San Francisco Giants: A-Rod Passes Mays; Is Bonds’ Total a Possibility?
On Thursday, one day after San Francisco Giants‘ legend Willie Mays‘ 84th birthday, embattled New York Yankees’ slugger Alex Rodriguez hit his 661st home run, passing the immortal Mays for fourth all-time on the home run list. The longball came in Rodriguez’s second at-bat, and would have come in his first if not for a leaping grab by Baltimore Orioles’ right fielder Delmon Young that robbed him of the milestone.
Rodriguez has a ways to go to continue climbing the home run leader, as third-place Babe Ruth has 714 (53 ahead of Rodriguez), Hank Aaron has 755 (94 ahead), and Barry Bonds leads the way with 762 (101 ahead).
Can Rodriguez get to the mountaintop? Will he be able to slug another 102 dingers to surpass another embattled power hitter?
This isn’t to argue the validity of anyone’s records. It could be argued for days about whether Bonds and Rodriguez, the poster children of the PED era, deserve to be mentioned in the same breathe as Mays, Ruth, and Aaron.
More from San Francisco Giants
- Thank you SF Giants for a fun, wild, surprising 2020 season
- SF Giants lose in heartbreaking fashion and miss 2020 MLB playoffs
- SF Giants: Mike Yastrzemski named 2020 Willie Mac Award recipient
- SF Giants: Chadwick Tromp placed on IL with shoulder strain
- SF Giants: Tuesday’s game against the Seattle Mariners postponed
There is also the time that Mays missed early in his career, while he served in the Korean War. He played in just 34 games in 1952, and missed all of 1953, his age 21 and 22 seasons, respectively. There’s no question that if Mays wasn’t serving his country during those years, Rodriguez would still be chasing him.
But the fact is, the way things are is how they’ll stay. No one is going to take any home runs away from Bonds’ and Rodriguez’s totals. It would be just about impossible to pinpoint exactly how many are tainted, and what the true totals should be. And no one is going to extrapolate data to figure out how many home runs Mays would have hit if he were playing.
So is Bonds’ record safe? The way it looks right now, Bonds’ 755 home runs will stand until the next great slugger (Giancarlo Stanton, maybe?) makes a run at the record, but there’s no guarantee that Rodriguez won’t get there.
Rodriguez is 39 years old right now, and towards the end of July, he will turn 40. This season, Rodriguez has seven home runs. If he were to connect for another 21, to end the season at 28, that would leave him 80 home runs behind Bonds.
That would mean Rodriguez would have to average 20 home runs per season for four years to catch up to Bonds. If he were able to maintain that pace, he would tie Bonds in the 2019 season, at the age of 44. For a player who has been dealing with hip problems for a couple years, maintaining that pace for another four-plus years seems out of the realm of possibility.
On the other hand, if Rodriguez could keep his current pace for this season, he would hit 39 home runs, leaving him 69 shy of Bonds. Over the next three years, Rodriguez would have to average 23 a year to catch Bonds.
Rodriguez’s career will likely be extended if he stays with the Yankees, as he will have the benefit of playing designated hitter a couple of times a week, or even permanently. That could possibly give him an extra year or two of playing time. Bonds hit 79 home runs after he turned 40, and did so without the benefit of playing DH on days where his body was sore and aching.
It’s not impossible to think that one day, a few years down the road, Rodriguez will stand as the all-time home run king in baseball. At the same time, it doesn’t seem like the odds are very good for Rodriguez to make that push to the head of the pack.
Nothing in baseball is unthinkable. Players continue to defy Father Time, and as modern medicine continues to advance, more and more players will beat the hands of time. Rodriguez doesn’t necessarily have time on his side, but neither did Bonds.