUT... he also would have made a lot more outs, his on base percentage would have been brought down to the level of his batting average. So the question is would the outs have offset the home runs and would his team have actually lost more games because of it. I always thought pitching around him was a dumb strategy if it wasn't a "win the game" situation.
big8dog88 I can’t really remember his teammates but I also think him getting intentionally walked was also a function of his teammate sucking. Like they were willing to bet the guys hitting after him are way less likely to score him in. Plus you get s chance for a double play ending the inning early with less pitches thrown.
Craziest stat in this video for me is that of the 191 plate appearance in which he never swung the bat, only two were goddamn outs.... It's stupendously insane, his bat literally was fear.
So after watching this video many times over the several years since it was released I think I've figured out the "mistake" that was made in simulation, AND something that could be done to get a better simulation. Basically the issue is that, typically, the farther behind the pitcher is in the count, the more likely he is to throw a strike, which is why those counts are good ones to hit in. Now, there's likely a sample size problem that would make simulating pitches based on what bonds was thrown in every possible count would not yield a big enough sample size in some, rarer counts, to get an accurate simulation, but I think it might be possible to sort them into categories like "batter ahead" "pitcher ahead" and "even count" or, perhaps, simply split them into "3 ball counts" and "all other counts." I know this probably won't be revisited after such a long time, but it is a super fun idea, so I figured since I just thought of this I'd mention it =P
I can 100% see how this would be an applicable variable in this simulation but in reality, the solution of "the pitcher tries harder to throw strikes and is therefore more successful in throwing said strikes for bonds to hit" isnt necessarily valid and feels like a bit of a cop out compared to the variables that were tested. I imagine, especially based on the case of the 3-1 intentional walk, even if they NEED to throw the strike they might still choose to not. I appreciate the extended thought on the subject tho cuz same, doesnt seem like it should be possible but how baseball stats work allow it to be
Another, more important question: Does that strike zone percentage include intentional walks? Because intentional walks are already accounted for and we are trying to simulate the pitches where the pitcher didn't intentionally walk him. We would specifically need the percentage of pitches that went into the strike zone when the pitcher wasn't trying to intentionally walk him.
This video really makes me think, what if Billy Beane and his Moneyball operation was in SF in 2004 instead of on the other side of the Bay in Oakland? I just imagine this conversation going down: Billy: Barry, we need you to stop swinging the bat Barry: Why tf would I do that? Billy: Well we ran the numbers and if you went the rest of the season not swinging the bat once, you’d have a .608 OBP, the highest in MLB history Barry: Man gtfo, how you gonna tell me I’ll get to .608 without swinging? You high or somethin’ Billy?
I'm a lifelong Giant's fan, I watched Bonds career (his Giants career) and I can tell you without doubt he was the most feared hitter I've ever seen. Even when pitches pitched to him he would rarely see a pitch in the strike zone and when he did it was usually an un-intention mistake. (from about 1999-2004) I saw games where pitches walked in runs with the bases loaded rather than give Barry an opportunity to hit a Grand Slam. You say what you want about the live ball era and steroids and all the rest, I watched those games and I say for a brief time Barry Lamar Bonds was the greatest hitter to ever play the game. You love the numbers game, take the number of at bats Bonds got in 2004 subtract the number of walks intentional or otherwise, and the number of times he was hit by a pitch so your looking at just the at bats where he actually swung the bat and in those at bats look at the total bases he had. Bonds had more total bases in fewer at bats than Ted Williams or George Hermann Ruth in the greatest seasons of their careers. For a brief moment in time Barry Lamar Bonds was the the greatest hitter that's ever played and anyone who watched those seasons will tell you it was like watching Ricky Henderson in 1982, you just knew that you were watching something historic, something unprescidented, something as a baseball fan your not likely to ever see again in your lifetime.
I think that it's an accurate representation, but the only way to reeeeeally nail it down would be to redo it about 10 more times and average out the totals, although it may end up being a big waste of time and you'd get the same results anyways
yeah, i tend to agree. i thought about running it through more than one simulation, but decided not to because a) it would have taken forever and i really didn't want to, b) i was worried that that amount of manual simulation could result in errors, and c) i figured that a sample size of a few hundred was large enough to ensure that the results were distributed in the right ratio.
thanks! for the research end i use Google Sheets and i'm super-dependent on Sports-Reference for the data (a Baseball-Reference subscription is like $6 a month and totally worth it). i use Sheets to generate the charts, then edit them in Photoshop and upload them to Google Earth, which i use to animate/scroll/etc. Earth wasn't really intended to do that but it actually works really well.
I think you actually slightly underestimated Bonds's potential for getting on base. For the instances where you had to introduce and simulate additional pitches, you never factored in that some small percentile of those will end up as HBP, instantly getting Bonds on base.
I love this video and am impressed by your approach. The key element here is that the pitcher doesn't know Bonds doesn't have a bat, so you're OBP is purely a reflection of how pitchers pitched at Bonds. The reality is that most players would seems to be actively lowering their OBP vs their "without a bat" sim because pitchers generally try to pitch the edges of the zone to make batters swing. There is a game theory at play between the pitcher and the batter because the batter wants to get on base and the pitcher wants to strike the batter out. A pitcher would rather walk a batter than give up a hit and a batter would rather make contact with the ball then go out looking. However, if a batter swings too often, then a pitcher will pitch more breaking balls outside the zone to get a strike on what should be a ball. If a batter doesn't swing often enough, a pitcher will throw in the zone more confident the batter won't swing. This gets really complex really fast, but its why plate discipline is so incredibly important. The batter has the advantage of game theory because they get to see the pitch before it reaches the plate. If they are good at reading the pitch, then they have essentially hacked baseball as long as they know how to connect with a good pitch whenever it comes. However, the better your plate discipline, the more often you get walked because the stats do not favor throwing even one pitch over the plate. So if you've got really strong plate discipline, your "without a bat" OBP should be sky high; no pitcher wants to throw one over the plate when you bat. So it would be impressive enough just to come close to your sim OBP, but Bonds does even better than that. He is so tremendous that he is able to exploit the marginal advantage the batter has and get on base more often by swinging than not.
Since you used random number generation, run it several more times because you might have had an unusually high number of certain outcomes. Several simulations or just multiplying the total by the percentages and rounding up or down might affect the outcome....
I just did this via a Python script... The average OBP over 10,000 simulations was .590. Still good enough to be the best OBP in the history of the sport. The lowest result was .533. I didn't think to look at the highest, I think it was over .660.
Surely the best solution is to just scrap the random number generator entirely, just leave all the at bats where pitches were simulated as a fraction of an on base or out.
@@colinpetersen1173 That would yield results that are more accurate than what Jon did, but still less accurate than an ensemble like what Matt did. Or at least it would be less accurate than a proper ensemble of like 100,000 simulations or more. I'm not convinced 10,000 is quite enough. There are other problems in the data he used. One that is easy to spot is that he used the set of all pitches Bonds swung at to estimate the likelihood that a pitch he fouled off was in the strike zone. But it is nearly certain that Bonds fouled off a higher proportion of pitches outside the strike zone than he fouled off pitches inside the strike zone. Surely a pitch down the middle was more likely to land in fair territory. Taking that into account would actually exaggerate his OBP without a bat even further (by a tiny bit). And there are lots of other things like this.
@@demonvictim basically means that his humanity and hubris was holding him back. He would swing at stuff he shouldn’t and get a foul, when it was better to just let it go
Are you able to find the pitches thrown at Barry Bonds by the count? Like are there more balls at a 2-2 count or whatever, that could be a bit more accurate. Also doing it a few times could also be very good
Agree with this. He already has that data from looking at next pitch of at bats that lasted beyond 2-2 for example. @JonBois share the data from your experiment in Excel and I can compile these percentages for you
My hypothesis is that pitchers are more likely to throw strikes when behind in the count (3-1), and more likely to throw balls when ahead, so this more complicated simulation will result in longer ABs, but to what magnitude each is true is unclear. As other comments mention, would be useful to add replication to the simulation
Came back to this a couple of years later and just realized that on the balls to walks thing that had him being pitched a ball like 58% of the time, he may have forgotten to take balls from intentional walks out of the equation.
I didn't say this before, but thank you for the great 15th birthday gift that is this video. 7 years later, I'm still enjoying it as if I'm seeing it for the first time.
I guess something you could’ve taken into account is, instead of strikes/balls ratio for the whole game of baseball, you could take that ratio for each pitcher individually and specifically when they pitch against Barry Bonds
I’ve watched this a few times and it just occurred to me the no-bases intentional walk might have been because they had a better chance of getting him out on the base path, rather than at the batter’s box. Would be interesting if someone calculated how likely it was for him to score once he actually got to first base
Since the league on-base percentage was .333 that year, Batless Bonds got on base 162 times more than the average player would have over those 617 plate appearances. That also meant he saved 162 outs at the plate, giving his teammates 162 free trips to the plate, or about 4 games worth. Since the Giants averaged 5.2 runs per game, that meant that Batless Bonds was worth about 20 runs just from the runs that his teammates were able to produce with the extra at-bats he saved for them.
Best Raptor - good point. Bonds was worth about a run per game, so the other Giants were worth about 4.2 runs per game, so instead of 20 runs he added about 16 runs by saving his teammates "ups". Of course, he also saved some of his own plate appearances too, but now we're getting into a circular type calculation...so maybe a bit more than 16 runs is the final answer.
That's what I was thinking. If the scouting report comes back with "doesn't swing ever", fear is not an issue. Intentional walks don't happen, and they're not throwing very many balls at him.
I'm an actual scientist, so I'll tell you what was missing from this analysis. The .608 OBP is not the only possible result of the random distribution of results that you simulated. A proper statistical analysis would produce a distribution of POSSIBLE results based upon those probabilities then create a probability distribution of possible OBPs that he could have achieved. Here's an analogy. If you simulate 100 coin flips, and you obtain 68 heads, you could not justifiably conclude that the real coin you were simulating would obtain 68 heads. The form that a true scientific answer would take is something more like, "The highest non-Bonds OBP is Ted Williams at .553. Given the probability distributions entered into the model, there is a 63% chance that Barry Bonds would have scored higher than .553". I made up the number 63%, and you'd be bored if I tried to teach you how to calculate probability distributions, but that's the basic idea. NOTE: There was another comment on here about Monte Carlo simulations that makes basically the same point.
I have watched this video probably 10 times. Not just because of Bonds (he was amazing, roids or not) but the way Jon Bois presents the info. He does a fantastic job simplifying it and he is really calming and knowledgeable. Credits to you Jon.
I know this is like 5 years late but I would expect the inside zone vs outside zone to be dependent on the count. If the count is 3-2, I would be much more likely to throw a strike than 0-2. I would assume the percentages are also different for 1-0 vs 0-1 counts.
Jason Horwitz I just wrote this but it makes more sense to 2nd your statement. Pitcher are more likely to throw a strike with 3 balls. Not represented in the stats.
And if you want to get into more details: pitcher-, score-, situation (i.e., # on and outs in a inning), and count- specific ball/strike probabilities.
Let’s talk about the music in your videos, which is arguably AS important as the stats you’ve compiled, your editing, and your just plain ol’ flair for theatricality. You’re the best thing in sports criticism and examination today. Periodt.
Concerning your methodology, have you tried this same method with other hitters of the same period? Do we get similarly wacky results or are they just not there. I think some comparisons would help settle the question on whether or not this was the right method.
im a year late to this party but i agree this was my first thought. If every baseball player has an improved obp with this system then we can agree its flawed. if we do it for 100 players and barry bonds is the only one or one of a select few that actually improves then we'll know he's actually that special.
Jesse G I seriously don’t think that would happen, i think Bonds is the outlier here because he was intentionally walked at a historic rate but also had elite plate discipline he walked over 1000 times more than he struck out in his career where as frank thomas walked about 200 times more than he struck out.
3:13 Bonds in 1993 had a top ten all time intentional walk total. Years before he took steriods. I believe Bonds is the greatest baseball player of all time. Even greater than Babe Ruth who never stole as many bases as Bonds or won Gold Gloves like Bonds.
Greatest is debatable, but certainly one of the best. It's why there's a good argument that he should nevertheless be in the Baseball Hall of Fame, whereas a Sosa or McGwire really doesn't belong
Greatest is Ichiro dude. Didn’t need to use drugs to get there, maintained that consistency over a decade, didn’t even start in America until his mid twenties, and played in the super competitive steroid era.
Hey man, did you adjust the chance of a pitch being a ball or strike depending on the count? It seems to me that a lot of simulated pitches would be on 3-1 or 3-2 counts, which are more likely to be in the zone than the average pitch.
Music (what Shazam would tell me): 0:26 Keith Mansfield - Love De Luxe 2:00 Richard Philip Birdsall - Zero Gravity 4:07 is too short to get a read on, sadly. 6:04 and 10:15 have the sound effects and don't read. I really want the 10:15 source.
Finally having an answer to what the theme song is was great, finding out the theme song is available on vinyl was better, finding out that records is going for 65 bucks was... less good.
So you're at the mercy of variance with the random number generation. You would have to simulate these at bats enough times each to decrease variance below a certain point (say 95% confidence). Another way (which I've taken the time to do here) would be to apply the expected value of number of balls and strikes that occur in the ambiguous cases and simply see how many at bats flip as a result. Obviously this is complicated, as some at bats have multiple ambiguous pitches at different points during the at bat. One nice thing about the "walks" section is that GENERALLY there's only 1 ambiguous ball that causes a walk. So if that gets flipped, we can safely say it would've been a strikeout. Based on the probabilities you presented, 3 balls in the "walk" section should be strikes, thus removing 3 walks from the equation. In the "strikeouts" section, 3 more orange strikes would be expected, but where to apply them? As 7 of the 16 orange balls cause walks, I'd say slightly less than half of our 5 would then flip a result. Remove 2 walks.For the yellows, 1 more strike would be expected. Of the 14 places we could apply this, 10 would change the result to a strikeout. Remove 1 more walk. Up to 6 now. Finally, the "In play" section. Your simulation got 133 walks out of 335 AB. That is significantly LESS than what I would expect given the 58.7% of pitches are balls statistic you presented. Think about it. If 4/7 pitches are balls, that means walks to strikeouts should be about 50/50. It takes 4 balls to walk, 3 strikes to strikeout. 58.7% balls is quite close to 4/7, in fact it's a bit more. So if half of these 335 AB's were walks, my final estimate would come out to 28 more walks than you had. A 639 OBP. However, this neglects the fact that Bonds swung at at least 1 pitch in all of these at bats. Which leads me to my last point. So where's the flaw? Perhaps generalizing to "58.7% of pitches are balls" was too broad. Every pitch is a different circumstance, something you addressed when you applied the situation where Bonds swung. The moral? This is an incredibly difficult question that is impossible to answer accurately. I think you made a damn good attempt at doing it, though. In all likelihood, Bonds would still have had the highest OPB that season, perhaps even all time. The point of the video as I understood it was to prove that through fear alone, Bonds achieved very high stats in Major League Baseball. You certainly did that.
I can't see any issues with this simulation. The only thing I could suggest is run the simulation about 99 more times, same rules, and get an average of the results. Since it is a simulation and not a season, it's okay to get a larger sample size and compare/contrast.
was kinda hoping for a scientific examination of how far barry bonds could punch a baseball pitched at him, but this is even more amazing. the menacing aura of barry bonds... amazing.
Ikks Nayhelm same
or a roundhouse kick. I’d probably watch a lot more baseball if that was an option.
Ikks Nayhelm how about off if forehead happy Gilmore style
When I clicked on the video I was thinking "use arm swing as a bat" and like, how many pitches before his bones turn to dust lol
Bring a boxing glove like Donkey Kong in Mario Baseball
I love how you used Barry in regular clothes just smiling as if to say: oh hey guys, I was just walking through the neighborhood and noticed you were playing a baseball game."
"O-ok Barry, y-you can play. You know what just take first base, PLEASE DON'T HURT ME!"
No one like the comment
@@zaw33mc24 actually 473 people and counting like the comment so... 🤷♂️
@@zaw33mc24 588 now bub, how many yours got?
Jon Beers it was at 420 likes
Pitching coaches: What are you doing? Why aren't you striking him out?!
Pitchers: He's just standing there...MENACINGLY.
A Jojo reference in a baseball vid?
Well played. 😂
@@kevp6488 thats
a spongebob reference
@@ImaginaryStudios @kev p filthy acts at a reasonable price could go to a universe where this is a jojo reference
RUN FOR YOUR LIFE
@@farischugthai5598 nigerundayo
Two weeks into season:
"Hey, has anyone noticed that Barry hasn't swung the bat once?"
I'm not gonna risk being the one he swings on!
what bat?
Only Intentional walk so far this season. Maybe he can swing the bat after the All-star break.
Coach: "Yea, but he's on fire. i dont even wanna talk to the guy cause I'm afraid ill jynx'em."
This video makes zero sense. The pitchers would not have pitched him the same had he not had a bat. Hello?
but what if he played with two bats?
Pitcher slaughterings.
whos-spamuel I’ll see your two bats and raise you bat shoes and a bat arm guard
What if he played with four bats?
He would hit a Dinger every time
Imagine if baseball was played with metal bats and lacrosse balls.
Jon, I'd like you to run the simulation again, but this time if Barry Bonds had held a big ol' summer sausage instead of a baseball bat. Thanks.
I would also be happy if you substituted a six foot party sub in lieu of a bat.
I would also be ok with a live bat instead of a baseball bat
pigpuddle YARD-O-BEEF,LOL
pigpuddle One of those minature,gimmick bats
What's the background music at 10:14??
Wow, it’s such a big coincidence that all 4 players that broke 1.25 in OPS were all named Barry Bonds
Yeah, arthritis cream and flaxseed oil works wonders.
but thats not even true
The name must be lucky
It was a popular name
I hope your joking lol
“Why was he so good? Nobody knows. If you think you know, go into the comments and get into a huge fight.” Perfect sentence
It was probably the steroids
@@tybrown2889no he was just really good idiot. You wanna fight?
@@tybrown2889it was probably well before the steroids.
@@tybrown2889 Barry was a HOFer before he ever decided to start taking steroids. shame that the greatest slugger in history irreparably tarnished his legacy like that.
@@Cynsham People don't get how he was maybe the greatest player in MLB since Mays (whom some consider the greatest ever), and 100% an inner circle Hall of Famer. Pre-steroids Bonds is Mike Trout before Mike Trout and sabermetrics. Anyway, the only thing greater than Barry Bonds' talent was his ego, and he just couldn't stomach all the praise lavished on inferiors who were roided up like McGwire and Sosa. So he decided to show everyone what you could truly do if baseball wanted chemically-enhanced He-men. How he could have the best seasons ever at an age when all-time great players begin to retire. Definitely a shame he tarnished his legacy.
this is the absolute dumbest idea ever and i love it
Oh hey you did that sex speedrun a few days ago good video
tommy boi big fan
That’s baseball for you
You know if it's a good video if tomatoanus has watched it.
Why comment in japanese
The saxophones still hit 3 years later
Jon Bois saxophones are god's instrument lmao
I know this is a year old comment, but does anyone know what those are from? It’s so good
@@MossFauna Love De Luxe Kieth Mansfield
Saxophones still hit 6 years later
You should hear them 7 years later 💋👌
"What if Barry Bonds had played without a baseball bat?"
I imagine his forearm would have hurt quite a lot.
From the steroid injections or from batting with it?
both
IndieGamerChick feel like he’d be so jacked up on roids he wouldn’t even feel it
bonds never used steroids
The real question is how fewer home runs he would have gotten if he didnt do roids.
Yes, Hank Aaron is still the home run king. Deal with it.
May I suggest “What if 1999 Pedro Martinez pitched without any fielders?” He already has the highest FIP of any pitcher since 1945 and the 4th highest all time. Would be cool to see a chart about this.
Brilliant
He’d get shelled
well everything would be an inside the parker
what about a pitch that goes right back to him? He'd have to run it out without a first basemen. Thats impossible to calculate
@@lk2704 he was in the nl before, so we can take his speed from his hits
I was kind of hoping this involved Barry Bonds just swinging his massive arm and smacking the ball with his fist. This was awesome too, though.
Only Donkey Kong in Mario Superstar Baseball for GameCube gets to do that.
yeah me too...
but bonds is still a cheater.
(sorry ive done it on every comment so far)
me too
timwaderoberts - I want to see him open hand slap the ball
i honestly just laughed my ass off
One statistical caveat: you based the pitches he was thrown on his entire career. However, he would likely have been thrown a far higher proportion of strikes earlier in his career. In other words, pitchers would be much less intimidated by rookie Barry Bonds than by 2004 Barry, so if anything, he would be thrown an even higher percentage of bad pitches than you included. This means his OBP, properly speaking, would be even greater than .608
Sean Condon God damn it! I thought you were about to disprove the whole thing, but you just made completely destroyed my day. Thank you:(
Sean Condon if they were less intimidated, why would they throw more bad pitches?
Dario Colon I think he’s saying that they would throw less strikes. If they throw in the strike zone, he’s going to hit it, so they want to get him to swing at balls, which doesn’t actually work out
But since you can't actually prove that, he didn't include it. Pretty standard.
@@georgebishop4627 I'm super late but yes you can prove it. Use the amount of balls to strikes for just 2004 instead of the amount for his career and the numbers would change and hed actually be getting thrown more balls. It's easily provable
Barry Bonds Wins by Doing Absolutely Nothing
Olivia Soules comment of the year
The new Luigi. Or the OG weegie
except steroids
MVP! MVP! MVP!
Because hes a baseball god
So wait, everyone was so scared of Bonds that they literally _walked_ him into the highest OBP in the league?
SavageGreywolf yes. Pitchers were incredibly scared of Bonds.
And when you were watching, it ALWAYS felt like a mistake to pitch to him. As a giants fan, I remember how excited the whole stadium would get whenever he came up in a situation they had to pitch to him, but even then he would often get 4 consecutive pitches out of the zone and take his free pass.
@@abbajabba7 Baseball has never had a presence at the plate like Barry Bonds, at least in my life time. Must see TV, you literally got excited just because they decided to pitch to the man. Best ever.
Skrt Reynolds the early 2000’s was the era of baseball I grew up on, and it felt like almost every team had a player that was exciting to see, and Bonds was the best player of the era.
@@abbajabba7 well, runners on 1st and 2nd, no one out, Giants trailing by 2. Bonds to the plate. Definitely an intentional walk situation here. xD
So, you probably won't see this, but it's worth pointing out: what you're doing is essentially a Monte Carlo simulation. But, at least as far as I can tell, you've only run the simulation once. You can't really infer anything from a sample of one simulation; you'd be at the mercy of variance. That's why Monte Carlo simulations involve hundreds, or thousands, of trials. By running lots of trials and then taking the average, you end up closer to the expected value of the situation - i.e., what an average 2004 season for Barry Bonds with no bat would look like.
If you run the simulation through more trials, you probably end up with something a bit lower. Still insanely high, but not necessarily as .608.
thefiddleronthegreen
I mean he could also end up with something higher, no?
He could have, you're right. I expect something lower, because that's what seems reasonable to me. But I'll admit to my bias here.
Also it would make sense to assume that plate appearances that ended as a strike out would have featured more pitches thrown for a strike, again the number might not drop much, but the likelyhood of a strike probably would change from pitcher to pitcher and plate appearance to plate appearance.
He could literally just calculate the expected value, no need to simulate at all
Although you’re right, the amount of time that would take is so massive (in my mind) that this proves a good enough point
As a fan of the game during that 2000 - 2004 stretch, I honestly wondered why pitchers ever threw him strikes...like ever. He was murdering the ball at an inhuman rate. It was like playing baseball against a superhero. If I was the opposing manager, I'd walk him every single time and hold his ops to 1.000, because he's actually less of a threat if you just give him a walk every single time. Unreal greatness.
He literally was superhuman, he was on peds lol
@@zebrain2330if that’s the case…. There’s a billions of people that take PED’s why can’t no one duplicate his numbers ? Lol
@@zebrain2330Everyone else in the 90s and early 2000s was also juicing like a worker at an orange grove. Barry was still better than them
@@zebrain2330 barry was the best, then others started to juice, then he started to juice, and barry became the best again. he just evened the playing field imo
Too bad now his career will now and forever be nothing but an asterisk
“What if Barry Bonds has played without a baseball bat?”
So... we’re making him a pitcher in the American League now?
TheMur28 with all the steroids he’d be amazing
@@gionnivillalobos7112 no, look at what bonds did against all those pitchers who did roids. dipfuck
Apple Sucks he was the undisputed king of roid rage
@@Isthatthegrimreaper170 k
120mph heaters 😂
Barry Bonds w/o bat: 100% power
Barry Bonds w/ bat: 99% power
Holding a bat is a intentional restraint to prevent Barry Bonds from unleashing his true power on innocent civilians, kinda like Shadow The Hedgehog’s inhibitor rings
@@MrSkerpentine The image of Barry Bonds menacingly cocking an MP5 like a shotgun is now in my head.
@@leetorry Shooting Ken Griffey Jr. in the back with a handheld weaponized pitching machine and standing over his lifeless body as fire surrounds the two
😂😂😂😂
99.84% power, technically.
You should run it on an average player and see the results
Wow this is actually how you figure out if jon is full of crap
I believe that's called a "control."
Cheese in my pockets Velveeta “full of crap” is that an aggressive way of saying “selectively shares statistics in a compelling narrative backed by wonderfully composed graphics and music”?
Brayden Rankin no it’s exactly what jon called himself at the end of the video you pile of crap
@@joebobby1412 Wonderfully *loud* music*
There, I fixed it for you.
it's actually higher since you didn't simulate the small possibility he was hit by a pitch in each of those simulated pitches. Since a hit by pitch would never be worse than a walk and it is better than a strike out it would only improve his odds. other than that cool vid.
Yeah but if it hits him it's a ball and it would fall under the ball category anyway
but a hbp would end the at-bat. perhaps flipping just one K into a BB and then he does BETTER without a bat than with.
Emmanuel Eppinger I
Jon, we're forgetting Hit by Pitches in the 335 in play balls you simulated. So rough calculations, he was HBP 9 times in his 617 AB's in the 2004 season. That comes out to about 1.5%, and given there were 335 plate appearances Jon had to simulate. Of the 335 Jon simulated, Barry walked on 133 anyways, so we're left with 102 plate appearances where he "struck out" according to the simulation. Given that he had roughly a 1.5% chance to get hit on any given at bat, odds are he would have gotten at least one HBP according to that estimate. Plus of the actual 34 strikeouts he did have, subtracting the 7 walks Jon got anyways, gives us 136 AB's to simulate. Also, because I'm only going to count balls as potential HBP's, and Barry got 58.7% of pitches outside the strike zone, that gives us 80 at bats where he could have gotten hit. considering that 1.5% chance we only need, on average, 67 at bats for Barry to get hit. I generated 67 random numbers, and got 2 under 15 from 1 to 1000, for that 1.5% chance. GIVING BARRY AN OBP OF .611, MAKING HIM BETTER WITHOUT A BAT THAN WITH ONE IN 2004.
This is probably the most important sports video I’ve ever seen. I don’t think a week goes by without me thinking about it. It essentially and fundamentally puts out there that having a player who performs gets a bonus in their ability just from reputation. It’s true in football and American football, cricket everything. As soon as teams start fearing a player that player just gets more chance to do what they’re good at.
Another good example of someone like that is Deion Sanders, who played in the NFL from 1989 to 2005 (14 seasons), and he primarily played as a cornerback. His defense was so dominant that teams would straight-up not send the ball anywhere near his direction; he shut down an entire half of the field. Just in case that isn't enough to show what an athlete he was, he played baseball from 1989 to 2001 (9 seasons).
Learned all about him from the Dorktown Atlanta Falcons documentary.
@northstarjakobs I think a better example of a lockdown would be Darrel Revis, but yeah, your point is valid.
It is the essence cycling. You almost only cover the moves of the people you are scared of.
yeah, i've seen PSG collapse against Barcelona in the Champions League (no not that one, the one before that). Messi started warming up to get subbed in and PSG immediately panicked and conceded a goal. They were scared of the idea of Messi.
Man, I remember when I was a little kid going to Giants games with my Dad and seeing the chickens they'd put up by the strikeout tally every time a pitcher walked Barry. Great times.
oh cuz they’re scared to pitch to him 😂 took me a sec lmao
1) You should run the full simulation multiple times; it isn't impossible for a single run to be particularly lucky or unlucky even with the number of pitches you had to simulate.
2) You left out possibilities on the newly created pitches; the pitcher could hit Bonds with the ball. Or other mistakes could be made. (Though these would help Bonds.)
3) The general percentages don't necessarily translate to specific moments. The situations where you need to simulate new results may be weighted towards less general figures.
4) It isn't actually impossible that Bonds could theoretically be the same or even better without a bat.
A HBP would also have been a ball therefore any HBP would also have been a walk. If you're in the strike zone and you get hit that's on you.
5) the test is about fear from his reputation but his strike/ball stats are from his entire career. It's reasonable to think 2004 barry would get a higher proportion of balls than barry in his first few years in the majors. Using numbers from before he built his reputation defeats the point of testing how his reputation affected the game. Shouldve used his 2004 ball/strike numbers.
#3 is absolutely correct. A lot of the pitches he had to simulate came late in the at-bat, where the distribution of strikes to balls would be very different than Bonds' career average.
Also I think
@@techpriestsalok8119 Given the large number of intentional walks, that number sounds totally correct. The bigger question is: Is it fair to assume that these made up pitches would have included intentional walks?
Espn posted today since walks aren’t ABs, Barry reached base 376 times in 373 ABs.
Hence the difference between AB and PA?
@@supergaga1712 yeah, that's the joke. Thanks for playing along!
Lol they reposted it today... and that brought me here 🤣😂
I always watch this video every few months when I feel down and the sheer joy and awe I feel when the final number is revealed makes me giggle like a child
weirdo
@@factory7966 Thank you for your input, "Subaru Mystic"
The fact that this video exists should be enough for younger people to understand just how terrifyingly good this guy was.
Because he took PEDS
Yeah, it is. I've never seen a game with Barry Bonds, and after seeing this video, I know how ridiculous he was.
This and Foolish Bailey's 'Bonds in 4' are GREAT indepth dives to the absolute terror that was Barry Bonds from 00-04.. I really wish he'd be the hitting coach for seattle right now.. those dudes swing at EVERYTHING
Listening to Jon is like being told a story in bed when you're a kid, the feel of all of his videos is something that lots of people have tried to emulate but nobody does it quite like him. Thank you Jon you make UA-cam a great place
"What was his secret? Nobody knows."
Balanced breakfasts.
It’s obviously the Wheaties
And what do you drink with your healthy and balanced breakfast? A good helping of juice of course.
@Chronusx Now just what is that supposed to mean?
He ate sugar smacks and stimulated his Q-zone for optimal health benefit!!!
His secret was juice. Orange juice to be specific. Right in the jugular.
im rewatching this for the 8th time. Jon Bois is one of the greatest content creators ever if not the best.
9th time
@@Rytoast99 Only the ninth?
Rytoast99 Just watched “Randall Cunningham Seizes the Means of Production” so many great videos.
Watched two others before that.
No argument here. He’s a revelation.
10th time
His secret was the recommended 8 glasses of water a day and a healthy breakfast.
@@Greg-ix4nu his secret was steroids
@@AaronF2112 no it was the recommended 8 glasses of water a day and a healthy breakfast
Idk, if its everyone's secret, then is it really "His secret"?
Funny thing about this, is that Jon may have actually shortchanged Barry here. Because he should have also used the 19% ball randomizer for swinging strikes, not just foul balls.
True
True
True
False
jk 😂
This experiment makes me think of the naval warfare strategy of a "fleet in being", defined by Wikipedia as "a naval force that extends a controlling influence without ever leaving port." Thus, Barry Bonds was considered a threat just by literally standing in the batter's box, not even having to take a swing - in effect, just from his mere existence. That is hilarious. Of course, to reach that pinnacle required illustrating his dominance at the plate before that season.
The baseball gods: no Barry, you can’t have a bat this year.
Barry: why?
Baseball gods: it’s not fair, Barry
Barry: Ok...
Also Barry: *begins staring at the pitchers so menacingly they walk him*
Baseball gods: NO! THIS ISN’T HOW YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO PLAY THE GAME!
It was either the bat or the roids
“Turns out, there’s only one thing more powerful than home run ability: Fear.”
- Jon Bois, April 11, 2017
Date’s definitely wrong. Was uploaded April 11th, not recorded.
@@A.B.421 well I had to write the comment somehow
@@temporaltoast9692 lol
His home run ability was literally the reason the pitchers feared him. The home runs CAUSED the fear. It was a very stupid quote.
I forget which legendary pitcher said it but he said “pitching is the art of instilling fear” that could probably go for hitting as well
You didn't simulate the number of out-of-strikezone pitches that would have hit him, realistically bumping his OBP up by a few more points.
If barry bonds swung at a pitch there whould realistically 0 chance for it being that far inside
@@jaydenpreston6102 I think what he means is that in this scenario, with the extra pitches that are thrown to him (some of which were balls), some were bound to hit him.
@@sportsjoe17 If you are talking about the pitches that whould have hit him had he not moved I tjink he still moves out of the way in the sim
@@sportsjoe17 ye but most of the extra pitches were probably ball four anyways. I guess there could be the possibility of it but probably at a chance where it wouldn't happen in most seasons
@@vuowehuoj9354 Yeah, depends on the season...probably won't happen in winter.
You forgot to count in HBP for the added pitches thrown. Some of those extra pitches thrown could've hit Bonds causing his OBP to be higher than .608
Good point! I doubt it would have changed too much, but two extra HBP in place of strikeouts would bump him up to .611.
Came in here to say just this. If anything, .608 might be too LOW. Which is crazyballs.
Which would officially make '04 Bonds more dangerous without a bat than with one. Holy schnikes.
Barry bonds was his by 106 pitches in his 12606 plate appearances. If I did my math right, if you multiply this percentage by 335 (2004 plate appearances not yet counted), he would have been hit by 2.8 more pitches, which would put his OBP at 0.612, making him more dangerous without a bat than with one.
Here's the math I used if anyone cares to look
((106/12606)(335)+366+9)/617=0.6123450771
only more dangerous at getting on base, of course. remember, he still hit 45 homers, and im pretty sure that required his bat.
Barry Bonds was on Flintstone Vita-Gummies
Thats just a conspiracy, not proven. He was flin stone gummy free.
SO was the entire MLB. Moot point unless you believe he had extra special steroids.
Franken Peter not if you are comparing is stats to the entire history of the MLB. It matters greatly then for the legitimacy of that greatness.
Ok then whose stats do we throw out the way Bond's supposedly are?I am asking a theoretical question but think about it.
@@KDogg_96 Actually it WAS proven and that's why his name is striken from his HR record. Granted, he was skilled, but the power spike came from the juice. This is indisputable and with factual evidence.
We're talking about a prediction the pitcher makes: they know Bonds will get on base, so they choose to limit the damage of that happening.
When you look at it that way, it makes perfect sense for the OBP to stay the same. If anything, it shows how accurate the pitchers are in assessing their own and Bonds capabilities
Exactly my thoughts as well. Theoretically, assuming perfect pitching strategy, you should get the same result for every player ever, not just Bonds.
If anything, OBP should go up on average across multiple players put through this test. You're sacrificing a higher OBP to reduce slugging.
Wow that's a great way to look at it. That's so fascinating!
Jon Bois the only reason I'm subscribed to this channel. Can they make this your full time job?
It IS his full-time job. He is incredibly lazy and doesn't work very hard.
Matt Ufford so the delays aren't coming from him having to traditionally report too?
Stanley Terrell Anderson II nah that's all Jon does
+Matt Ufford you are joking right?
I would never joke about anything as serious as playing baseball without a bat.
Based on the conditions of the experiment, it seems like this could be real. The only argument I could've pondered was satisfied when it was stated that the pitcher has no idea Barry doesn't have a bat. Its such a silly and absurd thought, but at that time Barry Bonds commanded respect with his power and discipline.
I'm also glad you did this, because had this experiment ever ran across my mind, there's no way I follow through. Though, looking at some of the other Chart Party episodes, this seems tame. Your drive is admirable.
Bit late, but you could think of it as him just not swinging instead of him straight up not having a bat.
@@Meganarb i think it's more he has a bat that is visible but insubstantial so that he swings like usual but if the pitcher pitched a strike he'd strike out (and if he didn't swing then he still wouldn't swing). But obviously this is pretending that pitchers would still have the same pitch selection for a guy who has made zero contact with the ball all season long.
coverkillernation huh, you are not just a metalhead with cool reviews but also a baseball follower. A man of culture.
The percent of strikes Bonds received was probably a function of the count. I imagine he'd be more likely to see a strike in a 3-2 count than a 3-1 count. Using count based ball/strike odds might affect the results a bit, but I don't know if that stat existed at the time.
Because of the virtually extended counts, there's increased odds that he'd have reached via HBP. This would increase his OBP, but it'd likely be a very small increase.
The random number generation might have affected the result too, running the simulating more than once and taking the average would help with that.
This was absolutely fantastic to watch though, it must have taken forever to work all this out.
ZebraCakes running the number generator more than once and taking an average would badly screw up the probabilities. The more times it is used, the more likely it is that the average comes close to 500. If he averaged thousands of numbers for each pitch, there would not be a single ball thrown.
No, that's not correct, and I'm not sure why you'd think that. This is literally how Monte Carlo simulation is performed.
That’s exactly what was wrong lol Great call.
Several years later, I've been thinking about how the end of this video -- the no, no!-- is a clear demonstration of the limitations of imputation. The video serves both as an explainer and a cautionary tale.
At first I thought this video would be totally stupid for many reason. However, GREAT work! You, my friend, are a fantastic stat freak! And, baseball, as we know, is a stat freaks Heaven.
That's it. I know what it is now, Jon.
If you did your videos without the music, your likeability would STILL be off the charts. But it's the music... wind jazz... that feeling of the stark loneliness of stats, of reasearching and accumulating them is usually done alone. The wailing sax... lost, searching... Oh no. You'll have to stretch it out even further. And then you do reach the end. You're done. It's over. No more stats to get. It's presentation time and the music perks up. (Usually. Depending on the outcome.)
*Your stories, with or without the music, just like Barry with or without his bat would still be freakishly good*
Better than "Pretty Good." So the word I found to describe the deep down feeling of mellow, even safe, familiar, a happy-sad (if that's possible) feeling by your fans when we watch until the end and then it's gone... and probably to you when you finish them and release them into the internet wild. The word is...
*forlorn*
Thank you for reading.
~D.
The Vanilla Godzilla youve got major issues.....
The Vanilla Godzilla barry bonds secret is the juice
wat the fck
Five-lorn
He was trying to make it resemble the Bonds era music
My man has the highest charisma stat ever and somehow managed to double proficiency intimidation
If we're talking dnd, what you're talking about is expertise, and rogues and bards get it (at least nowadays)
@@PilliamWilliam there's other ways to get double proficiency besides expertise
Remember, Intimidation uses charisma
>Barry Bonds
>High Charisma
Wut? The man was hated by his teammates and reporters even before the steroid scandal
@@pranavarora9976 intimidation uses charisma
The real question here should be "What if Barry Bonds had never walked?" In other words, opposing pitchers all had the cojones to pitch to him. He would have hit more home runs, probably would have ended his career in the mid 800s, BUT... he also would have made a lot more outs, his on base percentage would have been brought down to the level of his batting average. So the question is would the outs have offset the home runs and would his team have actually lost more games because of it. I always thought pitching around him was a dumb strategy if it wasn't a "win the game" situation.
big8dog88 I can’t really remember his teammates but I also think him getting intentionally walked was also a function of his teammate sucking. Like they were willing to bet the guys hitting after him are way less likely to score him in. Plus you get s chance for a double play ending the inning early with less pitches thrown.
Well, they won the pennant in 2002, so it wasn't always ineptitude surrounding him...
Sabermetrics have seemed to suggest that intentional walks happened too often, so my guess is it would have been worse for his team.
Assuming he had the same average and slugging percentages, he’d still have an OPS of 1.174 which is still outstanding.
What if Barry Bonds had the cajones to face major league pitching without cheating and taking steroids?
Barry Bonds: I have no bat but I must score runs.
**Menacing**
Probably my favorite bit of sports journalism ever. I still bring this up at parties.
#METOO
...Chart Parties?
I bet you get so laid.
Cool story bro
He's just standing there, menacingly!
Craziest stat in this video for me is that of the 191 plate appearance in which he never swung the bat, only two were goddamn outs.... It's stupendously insane, his bat literally was fear.
What if Nolan ryan pitched without a ball
Briguy4 then he wouldn't have been able to plunk Robin Ventura, and the world would be robbed of the best baseball fight ever
Judge Smails until he got suspended
Then I would have a different name.
ded af
What if your dad wore a condom
Barry Bonds wins by doing absolutely nothing. He is the new luigi
More like Obama, the usurper
Croon Trigger or bran the broken
So after watching this video many times over the several years since it was released I think I've figured out the "mistake" that was made in simulation, AND something that could be done to get a better simulation.
Basically the issue is that, typically, the farther behind the pitcher is in the count, the more likely he is to throw a strike, which is why those counts are good ones to hit in.
Now, there's likely a sample size problem that would make simulating pitches based on what bonds was thrown in every possible count would not yield a big enough sample size in some, rarer counts, to get an accurate simulation, but I think it might be possible to sort them into categories like "batter ahead" "pitcher ahead" and "even count" or, perhaps, simply split them into "3 ball counts" and "all other counts."
I know this probably won't be revisited after such a long time, but it is a super fun idea, so I figured since I just thought of this I'd mention it =P
I can 100% see how this would be an applicable variable in this simulation but in reality, the solution of "the pitcher tries harder to throw strikes and is therefore more successful in throwing said strikes for bonds to hit" isnt necessarily valid and feels like a bit of a cop out compared to the variables that were tested. I imagine, especially based on the case of the 3-1 intentional walk, even if they NEED to throw the strike they might still choose to not. I appreciate the extended thought on the subject tho cuz same, doesnt seem like it should be possible but how baseball stats work allow it to be
Another, more important question: Does that strike zone percentage include intentional walks? Because intentional walks are already accounted for and we are trying to simulate the pitches where the pitcher didn't intentionally walk him. We would specifically need the percentage of pitches that went into the strike zone when the pitcher wasn't trying to intentionally walk him.
"And here's another hit, Barry Bonds"
-Kanye West, 2007
we outta here baby
If you worked out 3.5 times this week, you'd have a more accurate result.
😂😂😂
YOU'RE AN IDIOT. How can you work out .5 times?? You need to go back to elementrary math.
That was a pretty good video if I do say so myself
TheJudoJoker you are the dumbest boy alive
Collin Smith hey dude we have the same name but mines spelt with one L.
This video really makes me think, what if Billy Beane and his Moneyball operation was in SF in 2004 instead of on the other side of the Bay in Oakland? I just imagine this conversation going down:
Billy: Barry, we need you to stop swinging the bat
Barry: Why tf would I do that?
Billy: Well we ran the numbers and if you went the rest of the season not swinging the bat once, you’d have a .608 OBP, the highest in MLB history
Barry: Man gtfo, how you gonna tell me I’ll get to .608 without swinging? You high or somethin’ Billy?
Yea but eventually pitchers would catch on
and then jonah hill walks in, he looks like a deer in headlights because he's never met a black dude before, and he says, "here are the numbers barry"
@@yuvgee3537 Then he would just hit a nuke lmao
Paul DePodesta to Billy: "Billy, I ran the numbers and you're not gonna believe this"
nice barry impression at the end there 🤦♂️ lol
I'm a lifelong Giant's fan, I watched Bonds career (his Giants career) and I can tell you without doubt he was the most feared hitter I've ever seen. Even when pitches pitched to him he would rarely see a pitch in the strike zone and when he did it was usually an un-intention mistake. (from about 1999-2004) I saw games where pitches walked in runs with the bases loaded rather than give Barry an opportunity to hit a Grand Slam. You say what you want about the live ball era and steroids and all the rest, I watched those games and I say for a brief time Barry Lamar Bonds was the greatest hitter to ever play the game. You love the numbers game, take the number of at bats Bonds got in 2004 subtract the number of walks intentional or otherwise, and the number of times he was hit by a pitch so your looking at just the at bats where he actually swung the bat and in those at bats look at the total bases he had. Bonds had more total bases in fewer at bats than Ted Williams or George Hermann Ruth in the greatest seasons of their careers. For a brief moment in time Barry Lamar Bonds was the the greatest hitter that's ever played and anyone who watched those seasons will tell you it was like watching Ricky Henderson in 1982, you just knew that you were watching something historic, something unprescidented, something as a baseball fan your not likely to ever see again in your lifetime.
This is like how Gretzky would be the all time points leader in the nhl even if he had never scored a goal.
MOTHforLife that isn’t a close comparison at all
Dario Colon it kinda is though. “What if Barry bonds never swung a bat” vs. “what if Wayne Gretzky never shot a puck?”
Bennett Campbell if Gretzky never shot a puck there’d still be 11 other players allowed to touch it
@@DarioColon, hockey isn't played by 12 guys. By 6.
Banana Narwhals 6 players/team x 2 teams = 12 players
Greatest editing job ever lol
It's pretty good
Trevor Wright What's the background music at 10:14??
Chad Bonogees did you get a response? I'm interested as well
Arman Khan Not yet :(
Chad Bonogees idk the song
I think that it's an accurate representation, but the only way to reeeeeally nail it down would be to redo it about 10 more times and average out the totals, although it may end up being a big waste of time and you'd get the same results anyways
yeah, i tend to agree. i thought about running it through more than one simulation, but decided not to because a) it would have taken forever and i really didn't want to, b) i was worried that that amount of manual simulation could result in errors, and c) i figured that a sample size of a few hundred was large enough to ensure that the results were distributed in the right ratio.
Jon Bois what tools do you use for your simulation? Just curious as an engineer and sports fan. These videos are awesome!
thanks! for the research end i use Google Sheets and i'm super-dependent on Sports-Reference for the data (a Baseball-Reference subscription is like $6 a month and totally worth it). i use Sheets to generate the charts, then edit them in Photoshop and upload them to Google Earth, which i use to animate/scroll/etc. Earth wasn't really intended to do that but it actually works really well.
+Jon Bois sense you're responding when can we expect another episode of Pretty Good. Those video are pretty.... uh... awesome.
+TheJudoJoker wow those typos are bad :/ please ignore
I think you actually slightly underestimated Bonds's potential for getting on base. For the instances where you had to introduce and simulate additional pitches, you never factored in that some small percentile of those will end up as HBP, instantly getting Bonds on base.
Regardless of what your opinion on Bonds is; this is incredible to watch and see the stats
*has science gone to far?*
Lavar I didn’t know you were a fan of the greatest baseball player to ever live!
Brian Labar i can watch other sports ya know
Lavar Ball FOSHIZZLE!!
Lavar I got tell you are the funniest man on television! Love your style!!
Brian Labar that’s right, now, GO BUY MY GEAR!
damn, seeing all this analysis it makes me wonder if it would just be easier to build a time machine and take his bat away.
I love this video and am impressed by your approach. The key element here is that the pitcher doesn't know Bonds doesn't have a bat, so you're OBP is purely a reflection of how pitchers pitched at Bonds. The reality is that most players would seems to be actively lowering their OBP vs their "without a bat" sim because pitchers generally try to pitch the edges of the zone to make batters swing. There is a game theory at play between the pitcher and the batter because the batter wants to get on base and the pitcher wants to strike the batter out. A pitcher would rather walk a batter than give up a hit and a batter would rather make contact with the ball then go out looking. However, if a batter swings too often, then a pitcher will pitch more breaking balls outside the zone to get a strike on what should be a ball. If a batter doesn't swing often enough, a pitcher will throw in the zone more confident the batter won't swing. This gets really complex really fast, but its why plate discipline is so incredibly important. The batter has the advantage of game theory because they get to see the pitch before it reaches the plate. If they are good at reading the pitch, then they have essentially hacked baseball as long as they know how to connect with a good pitch whenever it comes. However, the better your plate discipline, the more often you get walked because the stats do not favor throwing even one pitch over the plate. So if you've got really strong plate discipline, your "without a bat" OBP should be sky high; no pitcher wants to throw one over the plate when you bat. So it would be impressive enough just to come close to your sim OBP, but Bonds does even better than that. He is so tremendous that he is able to exploit the marginal advantage the batter has and get on base more often by swinging than not.
Since you used random number generation, run it several more times because you might have had an unusually high number of certain outcomes. Several simulations or just multiplying the total by the percentages and rounding up or down might affect the outcome....
I just did this via a Python script... The average OBP over 10,000 simulations was .590. Still good enough to be the best OBP in the history of the sport.
The lowest result was .533.
I didn't think to look at the highest, I think it was over .660.
@@ThatShaggyMatt that is still extremely terrifying and there are chances that he does even better.
Surely the best solution is to just scrap the random number generator entirely, just leave all the at bats where pitches were simulated as a fraction of an on base or out.
@@colinpetersen1173 That would yield results that are more accurate than what Jon did, but still less accurate than an ensemble like what Matt did. Or at least it would be less accurate than a proper ensemble of like 100,000 simulations or more. I'm not convinced 10,000 is quite enough.
There are other problems in the data he used. One that is easy to spot is that he used the set of all pitches Bonds swung at to estimate the likelihood that a pitch he fouled off was in the strike zone. But it is nearly certain that Bonds fouled off a higher proportion of pitches outside the strike zone than he fouled off pitches inside the strike zone. Surely a pitch down the middle was more likely to land in fair territory. Taking that into account would actually exaggerate his OBP without a bat even further (by a tiny bit). And there are lots of other things like this.
@@demonvictim basically means that his humanity and hubris was holding him back. He would swing at stuff he shouldn’t and get a foul, when it was better to just let it go
Probably the greatest video of all time. I rewatch this a couple times a year.
The title instantly made me think Bonds punching pitches into McCovey cove. And let's be honest, in his prime, he probably could've done it.
Donkey Kong in mario baseball is quaking
Been waiting so long for another of these videos! Masterpieces every single one.
Are you able to find the pitches thrown at Barry Bonds by the count? Like are there more balls at a 2-2 count or whatever, that could be a bit more accurate. Also doing it a few times could also be very good
Agree with this. He already has that data from looking at next pitch of at bats that lasted beyond 2-2 for example. @JonBois share the data from your experiment in Excel and I can compile these percentages for you
My hypothesis is that pitchers are more likely to throw strikes when behind in the count (3-1), and more likely to throw balls when ahead, so this more complicated simulation will result in longer ABs, but to what magnitude each is true is unclear. As other comments mention, would be useful to add replication to the simulation
James Whistler I doubt Barry saw many 3-1 3-0 2-0 strikes
Came back to this a couple of years later and just realized that on the balls to walks thing that had him being pitched a ball like 58% of the time, he may have forgotten to take balls from intentional walks out of the equation.
The graph says intentional balls excluded
I didn't say this before, but thank you for the great 15th birthday gift that is this video. 7 years later, I'm still enjoying it as if I'm seeing it for the first time.
You're not Barry's mother, Jon. You can't just take away his bat, he studied really hard for that test and did his best! Give his bat back right now.
Cracking open a cold one with the jon bois
Jon Bois is the best
MrFindX he’s pretty good
Your wrong!!#!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!#
MrFindX the great bambino
What's the background music at 10:14??
darude sandstorm
This is easily still in my top 10 youtube videos, ive probably watched it a dozen times now between rewatches and showing it to friends
I guess something you could’ve taken into account is, instead of strikes/balls ratio for the whole game of baseball, you could take that ratio for each pitcher individually and specifically when they pitch against Barry Bonds
Should be renamed "What if Barry Bonds never swung?"
That would be a more accurate title.
Except he would have been struck out looking every single time.
But that's not as click-baity, so it wouldn't drive in the views!
Trystan Davis it's not clickbait if he does exactly what the title says
Brooks, this title infers that the video was going to look at his defense performances/stats. As if he never went up to bat at all.
This is the greatest “stat” video of all time. 🙌🏾🙌🏾🙌🏾
Wait till you see what he does about punts.
@@KMcNally117 Punts video imma let you finish but the 2004 Bonds video without a bat is the greatest Jon Bois video of all time!
I’ve watched this a few times and it just occurred to me the no-bases intentional walk might have been because they had a better chance of getting him out on the base path, rather than at the batter’s box. Would be interesting if someone calculated how likely it was for him to score once he actually got to first base
366 walks, 251 strikeouts and a SLG of .000
Since the league on-base percentage was .333 that year, Batless Bonds got on base 162 times more than the average player would have over those 617 plate appearances. That also meant he saved 162 outs at the plate, giving his teammates 162 free trips to the plate, or about 4 games worth. Since the Giants averaged 5.2 runs per game, that meant that Batless Bonds was worth about 20 runs just from the runs that his teammates were able to produce with the extra at-bats he saved for them.
Does that 5.2 figure include Bond's RBIs that season?
The Giants wouldnt have 5.2 runs a game without Barry Bonds driving in runs
Best Raptor - good point. Bonds was worth about a run per game, so the other Giants were worth about 4.2 runs per game, so instead of 20 runs he added about 16 runs by saving his teammates "ups".
Of course, he also saved some of his own plate appearances too, but now we're getting into a circular type calculation...so maybe a bit more than 16 runs is the final answer.
tz This is really,really dumb
I mean, it ignores the scouting report aspect of the game that would say, "hasn't swung at any pitches all season."
James Schultz obviously lol
That's what I was thinking. If the scouting report comes back with "doesn't swing ever", fear is not an issue. Intentional walks don't happen, and they're not throwing very many balls at him.
Scouting Report - "Literally unable to swing at pitches."
Scouting report - has already been signed to an MLB team, what are we doing here?
James Schultz lol that's hilarious
It's been four years and this is still my favorite youtube video.
I'm an actual scientist, so I'll tell you what was missing from this analysis. The .608 OBP is not the only possible result of the random distribution of results that you simulated. A proper statistical analysis would produce a distribution of POSSIBLE results based upon those probabilities then create a probability distribution of possible OBPs that he could have achieved.
Here's an analogy. If you simulate 100 coin flips, and you obtain 68 heads, you could not justifiably conclude that the real coin you were simulating would obtain 68 heads.
The form that a true scientific answer would take is something more like, "The highest non-Bonds OBP is Ted Williams at .553. Given the probability distributions entered into the model, there is a 63% chance that Barry Bonds would have scored higher than .553". I made up the number 63%, and you'd be bored if I tried to teach you how to calculate probability distributions, but that's the basic idea.
NOTE: There was another comment on here about Monte Carlo simulations that makes basically the same point.
Imagine leading the simple thought of using an average with "I'm an actual scientist".
@@cliff5066 I dumbed down the math content because it's a youtube comment, smart guy.
thank you random redditor
@@virdo1 good comment🌻
“What’s your job description?”
This guy: “Scientist.”
“What kind?”
This guy: “An ACTUAL scientist.”
Okay.
I have watched this video probably 10 times. Not just because of Bonds (he was amazing, roids or not) but the way Jon Bois presents the info. He does a fantastic job simplifying it and he is really calming and knowledgeable. Credits to you Jon.
This might be my favourite video on this app
I know this is like 5 years late but I would expect the inside zone vs outside zone to be dependent on the count. If the count is 3-2, I would be much more likely to throw a strike than 0-2. I would assume the percentages are also different for 1-0 vs 0-1 counts.
John has exhaustively researched possibly the dumbest question in sports history and i am thoroughly impressed
I disagree! ua-cam.com/video/F9H9LwGmc-0/v-deo.html
@@waylandsmithGood choice. An incredible amount of effort went into that fascinatingly brilliant and utterly dumb video.
Did you consider using count-specific ball/ strike probabilities?
Jason Horwitz I just wrote this but it makes more sense to 2nd your statement. Pitcher are more likely to throw a strike with 3 balls. Not represented in the stats.
At least we would hope they're more likely to throw a strike with 3 balls...
Well the stats show they do. So I dont hope for it.
And if you want to get into more details: pitcher-, score-, situation (i.e., # on and outs in a inning), and count- specific ball/strike probabilities.
Jason Horwitz agreed. Why would the pitcher throw an intentional ball when its a full count?
Let’s talk about the music in your videos, which is arguably AS important as the stats you’ve compiled, your editing, and your just plain ol’ flair for theatricality.
You’re the best thing in sports criticism and examination today. Periodt.
Concerning your methodology, have you tried this same method with other hitters of the same period? Do we get similarly wacky results or are they just not there. I think some comparisons would help settle the question on whether or not this was the right method.
Frank Thomas.
im a year late to this party but i agree this was my first thought. If every baseball player has an improved obp with this system then we can agree its flawed. if we do it for 100 players and barry bonds is the only one or one of a select few that actually improves then we'll know he's actually that special.
Jesse G I seriously don’t think that would happen, i think Bonds is the outlier here because he was intentionally walked at a historic rate but also had elite plate discipline he walked over 1000 times more than he struck out in his career where as frank thomas walked about 200 times more than he struck out.
3:13 Bonds in 1993 had a top ten all time intentional walk total. Years before he took steriods. I believe Bonds is the greatest baseball player of all time. Even greater than Babe Ruth who never stole as many bases as Bonds or won Gold Gloves like Bonds.
Greatest is debatable, but certainly one of the best. It's why there's a good argument that he should nevertheless be in the Baseball Hall of Fame, whereas a Sosa or McGwire really doesn't belong
Tony Gwynn is argueably a better hitter :)
Greatest is Ichiro dude. Didn’t need to use drugs to get there, maintained that consistency over a decade, didn’t even start in America until his mid twenties, and played in the super competitive steroid era.
@@Jaxck77 y'all really love singles and batting average, huh.
@@5-iwnl-596 no he is not.
Still, all these years later, one of the best baseball videos ever put on UA-cam
Hey man, did you adjust the chance of a pitch being a ball or strike depending on the count? It seems to me that a lot of simulated pitches would be on 3-1 or 3-2 counts, which are more likely to be in the zone than the average pitch.
Music (what Shazam would tell me):
0:26 Keith Mansfield - Love De Luxe
2:00 Richard Philip Birdsall - Zero Gravity
4:07 is too short to get a read on, sadly. 6:04 and 10:15 have the sound effects and don't read. I really want the 10:15 source.
yup, the first two are right. 4:07 is "Valley of Minds" by Tim Juckes, 6:04 is "Skyline" by Bernd Roger, and 10:15 is "Lasting Hope" by Lorne Balfe.
Thank you!
Finally having an answer to what the theme song is was great, finding out the theme song is available on vinyl was better, finding out that records is going for 65 bucks was... less good.
Thank you! Can you tell us the outro song? I'd love to know the outro to "We decided to erase the three point line" to if you're willing to tell us.
So you're at the mercy of variance with the random number generation. You would have to simulate these at bats enough times each to decrease variance below a certain point (say 95% confidence).
Another way (which I've taken the time to do here) would be to apply the expected value of number of balls and strikes that occur in the ambiguous cases and simply see how many at bats flip as a result. Obviously this is complicated, as some at bats have multiple ambiguous pitches at different points during the at bat.
One nice thing about the "walks" section is that GENERALLY there's only 1 ambiguous ball that causes a walk. So if that gets flipped, we can safely say it would've been a strikeout. Based on the probabilities you presented, 3 balls in the "walk" section should be strikes, thus removing 3 walks from the equation.
In the "strikeouts" section, 3 more orange strikes would be expected, but where to apply them? As 7 of the 16 orange balls cause walks, I'd say slightly less than half of our 5 would then flip a result. Remove 2 walks.For the yellows, 1 more strike would be expected. Of the 14 places we could apply this, 10 would change the result to a strikeout. Remove 1 more walk. Up to 6 now.
Finally, the "In play" section. Your simulation got 133 walks out of 335 AB. That is significantly LESS than what I would expect given the 58.7% of pitches are balls statistic you presented. Think about it. If 4/7 pitches are balls, that means walks to strikeouts should be about 50/50. It takes 4 balls to walk, 3 strikes to strikeout. 58.7% balls is quite close to 4/7, in fact it's a bit more. So if half of these 335 AB's were walks, my final estimate would come out to 28 more walks than you had. A 639 OBP. However, this neglects the fact that Bonds swung at at least 1 pitch in all of these at bats. Which leads me to my last point.
So where's the flaw? Perhaps generalizing to "58.7% of pitches are balls" was too broad. Every pitch is a different circumstance, something you addressed when you applied the situation where Bonds swung.
The moral? This is an incredibly difficult question that is impossible to answer accurately. I think you made a damn good attempt at doing it, though. In all likelihood, Bonds would still have had the highest OPB that season, perhaps even all time. The point of the video as I understood it was to prove that through fear alone, Bonds achieved very high stats in Major League Baseball. You certainly did that.
Could have been called "The Barry Bonds Never Swingulator"
I can't see any issues with this simulation.
The only thing I could suggest is run the simulation about 99 more times, same rules, and get an average of the results.
Since it is a simulation and not a season, it's okay to get a larger sample size and compare/contrast.