Arbitrator Fredric Horowitz has ruled in favor of Major League Baseball over Barry Bonds in the case of Bonds’ allegations of collusion against him following the 2007 season, Jon Heyman of CBS Sports reports.
Word of Bonds’ plans to pursue legal action first broke back in May, and Heyman reported at the time that Bonds had waited until the resolution of successfully-challenged felony charges (obstruction of justice) before attempting to take action against the league. Heyman now writes that Bonds worked with MLBPA lawyers in an effort to use circumstantial evidence to prove that teams conspired against him to keep him out of the game following what was a brilliant 2007 season.
Though he played much of that 2007 campaign at the age of 42 and would’ve been 43 heading into the 2008 season, Bonds put together a .276/.480/.565 batting line with 28 homers. That sky-high .480 OBP unsurprisingly led the league — the sixth time he had led the league in that category in a span of seven seasons. Nevertheless, Bonds’ then-agent Jeff Borris said early in the 2008 season that he did not receive a single offer — even one at the league minimum — for his client. Bonds even went so far as to publicly offer to play for the league minimum midway through that offseason, Heyman notes, but no offers emerged.
Heyman writes that “there was no smoking gun” in Bonds’ case, and Horowitz did not find Bonds’ side to be compelling enough to rule in his favor. Indeed, it’d be difficult to necessarily prove that there was definitive conspiracy against Bonds in spite of the fact that it was surprising at the time that no team — even an AL team with a need at DH — was willing to take on Bonds’ baggage and defensive limitations in exchange for the upside of one of the most potent bats in the game’s history.
One good punch for this Creep !
Legally it is difficult to prove but intuitively its just makes no sense that no team would pay even league minimum for a guy hitting 57% better than league average with an OBP near .500
Four teams had combined DH production of wRC+<100 that year. There were some brutal names getting regular DH time. For the MLB minimum Bonds would have been valuable to an NL team too. Trot him out to PH once a game, or do the old Mark McGwire move and have him back leadoff and then immediately replace him if he got on base.
For league minimum donated to charity no less. No, there is no proving the collusion, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to spot the black-balling here.
I can understand how it could look like the other teams worked against Bonds, the part that makes no sense is why would the Giants agree to it, just to appease the rest of the league? Bonds was their main gate attraction at the time it makes absolutely no sense for the Giants to be in on such a thing. Something is missing. The Giants not taking Bonds at league minimum gives credence to no other team taking it IMO.
I’d agree on Bonds from a baseball standpoint…but it wouldn’t take collusion for every team in baseball to individually conclude he just wasn’t worth it. All they would have to have done was be awake at that point to know he was a distraction. Not many teams building with young players would have wanted him. I think I had this discussion with someone back in May. We looked at the rosters and tried to conclude where he actually made sense….I believe there were two AL teams that could have used him at DH cause they had zero there…but essentially it was likely the headache and distraction he’d cause.
“Not many teams building with young players would have wanted him.”
Including the Giants themselves. As much of a Bonds fan as I was, I agreed with the decision to start building towards the future instead of hanging on to the past. I’d say it worked out pretty well.
That said, he certainly could have helped another team in some capacity.
The 2008 Rays with Bonds at DH, instead of Cliff Floyd, could have made for a more interesting post-season.
Not surprising, though it’s pretty ridiculous that no team would even give him a shot at the league minimum. Plenty of players have baggage.
Just as an example, the 08 Rays sent out Willy Aybar and Cliff Floyd to be their DH for the two World Series games that were played at Tropicana. With Bonds as a PH or DH that lineup, it’s certainly possible they could’ve gone all the way especially when you consider how important Matt Stairs was in a PH role that year.
Obviously that’s just a “what-if,” but we are talking about one of the greatest hitters of all time. If he was willing to play for the league minimum, I doubt he would’ve been much of a nuisance.
Collusion implies league owners working together to deny Bonds. It wouldn’t have taken collusion for every organization in baseball to individually feel Bonds just wasn’t worth the drama.
That’s nice if we just look at the stats. But the issue is, with the distraction Bonds would have caused for that entire team all year, would the players have focused as well to even get to the WS?
Do you really think Bonds,would have taken the league minimum and kept his ego in check? Not likely. He wasn’t a good teammate even in SF
The circus that was following Bonds at the time would have messed up any team he played for. Every single town the team went into would have been met with media asking questions and fans showing up with signs and booing him. It would have been a circus, as bad or worse then it was his last few years with the Giants. The players on any team would have had problems focusing, especially the inexperienced ones. I don’t know how any team could have played as well as they did that year with him on it.
Not a fan of the new comment format…I’m glad for your reply..but the format makes it appear like I was responding to you when I was.actually responding to ianthomasmalone. Still don’t have a working notification system either. Hoping the future app is solid..cause this site stepped back without disqus
I couldn’t agree more. Between comments not showing up, delays in posting due to moderation, comments being non-posted when they are within the commenting policy (which I’ve prob read so many times now out of frustration in trying to figure out why a comment wasn’t approved)
I appreciate tim and the guys trying to optimize it for the community and they do an absolute awesome job, but it’s starting to get frustrating. Even scan13 stopped posting comments.
If the Giants who had already dealt with the baggage and knew it better than any one else for years did not want him back, why would other teams? Would Barry Bonds quietly accept a bench role? Seems to go against every thing in his past.
The fact that he was willing to play for the league minimum also went against everything in his past. People can change. No one gave him the chance to.
It was about this point he was involved in domestic abuse…and who knows what else maybe teams were privy too.
People can change? He was 43 years-old with 23 years in MLB.
There was more to this than production numbers. He was indicted on perjury and obstruction charges. Additionally he tested positive for amphetamines prior to the 2007 season, which required random testing. Given the possibility of being suspended and having legal proceedings shadow him I don’t think any team would want to deal with the distractions.
If Bonds was in present day MLB, he would’ve had major offers as Melky, Peralta and other PED players have received.
At age 43? Yea right…
If he put up .276/.480/.565 with 28 HR in 2015, even at age 42, he would get another 1-3 years at a significant salary, despite his age.
Again not as 43 year old hitter facing felony charges over PED’s.
This completely ties all of Bonds value to his previous season stats, and doesn’t address his legal and potential clubhouse issues. Let’s just say those stats came from Jim Thome… yeah…Thome gets a contract. Ya know why Bonds didn’t get one? Because every organization in baseball took his character into consideration and determined that they either really didn’t have a place on the roster for him or he just wasn’t worth it. Bonds was perpetually in the media back then and had his laundry hung out on full public view. That’s also not to say that a team couldn’t hire its own P.I. and potentially come up with even more Bonds skeletons. He was also involved in domestic abuse at this point. It wouldn’t have taken a directive from league office or teams chatting to determine that Bonds wasn’t worth it. Man…it’d have taken a saint to take him at that point…no matter what the stats were saying.
Clemens was dominating at age 42 and 43 and still got offers at the same time period, and with similar baggage.
Should indicate the level of ridiculousness that was Barry Bonds that he didn’t get an offer. You have to be a major distraction or risk for those numbers not to get something. I do believe his knee was balky too. There just wasn’t a team out there who wanted him sulking and locking down the organization so he could DH.
That’s the difference between bonds and Clemens! You said it yourself “Clemens was dominating”
So, let’s just say Bonds had signed and put up decent, but declining stats….would he then be owed a contract for the following season? Do teams need to continue to be willing to offer employment to players until the players decide that they are no longer going to play? At what statistical point are teams allowed to make baseball decisions without facing law suits? What’s to keep Julio Franco from filing suit? At some point Bonds offer to play for league minimum is no different than MY offer to play for league minimum…maybe everyone who would like to play major league baseball should file collusion charges and force major league expansion to 500 teams so we can all get a few at bats in.
A 1.045 OPS in your age 42 year isn’t “dominating”?
Where is the statistical breaking point that the character is no longer worth the stats?
In limited playing time his Slugging percentage was above average and his OBP was really high thus inflating his OPS. He got walked a lot.
“Indeed, it’d be difficult to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that there was any definitive conspiracy against Bonds ”
That’s not the legal standard in a civil case such as this. Rather, it’s whether the preponderance of evidence demonstrates that collusion occurred. That is, is it more likely than not that MLB teams colluded against Bonds.
I also just made a comment similar to this one, but it’s “awaiting moderation”. I’m curious to see if it passes.
You’d need hard evidence to prove collusion…phone records…emails. Bonds was a public figure even to non sports fans. It wouldn’t have taken collusion to conclude from an individual team standpoint that he wasn’t worth the distraction. I’m not sure why he was owed a contract. He was aging, and had been hurt the previous season… Was in his early 40’s…AND was facing federal charges. What team wouldn’t want to be involved in that. San Francisco had EVERY reason from a marketing standpoint to retain him…yet they moved on.
Red line, we are normally on the same page when it comes to baseball matters, but this isn’t a strictly a baseball matter. This is a legal issue, with a baseball context.
You stated in your comment two examples of “hard evidence” – phone records and emails. Based on my experience, as a trial attorney, the best information you may be able available is GM of team A called GM of team B at a certain time on a certain number and maybe (and it’s a big maybe since this was a 2007 matter) you may be able to determine the duration of the call. That will be the only records available – you won’t get a recording of the conversation and most likely you will never know who the conversation was between. The number on the calling end will be routed through the teams operator, so you will only have a generic identification for the caller’s I’d – not the individual who is making the call’s extension.
Those phone records are circumstantial evidence.
Emails: you will get a bit further with emails, because you will be provided the transmitting and receiving email addressed, along with the time and date. The content of those individual emails, are not going to be available – especially through arbitration. So if you only have the sender and recipient’s addresses and the time and date it was sent, this is also circumstantial evidence.
Lastly, the determination that bonds is a public figure is not relevant to a determination of whether or not there was collusion. It’s relevant for allegations or libel, slander, or defamation generally, but not collusion.
I tried to respond to your comment in an adequate fashion. It was awaiting moderation. It’s been two hours. I don’t know why it wouldn’t have been approved by the mod by now… It was well within the commenting policy guidelines
Practically speaking, with out the transcripts of the phone conversations or transcripts of the emails – which more probable than not don’t exist (regarding the phone calls) or are not discoverable because of certain types of legal privilege (regarding emails)- the only thing that will be available is the log of the phone numbers involved in the conversation and the time and date. And anyone who has ever worked at a business that has a main line and a direct dial knows how numbers will appear in phone records.
The phone records and emails are circumstantial evidence. And circumstantial evidence is enough to prove collusion.
You are correct, but you still have to meet your burden of proof — especially when the other side can’t prove themselves innocent even if it was fair to ask them to. There’s nothing MLB or any of the teams can say about something that didn’t happen other than “that didn’t happen,” which means every bit of proof that it DID needs to fall on Bonds.
Maybe he presented a much more compelling case to the arbitrator, but all we know of his argument in public is basically “I was good and nobody offered me a contract.” That was never going to be enough.
…Or maybe teams just didn’t want to sign a 43 year old hitter with a felony steroid case and the clubhouse reputation of a Barry bonds?
Melky Cabrera would seem to indicate otherwise.
how so?
not really, Bonds was in the heat of the roid stuff really coming down on the league, AND he had a lot of other baggage and a higher profile. Melky is a averagish type player with a much lower public profile and no felony charges hanging over his head. (and the roid furor has died down because of the policies put in place) Combine that with Bond’s reputation for being selfish and a crappy teammate and the obviousness of his PED’s and it’s easy to see why teams could have been “meh, not worth the hassle” without there being some tin foil hat conspiracy
You think a lot more highly of MLB front offices than myself.
Steve, I have an issue with the sentence in your third paragraph that begins, ” Indeed, it’d be difficult to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt…” There is no circumstance anywhere in our legal system, be it criminal prosecution, civil litigation, alternative dispute resolution, or arbitration, where a party must prove their case “beyond a shadow of a doubt”. That is an obscenely high standard which isn’t even applied to death penalty cases.
Arbitration is a form of alternative dispute resolution that is often used as a tool to resolve civil matters. The standard burden of proof in those situations is “more probable than not”.
Lastly, a comment on circumstantial evidence, because the this is a term commonly misunderstood by the general population. Just because evidence is labeled as circumstantial, does not mean that is a lesser form of evidence or not as strong as other forms of evidence (testimonial, witness, or documentary). Quite often, circumstantial evidence is the most persuasive evidence that can be presented. Further, the presence of a “smoking gun” in any type of civil litigation is so extremely rare, that when one does exist, it goes down in infamy. Like the 1966 asbestos toxicology report…
That’s fair. The implications you’re referencing re: that phrase weren’t my intent, but I was pretty fast and loose with my wording when discussing a legal matter, which was rather careless on my part.
No worries. It’s a small matter that concerns a term of art in the legal profession. I wasn’t a huge fan of the manner in which Heyman wrote his article and the implications I drew from heymans language choice. He made it seem as though bonds couldn’t win the case on circumstantial evidence and he even seemed to double down with the smoking gun quote. Taken out of context by the average reader without any legal experience, it would seem like bonds didn’t have a leg to stand on and the matter was frivolous.
And you are being way to hard on yourself by saying you were playing it fast and lose and it wasn’t careless. You have been one of the main content providers on this site for well over a year and a quality writer for longer than that. You got tripped up on a term of art. It happens – especially when you have had to provide all the posted content (for over the last 24 hours) for a site that has such an avid readership and community participation. It wasn’t careless or fast and loose… It was a whoopsie. And that’s what you have loyal readers are community participants for, to help out on the things you couldn’t possibly know.
Let’s try this again… I responded hours ago and it was awaiting moderation again. Steve, it wasn’t careless or fast and loose, you had a whoopsie on a legal term of art. It’s no biggy. It happens. What makes this site awesome is that there is an active community with a very broad base of knowledge, so we can help clarify things. We expect you to be very very good, which you are, but we don’t demand perfection every time…
That’s BS. I am not a Barry Bonds fan at all, but it was obviously collusion. Guy had almost 500 obp and can’t even get a league minimum offer? It is so obvious he was black balled. I would have taken him for league minimum on my team if I would have been a GM.
Not even when he came out and offered to play for league minimum donated to charity. The fact that he was 43 had nothing to do with it, not with his “poor and declining” age 42 season being better than the vast majority of the league.
It’s not collusion if each team made a decision on their own accord. And it would not be surprising at all each team didn’t want a player with a felony case hanging above his head, right after the heat of steroid drama, in their clubhouse.
The truth is there probably was some collusion. Probably no official word but there was probably a quiet agreement among all to let him walk away.
The other truth is it’s not a bad thing. Since there is nothing on Bonds except empirical evidence he couldn’t be suspended while chasing Aaron’s record without setting a precedent that the player’s union would fight. But after Bonds broke the record and his contract was done then baseball could be done with Bonds.
Well it is a bad thing because now A-Rods going to become HR king when Bonds could have added dozens more and made it harder to top.
Why is it likely there was collusion?
For starters, with Barry Bonds it wasn’t simple steroid use. He was the poster boy of the entire scandal. The only reason we know the name BALCO is because of Barry Bonds. Other players wrapped up in in the same scandal testified to a grand jury that it was Bonds who introduced them. The whole sport was literally just in the midst of trying to undue or mitigate the damage to the sport he had done. At this point in time it wasn’t just “you cheated, cheating’s bad.” It’s “you may have just destroyed our sport.” Nobody knew exactly how this whole thing was going to play out.
At the beginning of 2007, news of a positive test for amphetamines under the drug testing program surfaced. When he was confronted with those results he tried to claim it was something he took out of his teammate’s locker, which he later recanted. By the end of the year, leading into the 2008 season now in question, he had been charged in federal court with four counts of perjury and one count of obstruction of justice. The Mitchell Report had just been released, and was not exactly kind to him.
Beyond all that, there were allegations of domestic abuse. He was known as a rather poor teammate even before the incident blaming Sweeney, and he was exceptionally prickly with the media. While his numbers were very good still, he only played half a season due to injury and was becoming a larger liability in the field. And his own team of the past fifteen years had just declared they were not going to sign him.
That’s the backdrop teams had to their decision whether or not to sign him. Given that, of the handful of (mostly AL) teams that might have had a legitimate opening for Barry Bonds I don’t personally find it hard to believe they could have independently decided “no, I’m not dealing with this.” In fact I would be surprised if any team had decided “sign me up!”
First off you are assuming he would have accepted the league minimum salary, I doubt he would. Secondly, no team would want a cancer like bonds to tear apart its balance and chemistry. A 40 year old, slightly better than average player is not worth the cost to team chemistry and overall goals of the club. Any team that would have signed him would be a dog and pony show at best.
Fun fact, a 1.045 OPS has never disrupted “chemistry”, ever. Never. Ever.
Here is one issue with proving collusion, all teams both NL/AL would have to be part of the collusion. To that conclusion every team would have needed a LF or DH (AL), Take Boston for example they had Manny if LF and Big Papi at DH. I don think at the time Boston would want to trade 1 headache (Manny) for a bigger one.
This is an interesting case. Inferring from is previous year’s stats that some team should have made him an offer is probably not good enough to demonstrate, on its own, that multiple MLB teams talked it out and all decided to not make one. So, I don’t think the mere circumstance (as suspect as it appears) would be enough to sustain the charge. But it’s hard not to draw the conclusion that something went on. Personally, if I were a GM at that time, with the enormous attention being paid to the issue, and his incredibly controversial personal history, I think I would have taken a pass.
Fact is, Teams didn’t have to collude with one another, if they all individually felt Bonds wasn’t worth the drama. Great bat or not, teams didn’t want him in their clubhouse, and it wasn’t due to a room full of GM’s saying yeah, let’s band together.
I am a little bit surprised to see no one has mentioned fan outrage as a factor in explaining why no MLB team was willing to sign Bonds.
We need to keep in mind that team owners have invested a ton of money in building up a loyal fan base. I do not care how many additional wins Bonds might have added to my home team’s total, it would not have been worth it. I just could not continue to offer full support to my team if Bonds was on the roster. I would rather see them miss the play-offs than win the World Series if it meant having to watch Bonds in uniform every day.
I do not think I am at all alone here. Bonds might have helped a team win a few more games, but even if he was paid nothing signing him was going to cost a team a LOT of venue. Both short term and long term revenue. Probably well into the eight figures. That factor alone adequately explains to me why all teams other than the Giants were unwilling to offer Bonds a contract. If Bonds was ever going to play baseball again it had to be with the Giants, no other team would be interested in associating themselves with Bonds, especially given what he had left to offer on the field.
And yet teams had great years without Bonds, and all that came with him. Soooo who cares. You do not build a better team by throwing a great hitter on it, You build a better team by having all your players play like a team. Bonds fit in with SF, so blame them …. not the rest of the league.