Did Steroids Juice Barry Bonds Past Babe Ruth?

You can slice and dice the numbers up just about any way you want to and you will almost always come to the same conclusion. Babe Ruth is the greatest hitter in baseball history. His stats are just superior to every other player. But the stats Barry Bonds put up while using steroids, HGH and other performance enhancing drugs are phenomenal. Did Bonds ever surpass Ruth as a hitter?

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The first thing to say is that on a career basis Barry Bonds cannot compare at all to Babe Ruth. For his career Babe Ruth scored runs at a 14.6% higher rate than Barry Bonds, hit home runs at a 10.4% high rate than Barry Bonds and drove in runs at a 30.1% higher rate than Barry Bonds per official at bat in the major leagues. Those are just huge statistical differences and you can read more on this here Babe Ruth Stats and here Barry Bonds Stats.

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Even though Barry Bonds was a great hitter before using drugs he was nowhere close to the Babe but once Barry started really using the juice his numbers exploded but did he ever catch the Babe? To determine this we will look at the peak numbers of both players in three categories. Run average, RBI average and HR average. We calculate these stats out just like you would for batting average, only using the player’s runs, RBI’s and HR’s instead of hits per official at bat.

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Babe Ruth’s Peak Numbers

In 1920 the Babe scored 158 runs in 457 at bats for a run average of .346.

Also in 1920 the Babe hit 54 home runs in 457 at bats for a HR average of .118.

In 1921 the Babe had 171 RBI’s in 540 at bats for an RBI average of .317.

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Barry Bonds Peak Numbers

In 2004 Barry scored 129 runs in 373 at bats for a run average of .346.

In 2001 Barry hit a record 73 home runs in 476 at bats for a HR average of .153.

Also in 2001 Barry had 137 RBI’s in 476 at bats for an RBI average of .288.

Run Averages  

Babe – .346

Barry – .346

Home Run Averages

Babe – .118

Barry – .153

RBI Averages

Babe – .317

Barry – .288

So what do we have? At their peaks, Babe and Barry were equal run scorers at .346, which I believe ties them at the highest single season run average of all time. In terms of home runs, Barry is 29.7% ahead of Babe. And in terms of RBI’s, Babe is 10.1% ahead of Barry.

Looking at the numbers we see they were equal in run scoring, Barry has a big edge in home runs and the Babe has an edge in RBI’s. (Ruth had an RBI average over .300 an incredible 7 times in his career. Bonds never made .300 and was over .250 in his career only 4 times, which is still a phenomenal rate.)

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Barry being equal to the Babe in peak run average is a product of his getting 232 walks, including 120 intentional walks, in 2004 (Ruth had 150 Total walks when he had a .346 run average in 1920). The .346 run average in 2004 was the only time Bonds was over .300 in his career while Ruth managed it 3 times (1920-21 and 1928). (It is much harder to score runs then to drive them in because you can only score once per at bat but can drive in up to 4 runs each at bat.)

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So did a juiced up Barry Bonds ever surpass Babe Ruth as a hitter? The numbers are very close and we can say without any hesitation Barry Bonds was at least equal to Babe Ruth in peak value and I would say that Bonds did slightly surpass Ruth in peak value. Of course it took steroids, HGH and just about every other performance enhancing drug Barry Bonds could pour into his body to do it.