But it was a better-known Bay Area baseball player who made headlines upon A-Rod’s milestone: Barry Bonds.

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With his 1,996th RBI, Rodriguez tied Bonds for second on the official RBI list. The same Bonds rooting for Rodriguez to surpass fellow Giants superstar and godfather Willie Mays on the career home run leaderboard. The same Bonds who, yes, like Rodriguez, has an unofficial asterisk next to his stats because of suspicions of performance-enhancing drug use.

Commonalities aside, we know that all RBIs aren’t created equal. It’s a situational stat, a source of debate, an incomplete assessment. So even as Rodriguez and Bonds seem buddy-buddy and sit tied near the top of the RBI leaderboard, it doesn’t mean they got there the same way. So who did it faster? Who did it better? Like most things, you can use statistics to tell either story.

All statistics are courtesy of the indispensable, splendid Baseball-Reference.

The Case for Alex Rodriguez

It took Rodriguez 372 fewer games than Bonds to reach No. 1,996, so he certainly gets points for efficiency. His 11,531 plate appearances to hit the mark outpaces Bonds’ 12,606 trips to the dish. 

But more impressively, Rodriguez seemingly has the edge in clutch hitting.

In situations Baseball-Reference defines as “high leverage,” Rodriguez ever-so-slightly knocked runs in at a greater pace. While Bonds garnered 683 RBIs in 1,847 at-bats in such situations (36.98 percent), Rodriguez got the RBI 37.8 percent of the time when it supposedly mattered most.

Rodriguez has also made his home runs count when he hits them. This shouldn’t be a surprise — the guy is the all-time leader in grand slams. In fact, 46.8 percent of Rodriguez’s home runs (311) to date have plated more than one run. For Bonds, the multi-run home run tally is similar (312), but the percentage much lower (40.9).

Perhaps most interesting, though, is the postseason comparison. Rodriguez’s critics like to cite his history of lackluster playoff runs. Which, you know, conveniently ignores the first nine years of his career — and 2009 — but who’s counting? In the context of this comparison, Rodriguez fares better than Bonds in postseason play. In 326 career playoff plate appearances so far in his career, Rodriguez has driven in 75 runs, good for an average of one RBI per 4.35 at-bats. Bonds’ 48 career postseason RBIs came at a pace — wait for it — of an RBI every 4.33 at-bats.

It’s difficult to picture what two-hundredths of an at-bat looks like (perhaps a Nomar Garciaparra cup adjustment), but for the sake of this conversation, let’s pretend it matters greatly.

The Case for Barry Bonds

One reason Rodriguez does not run away with this RBI faceoff: Bonds walked a lot.

Because of Bonds’ incredible eye, and pitchers’ incredible fear of throwing him anything near the strike zone, Bonds actually had fewer RBI opportunities than it would seem. While he came to the plate about 1,000 times more than Rodriguez has, Bonds actually had fewer official at-bats: 9,847 to A-Rod’s 9,977. Taking that into account, Bonds got an RBI, on average, every 4.9 at-bats. Rodriguez, slacking, sits at an RBI per five at-bats.

Bonds also did better in definitions of clutch hitting beyond “high leverage” situations. His batting line with runners in scoring position (.310/.527/.594), for example, beats A-Rod across the board (.294/.398/.528).

And in complicated, hard-to-calculate statistics that attempt to better measure a player’s impact on the game and the score, Bonds doesn’t just best Rodriguez. He bests … everyone … ever. Bonds is MLB’s all-time leader in career Win Probability Added (127.6 to A-Rod’s 58.3), a stat that accumulates based on how much a player’s plate appearance adds to his team’s chance of winning. Bonds also sits atop the leaderboard for runs created (2,892 to A-Rod’s 2,195), a stat created by Bill James to estimate the number of runs a player contributes to his team. Not bad.

The Tiebreaker

All of this said, this argument splits hairs between two elite hitters (steroid whispers, ahem, screams, aside). An example of how close this RBI race is: Rodriguez brought home 18 percent of baserunners between his MLB debut and Friday. Barry Bonds, for his career, knocked in 17 percent of baserunners. It’s close.

But Bonds wins. Here’s why: style points. The final RBIs of Bonds’ career didn’t come on a lazy fly. His 1,995th and 1,996th RBIs came, instead, on a two-run home run in Coors Field. A blast that ended up being the difference in a 5-3 win for the Giants over the Rockies.

Your move, A-Rod. 

Rodriguez has a chance to pass Bonds on Saturday night in Oakland, 16 miles across the bay from AT&T Park in San Francisco where Bonds used to blast. Together again, two players with supposedly tainted statistics, for now in lockstep.