3. Luis Gonzalez, Arizona, 2001

(AP)

I very nearly left Gonzo off of this list, and what a glaring of an error such an oversight would have been. It’s easy to brush Gonzalez aside as a similar player to Barry Bonds — a supreme talent who found a supercharged power stroke late in his career and held on for quite a while longer than anticipated. (Wait, did I just use Bonds as a case reference?)

I was 12 during the summer of 2001, when Luis Gonzalez came three home runs short of becoming only the sixth member of the single-season 60-home run club. Ruth, Maris, McGwire, Sosa, Bonds, and … Gonzo?!

It very nearly happened.

To illustrate just how crazy that was, consider his batting ratios entering that season. Through his first full decade in the big leagues, Gonzalez had racked up close to 6,000 plate appearances. Over that time span, his isolated power rate checked in at .178. In a court of law, that would be called “a hell of a lot of precedent.” Gonzalez, it could be plainly seen, was guilty of Possession of Warning Track Power. As a 30-year-old outfielder playing during the homer-happiest time in history, he would definitely be sentenced to a premature retirement and no chicks digging him — ever.

Mind you, he was a pretty good player—consistently over a win better than replacement level, year after year — but nobody was predicting a historically good power season. Nobody.

Then, something happened. Gonzalez, it seems, realized at age 33 that his true calling was to pump iron and mash taters. His 2001 isolated power rate of .363 is, to date, the 27th-greatest single-season mark ever produced. By contrast, Roger Maris produced a .351 power rate in 1961.

Perhaps Gonzalez was under some dark wizard’s spell, wreaking havoc on baseballs with the power of black magic at his side. If so, we can safely assume this wizard’s motivation: he bet on the Diamondbacks to make the playoffs that year. Because as soon as the curtain closed on that regular season, the power went out on that year’s second-runner-up for National League MVP.

Gonzalez went just 16-for-65 with three measly home runs during the Diamondbacks’ 2001 postseason run, but he was, by all accounts, the same guy. From regular season to playoffs, Gonzalez couldn’t have been more night and day, and one would have to believe that his sudden power evaporation would’ve been a bigger deal historically, but for a perfect storm of factors: his general likability around the league as a veteran face; the Diamondbacks’ epic championship win over the Yankees; the respective 73 and 64-home run seasons of Bonds and Sosa that year; oh, and Gonzo’s iconic World Series-winning bloop single off of Mo Freakin’ Rivera himself.

Gonzalez would never again hit even thirty home runs in a year, nor post an isolated power rate higher than .250. From 2004 to 2005, when the league started randomly testing players for PEDs, his isolated power would drop by over 50 points in a single season — a power outage easily explained by … the sudden, heavily debilitating effects of aging, of course.

Modern-Day Comparison: There’s Major Leaguer in the game today whose best player comparison, according to Baseball-Reference, is Gonzalez: Kansas City left fielder Alex Gordon.

Like early-career Gonzalez, Gordon brings a lot of good things to the table, and is a positive contributor to a winning team. He’s good at everything; not great at anything. Scratch that, he’s a great asset in fantasy baseball — his steady, jack-of-all-trades nature and lack of upside leads to him being consistently taken three to four rounds after his value indicates he should be, year after year. But if you’re looking for Ruthian power numbers, you look elsewhere.

Heck, Roger Maris once hit around 20 home runs while manning a corner outfield spot in Kansas City, too, and he grew into something more — or so I’ve heard. But let’s be realistic here, Maris set his home run record at age 26. That was 2010 for Gordon. Very good thirty-somethings don’t just turn into extraterrestrial, fastball-devouring monsters — at least, not anymore, in a post-PED world, they don’t.