take your base

[rone]

Today's walk against the Brewers tied Barry Bonds with Babe Ruth in second place on the career walks list, with 2062. #1 is Rickey Henderson with 2190 walks. At their current rates, Bonds should pick up another 15 or so walks, and Rickey maybe one or two more. That leaves Bonds with about 115 to go next season, which, given his recent rate, should be a given by next September.

I'm still stunned by the amount of baseball people who continuously profess that the only way to pitch to Bonds is to walk him intentionally. The utter unsportingness of it all aside, Bonds's OBP without the intentional walks is under .500, meaning that, yes, the pitcher still has a better chance of getting him out. Then, let's compare Albert Pujols's batting stats to Bonds: as many HRs, over twice as many doubles, 150% the RBIs... and just over a sixth of his IBBs.

I hate the intentional walk; that is, i hate what it's become. Managers hide behind, "Well, i have to do what i think is necessary to win the game." So they walk Bonds late in a game they lead by 2 runs with 2 outs and the bases empty. They can call it what they want, but that's the sort of thing that comes out of a male cow's ass. It's not entertaining, and that's not what people go to the stadium to see, but the simple truth of the matter is that it is almost never a good idea to gift a base to your opponent. Pointing to the lack of success of Giants hitters following an intentional walk this season is just making a lot out of a small statistical sample.

Small sidenote: Andrés Galárraga (note that it's ahn-DRESS ga-LA-rra-ga, not AHN-dress ga-la-RA-ga) is now #2 in career strikeouts, way behind #1, Reggie Jackson.

Glossary: HR = home run, OBP = on-base percentage, IBB = intentional base on balls, RBI = run batted in