6) Willie Mays
The definition of a five-tool player, Willie Mays hit for average, hit for power, fielded, threw, and ran with the best of them. And when I say the best, I refer to Mays’ 24-straight All-Star Game selections.
Mays won the first of his two MVP awards and a World Series with the Giants in 1954, and in his 1951 Rookie of the Year-winning season, he was actually the on-deck batter when Bobby Thomson hit his famous pennant-winning home run, "The Shot Heard 'Round the World."
Mays’ 660 home runs currently rank fourth all-time. He ranks tenth all-time in runs batted in and has a career .302 batting average, .384 on-base percentage, and .557 slugging percentage. Also ranking third all-time in total bases and eleventh in hits, Mays finished among the NL’s top-5 in OPS fourteen times, five times leading the league. When Mays retired he was third in runs scored; his 2,062 runs now place seventh.
The two-time All-Star Game MVP hit 51 home runs in 1955 and 52 in 1965. Those ten years are the longest stretch between 50-homer seasons for a player in MLB history.
Famous for his defense as well as his hitting prowess, Mays won twelve Gold Glove awards. The award was introduced six years into his career; he easily could have won more. Plus, Mays holds the record for most putouts by an outfielder with 7,095.
Range in the outfield translated to speed on the base paths for Mays. Starting in 1956, Mays led the NL in steals four straight years. Also, in 1969 Mays became the first member of the 300-300 club, a player with 300 home runs and 300 steals.
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| #6 Willie Mays |
5) Barry Bonds
Next we come to one of the most controversial figures in all of sports, Barry Bonds. However you feel about Bonds, the fact remains that he put up some historic numbers. Tainted as those numbers may be, Bonds was bar-none the most prolific offensive force of his era. In a generation where everyone used steroids, Bonds was unquestionably the most productive hitter.
Before Bonds’ career got off-track and he went the gorilla-with-a-maple-bat route, Barry Bonds was still a great player. He won the Rookie of the Year in 1986, he won three MVPs in the early 90’s, and he won eight gold gloves before he bulked up and couldn’t move around the outfield. Pre-2000, Bonds was consistently a .300 hitter who hit 30 homers, drove in 100 runs, and stole 30 bases. It’s just what happened after that that causes us to look at his career in a different light.
I don’t care what Bonds wants to say, a consistently very good player, like Bonds was, does not all of sudden jack 73 home runs at age 36. Still, that’s a record, ahead of other juicers Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa. Also, with the steroid crackdown these days, it’s a record we may never see broken.
Bonds holds the career home run record with 762. He’s a career .298 hitter with the all-time 6th-highest on-base percentage at .444 and the 6th-highest slugging percentage at .607. Bonds’ 514 career steals, the vast majority coming pre-2000, make him the only member of the 500-500 club. In addition, Bonds was perhaps the most feared hitter ever as evidenced by his record 2,558 career walks, a record 688 of them coming intentionally.
In all Bonds won seven MVPs (his next highest competitor has three), eight Gold Gloves, twelve Silver Slugger Awards, three Hank Aaron Awards, won the 1996 Home Run Derby, and was a fourteen-time All-Star.
Other records Bonds holds: most home runs against different pitchers (449), home runs by a 40-year-old (74), consecutive seasons with 30+ home runs (13), slugging percentage in a single season (.863), slugging percentage in a World Series (1.294), consecutive seasons with a .600+ slugging percentage (8), single season on-base percentage (.609), walks in a single season (232), intentional walks in a single season (120), consecutive games with a walk (18), consecutive MVP awards (4), Player of the Month selections (13), and he was the oldest player to win a batting title for the first time (37 years old).
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| #5 Barry Bonds |
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