He already has four home runs this year, and we don’t know how many more he’ll hit — tonight! They say he’s on pace to hit 362 home runs, which obviously is ridiculous, but it’s amazing what a quick start he’s gotten off to. On "Baseball Tonight," I hear talk about Bonds being one of the top five or 10 players ever.

Bonds is clearly one of the best players of his generation, if not the best. He is a throwback to Ted Williams when it comes to his resistance to hitting anything outside the strike zone. His combination of power and speed in the first half of his career was Hall of Fame material in and of itself. And now what he’s done in the last year — and what he will probably do this year — since bulking up … we are looking at a very special creature.

As all true statheads know, the best indicator of a player’s offensive capability is OPS, which stands for on-base percentage plus slugging. Unlike RBI, batting average or other statistics, it is comprehensive is solely dependent on a player’s offensive contribution, not how many guys are on base when he comes to the plate.

Barry Bonds is eighth all-time in career OPS, at 1.0034. Who are some of the guys before him on that list? Oh, just a few small-timers: Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx … you get the picture. Interestingly, Frank Thomas is sixth on that list. But Thomas is a terrible fielder and couldn’t steal a base to save his life, unlike Bonds.

Some complain about Bonds’ bad attitude and say he hasn’t come through in the clutch. Both are true, but when you look at how the numbers stack up, it’s damn impressive. How many other players have been walked with the bases loaded — twice— as Bonds has?