SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Barry Bonds doesn’t like making headlines anymore, he says, but he still has his opinions—particularly about two-way Japanese sensation Shohei Ohtani.
Major League Baseball’s all-time home run leader said in a wide-ranging interview last week that Ohtani shouldn’t pitch again.
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“If you’re DH-ing and doing what you’re doing, why fix something that ain’t broken?” Bonds said. “Pitching again? That’s a lot of concentration. He might get hurt again. They’re asking a lot.”
Ohtani didn’t throw for the Los Angeles Dodgers last season while recovering from his second reconstructive surgery on his right elbow. Still, he won his second consecutive league MVP as a designated hitter and became the first player to amass 50 homers and 50 stolen bases in one season, with 54 and 59, respectively.
Ohtani last pitched for the Los Angeles Angels on Aug. 23, 2023 against the Cincinnati Reds. He was revving up for a May return to the mound this season, but Dodgers manager Dave Roberts recently said the team is slowing down Ohtani’s rehab progression. Bonds has a different idea for Ohtani if and when he returns.
“For me, he should come out of the bullpen if he comes back to pitch at all. That’s just my opinion,” Bonds said. “That would be cool. He’d be a solid closer or set-up man for anybody because he’s so good. He wouldn’t have to work as hard as being a starting pitcher. He might have a no-hitter going in the sixth inning and then have to try to complete that no-hitter. Then they want him to DH the next day?”
When noted that the logistics of Ohtani getting down to the bullpen to warm up in the late innings might not work while he still has to hit, Bonds said: “That’s true. You have to start. That makes sense. He could play a position, too. He could play the outfield. If he could steal 50 bases then he could play the outfield.”
Since Ohtani came over from Japan and signed with the Angels ahead of the 2018 season, he has made one relief appearance—in the final inning of the 2023 World Baseball Classic. His Nippon Professional Baseball team, the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters, stopped playing him in the outfield because of recurring injuries.
“If he can sit on the bench and hit every few innings then he could play the outfield,” Bonds said. “You’re not doing much of anything out there. You’re just standing there.”
Bonds, who retired from professional baseball in 2007, has remained around the sport as a valued resource for the San Francisco Giants; he mentors Giants hitters at the request of San Francisco’s new baseball operations regime of Buster Posey and Randy Winn. Bonds is especially focused on bringing along the club’s younger cohort.
Last week, he visited Scottsdale Stadium as a guest instructor, working early each morning in the batting cage below the right field pavilion while wearing his famous No. 25 uniform.
“It’s comfortable. It’s nice,” Bonds said. “I sit down in the batting cage and talk to the guys. I’m no different than Willie [Mays] was. We’re an encyclopedia, dictionary of information. If you want to utilize it, utilize it.”
The Giants are utilizing it. And why not? Bonds is MLB’s all-time leader with 762 homers, hitting 586 of them for San Francisco, and he holds the single season mark of 73, set in 2001. Mays—Bonds’ godfather, who died last year at 93—hit 660 career homers. The two are team royalty. Both are honored on the club’s Wall of Fame on the red-brick facing of San Francisco’s Oracle Park. Mays long ago had his No. 24 retired, and Bonds’ No. 25 was retired in 2018.
“He lived a good life,” Bonds, now 60, said about the iconic Mays. “That’s it. We all can’t stay here forever. We wish.”
It’s going to be a long time before anybody breaks Bonds’ home run records, which some believe are tainted by alleged steroid use. But Bonds has never been coveted about maintaining those records. When Aaron Judge was going for Roger Maris’ New York Yankees and American League record of 61 homers in 2022, Bonds told Judge to not only go for it but also pass his single-season mark, too. Judge finished with 62.
No active MLB player is even close to 500, let alone 700. Giancarlo Stanton has 429, but he’ll start the season on the injured list for the Yankees with elbow problems. Mike Trout is next up at 378, but at 33 and because of injuries he’s only hit 93 homers for the Angels since 2019. Paul Goldschmidt, in his first year with the Yanks at 37 years old, has 362.
Ohtani, at 30, has 225 if you’re wondering. Judge, at nearly 33, has 315.
Babe Ruth finished with 714 homers in 1935, and Hank Aaron passed him in 1974. It was 33 years before Bonds passed Aaron’s 755 in 2007. The contemporaries behind Bonds are Albert Pujols (703), Alex Rodriguez (696), Ken Griffey Jr. (630), Jim Thome (612) and Sammy Sosa (609).
“You never know. Somebody could come along and surprise us all the same way I did,” Bonds said. “The same way Hank did. Everyone said no one could beat Babe Ruth, and here comes Hank. Nobody said Hank was going to be beat, and here comes me. Everyone said nobody’s going to hit 600, but you’ve got a bunch of guys who hit 600. Only God has that answer.”
Because of analytics, baseball has in recent years gone to an all-or-nothing approach where strikeouts and homers are king. But players actually hit a lot more homers in the Bonds era.
“I believe MLB has already recognized analytics works in some aspects of the game, but not in the core of the game,” Bonds said. “MLB is starting to try through rule changes to revert it to the way it used to be, to the way it was. You see guys using the field more. You see guys stealing more. You see more of the fundamentals of the game coming back. That one aspect of analytics is not fun. To me, it’s boring.”
Here are a few other tidbits of Bonds wisdom:
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On the pitch clock: “I don’t mind it. I never stepped out of the box anyway, so the clock would never matter to me. The 15 seconds is a little too fast, in my opinion. I think 20 seconds would be a little better, just a little extra time.”
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On when that changed: “If a pitch is 80 or lower I can still hit it anywhere. I can hit at 100, too, if I really want to, but I’m too old. It’s painful. It’s not that I can’t do it. It hurts. As players get older they’ll understand that. Like swinging a bat. Just the vibration hurts. The harder it’s thrown the more it hurts my hands and rib cage. Then I’m laying down for two days because I’m sore in places where I don’t practice anymore.”
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About his rejection by the National Baseball Hall of Fame: “I don’t know why you guys keep bringing that up. It’s like, why? Why not kill that bird and let it go? Why do you want to keep beating that drum? There’s no need to keep beating that drum. There’s no need to make a headline out of it. Just let it be what it is. That’s how I look at it now. Move on.”
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