Best hitters of the 21st century

Barry Bonds is long gone, but he still leads the batting race by a mile

Mar 25, 2022

Barry Bonds established himself as one of the best baseball players on the planet in the 1990s. He won the Most Valuable Player Awards for 1990, 1992, and 1993 — the first two in Pittsburgh, the latter in San Francisco — and he finished among the National League’s top five MVP candidates four other times in the decade.

Then the calendar flipped to a new century, and Bonds somehow got even better. He went on an unprecedented tear, taking second place in 2000’s balloting before winning the Most Valuable Player trophy in each of the next four seasons.

Here are the collective stats for Bonds’s 2001-2004 MVP reign with the Giants: 209 home runs, 438 runs batted in, and a batting average of .349. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to imagine any future batter achieving similar numbers over such a lengthy stretch.

Reporters naturally wondered about Bonds’s sudden shift into this superhuman gear of excellence. “Some things I can’t understand right now,” Bonds told them. “The balls I used to line off the wall, I’m lining out (of the park). I can’t tell you why. Call God. Ask Him.”

Cynics suggested that a call to his pharmacist — or perhaps his steroids lab — would have been more appropriate.

Bonds blasted a career-high 73 home runs in 2001, followed by his peak batting average of .370 a season later. He capped his streak with a pair of 45-homer performances in 2003 and 2004, drawing an otherworldly total of 232 walks the latter year.

The magic didn’t last. Bonds left the majors in 2007, hounded by widespread rumors of steroid abuse that have kept him out of the Hall of Fame. But his statistics, whatever the cause, remain the century’s best, far ahead of any other batter who made at least 2,500 plate appearances between 2000 and 2021.

I analyzed the records of 568 contenders, ranking them according to bases per out (BPO). I began by tabulating the number of bases each batter reached (through hits, walks, hit batsmen, stolen bases, and sacrifices), then I divided the resulting total by the number of outs he made.

A BPO greater than 1.000 indicates outstanding production by a batter. Bonds soared all the way to 1.647, reaching 3,333 bases between 2000 and 2007, while making just 2,024 outs.

The runner-up in my 21st century rankings, Mike Trout (himself a three-time MVP), finished a jaw-dropping 488 points behind Bonds. Trout’s BPO of 1.159 would be considered magnificent under any other circumstances, but it gets him only second place here.

Ten batters posted BPOs above 1.000 during the 2000-2021 span, and you’ll find their numerical profiles below, including such other stats as games, batting average, and home runs. Following the top 10 is a quick rundown of the century’s next 15.

A few well-known players also performed solidly during the past 22 seasons, yet fell short of my list of 25 elite hitters. Among them: Albert Pujols (.922 BPO for this century), Miguel Cabrera (.920), Kris Bryant (.917), Freddie Freeman (.912), and Ryan Braun (.900).