This Week in (Dumb) Baseball: On Barry Bonds as coach dissenters – CBSSports.com

It’s Monday, which means our regularly scheduled programming of This Week in (Dumb) Baseball is ready for consumption.

As regular readers already know, this feature has the title, sure, but it’s mostly for fun— a fact that eludes the masses but remains the case. For example, if you tell me to “quit whining,” you are missing the point. I’m mostly chuckling to myself as I write these things (with some exceptions, of course).

For all This Week in (Dumb) Baseball columns, click here.

1. Who wouldn’t want Barry Bonds as a hitting coach?

In case you missed it, my colleague Jon Heyman reports the Marlins are seriously considering bringing in Barry Bonds as a hitting coach.

And good lord, it’s amazing how many people have such a warped view of Bonds. Just look at the reponses under Heyman’s tweet when he broke the news (you have to click through and be prepared to scroll).

barry bonds is under serious consideration to become marlins hitting coach. https://t.co/kwWHCNAs62

— Jon Heyman (@JonHeymanCBS) November 30, 2015

I’m assuming the comments section on his story on our site is similar, just as it is everywhere on the Internet where other sites aggregated Jon’s report. It’s just what happens when people see Bonds’ name and lose their collective minds.

Let’s think about the actual subject here, though.

Barry Bonds would be helping younger players learn about hitting. That’s it.

Thinking this would somehow be a bad thing is, yes, dumb.

First off, there’s this silly notion that because of his controversial background, any player in the same locker room as him will be linked to PED use. That notion is so laughable that I shouldn’t even need to respond to such ridiculousness.

Secondly, Mark McGwire and Manny Ramirez, among others, have already proven successful hitting instructors. Why can’t Bonds, considering he was a better hitter?

Third, to piggyback off point number one, I roll over dying laughing when I see that some people actually, truthfully believe Bonds was some kind of steroid-fueled creation. He’s one of the most gifted players in baseball history. Did any of these brainiacs ever actually watch Bonds hit?

Let’s put aside that he was already on a Hall of Fame track before his career took a controversial turn. Through 1998 (a cut-off point that will make sense to those informed individuals on this subject), Bonds was a career .290/.411/.556 (164 OPS+) hitter. He was already north of 400 doubles and homers with 1917 hits. This was through age 33. He had walked more times (1357) than he struck out (1050) and won three MVPs.

What he did the rest of his career is what skewed the history books in the minds of many, but no one can deny that this is a person who knew a lot about hitting. Few handled the bat better than Bonds before he kicked things into overdrive.

After? Forget about it.

Go back and watch Bonds’ at-bats from the later years in his career. He never swung at bad pitches. He rarely swung at pitchers’ strikes. When he decided to offer at a pitch, he rarely fouled it off — unless he wanted to — and mostly made hard contact. When he was really dialed in, there were entire games where he’d swing the bat one time and it would result in a colossal bomb.

One can attempt to argue this was all physical based upon his immense talent, but there was a mental aspect at play here that all too often gets overlooked. This part of the game is where Bonds will be a great help to younger hitters. After his second MVP, he decided he wanted to better control his bat so he started to choke up and shortened his swing a bit. Yes, he made adjustments even after two MVPs at an early age. How are we to believe he would be a terrible coach?

This is a guy who had a firm grasp of the strike zone, knew what opposing pitchers would do to attack him, knew how they’d try to set him up and knew what they’d do after they thought they had set him up.

Sure, he can’t pass along his innate ability to so easily read the zone, but he can surely help with the mental aspect of how to approach an at-bat in ways many hitting coaches can’t. Make no mistake, much of the time he didn’t even blink at a close pitch out of the zone was because he already knew he wasn’t getting a strike.

It’s pretty simple-minded to see the name “Barry Bonds” and freak out like it would be a huge mistake to hire him. Let’s be better than that. Bonds getting to shot to prove he can be a productive hitting coach is a pretty fun storyline, really.

And just imagine if he can help Giancarlo Stanton harness the strike zone even a fraction of the manner in which Bonds did. That would be something.

And now, let us wash away the dumb with fun!

Throwback (way back) photo of the day

Hall of Fame hurler Kid Nichols’ grip!

Kid Nichols pitching grip in 1901. @GraigKreindler @BB_Essential @TNPMuseum @scorekeepers643 @ironhencafe @sabr pic.twitter.com/dgSDmajK1E

— The Skimmers (@TheSkimmers) November 3, 2015

Video game nostalgia

Monday marked the 61st birthday of Juan Berenguer. For those who grew up playing RBI Baseball in the late 1980s like I did, that name stands out for a reason: Senor Smoke! He was the hardest thrower on the original RBI Baseball. Those ’87 Twins were a fun team to play with anyway, but perhaps the best reason was having the option of bringing on Berenguer for this heater late.

Possibly dumb pop culture discussion of the week

I was able to see “Creed” Monday while the kids were in school and, wow, did it blow my expectations away. What a great job they did in putting that movie together. Any fan of the ‘Rocky’ movies will fall in love with this instant classic.

Perhaps more importantly, when I told my wife I was going to see Creed, she looked at me with the weirdest, most judgemental look ever. It was weird, too, because usually she’s with me on the “to each his own” front.

As it turns out, she thought I meant the band was touring and I wanted to see them play. Cue the laugh track.

Topical: here is the following video …

That’s the best thing he’s done in years!

On that note, let’s get outta here. Have a great week-before-Winter Meetings week.

Suggestions (dumb stuff, random videos, baseball cards, pop culture rankings topics, etc.) or hate mail? Feel free to hit me up: matt.snyder@cbs.com or you could always go to Twitter (@MattSnyderCBS).