{"id":97,"date":"2016-08-28T20:59:35","date_gmt":"2016-08-29T00:59:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonbaseball.com\/?p=97"},"modified":"2016-08-31T11:32:41","modified_gmt":"2016-08-31T15:32:41","slug":"anthony-rizzo-modern-day-barry-bonds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2016\/08\/28\/anthony-rizzo-modern-day-barry-bonds\/","title":{"rendered":"Anthony Rizzo: A Modern Day Barry Bonds"},"content":{"rendered":"

The thought sounds ludicrous at face value, I know. Barry Bonds<\/a><\/strong> won seven National League MVPs and has hit more career homers than there are words in this article. Anthony Rizzo<\/a><\/strong> is just 27 years old and is a really good player in 2016. He has less than 200 career homers and has finished in the top-10 in NL MVP voting twice. To see this comparison, we have to commit baseball heresy and go beyond the numbers.<\/p>\n

Anthony Rizzo: A Modern Day Barry Bonds<\/h2>\n

The Home Run King<\/h3>\n

First let\u2019s look at what made Bonds the hitter that he was (whether or not you believe it was PEDs is irrelevant here, we\u2019re simply looking at mechanics and approach). During his career, Bonds was about as atypical of a power hitter as one could be in the era in which he played.<\/p>\n

For starters, he choked up on the bat. A concept that is widely believed to zap a hitter\u2019s power, it became a tool for him to generate unearthly bat speed. He was very compact and simple in his approach and that allowed him to not only hit for power, but hit for a high average. He didn\u2019t simply use his strength and momentum of the bat to generate power. Instead, he kept 100 percent control of the bat through the zone and hit the ball on the \u201csweet spot\u201d about every single time (which is just as mind-boggling as it sounds).<\/p>\n