Bonds and it's not even remotely close, LOL.
Barry Bonds in his prime seasons was the greatest hitter of all time. Easy. Greater even than Ruth. In 2004 Bonds was intentionally walked
120 times. That was out of 617 plate appearances. Yet he was walked another
112 times on top of that because pitchers were too scared to throw it to him in the strike zone. They were desperately trying to cheese him to chase pitches in hopes he would strike out, or at least get behind early in the at-bat so that he would have to hit defensively, and not swing for the fence. He was beaned 9 times, and he sacrificed a fly ball 3 times for the team. Altogether, that means he was effectively being dodged 2 out of 5 trips to the plate. I repeat:
40% of the time they were too scared to pitch to Bonds. Because his
on-base percentage was above 60%.
And in 2001, the year he set the record, he hit those 73 home runs with 476 legitimate at-bats where they pitched to him. That's a home run every 6.5 at-bats:
15.3 home runs every 100 times they pitched to him.
And then you come to learn neither of those seasons was even his best overall year at the plate. That would be 2002. LOL, it's stupefying.
Comparatively, Ohtani is downright pedestrian. This year, they only avoided him 12.5% of the time (1 out of 8 at-bats). That's less than a third the rate they dodged Bonds. His home run rate against legitimate opportunities was a home run roughly every 12 trips, or 8.5 HRs every 100 at-bats: barely more than half what Bonds did in 2001. His on-base percentage was 39%. Even with all his steals he produced the exact same number of total bases as Bonds did in 2001 despite ~70 more total trips to the plate. He struck out 2x-3x as much as Bonds in those prime seasons despite that his slugging was so widely inferior.
This isn't comparing them as overall players. This is comparing them as pure hitters. It's like comparing Michael Jordan to Paul Pierce.
Compare Players: Check out the head-to-head stats of Shohei Ohtani (2024-2024) and Barry Bonds (2001-2001) including their awards, honors, championships, playoff and regular season stats, and much more on Stathead.com
stathead.com
| Rk | Player | Age | From | To | G | PA | AB | R | H | 2B | 3B | HR | RBI | SB | CS | BB | SO | BA | OBP | SLG | OPS | OPS+ | TB | GIDP | HBP | SH | SF | IBB |
|---|
| 1 | Barry Bonds | 36 | 2001 | 2001 | 153 | 664 | 476 | 129 | 156 | 32 | 2 | 73 | 137 | 13 | 3 | 177 | 93 | .328 | .515 | .863 | 1.379 | 259 | 411 | 5 | 9 | 0 | 2 | 35 |
| 2 | Shohei Ohtani | 29 | 2024 | 2024 | 159 | 731 | 636 | 134 | 197 | 38 | 7 | 54 | 130 | 59 | 4 | 81 | 162 | .310 | .390 | .646 | 1.036 | 190 | 411 | 7 | 6 | 0 | 5 | 10 |
