I Stuck Barry Bonds in the Deadball Era

An OOTP Experiment

Barry Bonds in the Deadball Era

I stuck Barry Bonds in the deadball era to see what would happen.

The idea was pretty simple. I turned off race-based rules and created a 20 year old Barry Bonds in 1901. I let him become a free agent to sign with whichever team he wanted.

I made a few changes to the structure of the league as well. For example, the reserve clause leads to boring seasons and rosters that are far too stable. I revoked that clause, allowing all players to become free agents after a certain period of time.

Bonds made a strange decision in the beginning of his career. He signed with the Boston Beaneaters, and wound up signing an 8 year contract with them after he had already played for them for 4.

The problem, of course, is that Boston was pretty bad — and they never got better.

Bonds finally broke free and had an interesting career:

The interesting thing is that Bonds only played in two World Series: 1916 and 1918. He actually barely played with the Reds in 1916. He did a bit more in 1918, but certainly was not a huge star.

The Reds won the World Series both years, giving Bonds two rings that he never had in real life.

Bonds was part of a super team in Pittsburgh in 1920:

However, the Pirates couldn’t win the pennant in 1920 or 1921, despite having three of the greatest players in the game on their team. It was amazing.

I thought there were some questions about Bonds’ Hall of Fame credentials at the end of this experiment. 77 WAR isn’t nothing, but it wasn’t the sort of dominant performance you’d expect from Barry. And he didn’t win much:

The Hall of Fame prediction stats also made things look a bit murky:

But Bonds got in on the first ballot:

Now, I don’t like to throw around words like “compiler” — but I don’t know what else to call him.

What do you think?