To celebrate Barry Bonds’ breaking of Babe Ruth’s home run record, I’ve slapped together a little graph to compare Barry’s homers with the times he’s been at bat, to the times he’s been intentionally walked. How these factors are related and how they trend together is interesting to see.

The fewer times he’s appeared at the plate the fewer times he’s hit homers. This is incredibly obvious, but I just wanted to see.

I also put in the number of times he’s been intentionally walked because I wanted to see whether it was affecting the number of homers he hits. This seemed to vary from year to year and didn’t show a clear causal relationship, though I would guess that it had its effects regardless.

Now, how did the steroid investigation affect his home run production? Compare with the Balco timeline on USAToday. However, keep in mind the other factors that contribute to fewer homers.

Barry's Chart