page_title: Barry Bonds
section_title: 1999 season
hierarchical_section_title: Barry Bonds / Professional career / San Francisco Giants (1993–2007) / 1999 season
caption_attribution_description: w:Barry Bonds at the plate.
context_page_description: Barry Lamar Bonds is an American former professional baseball left fielder who played 22 seasons in Major League Baseball with the Pittsburgh Pirates and San Francisco Giants. He received a record seven NL MVP awards, eight Gold Glove awards, a record 12 Silver Slugger awards, and 14 All-Star selections. He is considered to be one of the greatest baseball players of all time.
  Bonds was an exceptional hitter: he led MLB in on-base plus slugging six times, and placed within the top five hitters in 12 of his 17 qualifying seasons. He holds many MLB hitting records, including most career home runs, most home runs in a single season and most career walks.
  Bonds was a superb all-around baseball player. He won eight Gold Glove awards for his defensive play in the outfield. He stole 514 bases with his baserunning speed, becoming the first and only MLB player to date with at least 500 home runs and 500 stolen bases. He is ranked second in career Wins Above Replacement among all major league position players by both Fangraphs and Baseball-Reference.com, behind only Babe Ruth.
  However, Bonds led a controversial career, notably as a central figure in baseball's steroids scandal.
context_section_description: 1999 marked a career low, up to that point, for Bonds in terms of playing time. Bonds started off the 1999 season hitting well by batting .366 in the month of April with 4 home runs and 12 RBIs in the Giants first 12 games of the season. But on April 18 he was placed on the 15-day disabled list for only the 2nd time in his career up to that point. Bonds had suffered a torn tendon in his bicep as well as bone spurs in his elbow, both of which required surgery and cost him the rest of April and all of May.
  Upon returning to action on June 9, Bonds struggled somewhat at the plate for the remainder of the 1999 season. A series of nagging injuries including elbow pain, knee inflammation and groin issues hampered his play. Only hitting .248 after his return from the disabled list, he still managed to slug 34 home runs, drive in 83 runs as well as hit for a .617 slugging percentage, despite missing nearly two full months with injuries and only playing in 102 games.
  Bill James ranked Bonds as the best player of the 1990s. He added that the decade's second-best player, Craig Biggio, had been closer in production to the decade's 10th-best player than to Bonds. In 1999, with statistics through 1997 being considered, Bonds ranked Number 34 on The Sporting News' list of the 100 Greatest Baseball Players, making him the highest-ranking active player.
  When the Sporting News list was redone in 2005, Bonds was ranked 6th behind Babe Ruth, Willie Mays, Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, and Hank Aaron. Bonds was omitted from 1999's Major League Baseball All-Century Team, to which Ken Griffey, Jr. was elected. James wrote of Bonds, "Certainly the most unappreciated superstar of my lifetime. ... Griffey has always been more popular, but Bonds has been a far, far greater player." In 1999, he rated Bonds as the 16th-best player of all time. "When people begin to take in all of his accomplishments", he predicted, "Bonds may well be rated among the five greatest players in the history of the game."
caption: Bonds at the plate with the Giants
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