I was amazed how well Bonds was able to do in 2001 and 2002 at his age. There’s a ton of suspicion about how he was able to do that. Babe Ruth on the “hot dogs and beer” diet did tail off quite a bit following 1933. I wonder if Ruth had not been a pitcher early in his career, if he could have ended up with over 763 HR’s or not. We’ll never know.

Jose Vidro: -1.3 WAR …why?
Travis Hafner: -0.8 WAR in 234 PAs (benched and DLed mid season and replaced by someone not named Barry Bonds)
Craig Monroe -0.6 WAR in just under 180 PAs (inexplicable started 6 games in center; think Cuddyer is bad?)
Matt Stairs, a few runs below replacement on offense mostly at DH but with a handful of OF starts (also worse than Bonds would have likely been on defense).
Daniel Dellucci: Presumably all or most of the non-Hafner shitty DHing that went on in Cleveland. Half a win below replacement on offense. Still alive to this day.

Bonds would have likely been a better DH than most of the DHes in the league. Hell he would have been better than many of the LFs that started in 2008 (I bet he’d even have given Garret Anderson a run for his money). He was 39 runs above average with the bat in 2007; that was more valuable than any DH except Aubrey Huff in 2008, and that’s because Huff cheated and played decent defense for 30 games at third. His production could have certainly tailed off, but that doesn’t stop Jim Thome (who hasn’t been +39 on offense since 2006; his decline started sooner so he could actually be a worse hitter today than Bonds would be. Today).

I’m not sure if I’d really blame collusion more than I’d blame simple stupidity or cowardice (Mariners could be the one, say… Rays the other, though Floyd was actually okayish that year I doubt anyone would have bet against Bonds in the race to 0.6 WAR).

Anyway I’ll just post instead of replying. I hate tall thin posts.