A different direction...

All right, since no one is reading this, I thought I'd stop talking about me and talk about something in the sports world that I find interesting.

Today, Jeff Kent retired. Now, everyone has gone back and forth all day on talk radio and such about "Is he a Hall of Famer or not?" I'm with the detractors. He's definitely not.

Let's take a look at the stats on the surface:

.290 BA, 2461 Hits, 377 HR, 1518 RBIs. 560 2Bs, 47 3Bs, 94 SB, and 1320 Runs. His OBP was .356, which is average. His OPS was .856, which admittedly is pretty good. But more importantly was his defensive numbers. His fielding percentage for his career is .978. Now, against current HOF 2nd Basemen (there are 16 listed as 2B as their primary position; Jackie Robinson and Rod Carew are two notables not compared), here is how he stacks up:

BA: 8th
Hits: 12th
HR: 1st
RBIs: 3rd
Runs: 10th
2Bs: 4th
3Bs: 16th
SB: 11th
Fielding %: 7th

(Information attributed to http://major-league-baseball.suite101.com/article.cfm/kent_on_road_to_baseballl_hof)

Impressive. It really is. But look closer. The majority of those stats came from 1997-2002, when he played for the Giants. Who did he bat in front of? That's right. The "Home Run King" himself, Barry Bonds. What did Bonds do in those years?

He averaged 145 hits, 30 doubles, 4 triples, 47 home runs, 110 RBIs, hit .310, and had an OBP of .693. Do you think maybe he benefitted from any of that? No. Of course not.

Not convinced? Ok. It wasn't fair compairing him to Bonds. Let's take a look at his contemporaries at the positon during his "breakout" years.

He was an All-Star five times in 17 seasons, and the 2000 NL MVP. His All-Star appearances came in 1999, 2000, 2001, 2004, and 2005. (2004 was particularly disappointing, but having the game played in Houston while he was a member of the Astros certainly helped. All this while Mark Loretta was having a career year in San Diego). As for the MVP, he won in a year where statistically, Todd Helton was far and away the best player, but he played for the fourth-place Rockies and Kent played for the first-place Giants. Simply put, if he was that good, he should have made more All-Star game appearances in 17 years, especially when he played in the weaker NL (it could be argued that he was continuously up against Craig Biggio, I suppose, but Biggio stopped going to the game as a starter in 1998; and Robbie Alomar played for Cleveland and Baltimore in those years), and everyone else will throw out there: "How do you beat out Chase Utley these last couple of years?"

All right. I drifted. I got caught up in stats. But how about these two "stats?" He did all of this in the Steroid Era AND he was a horrible teammate. He feuded everywhere he went. He and Bonds didn't get along and these last couple of years with the Dodgers was supposedly rift with faked injuries and his inability to take a back seat to younger talent (James Loney, Blake DeWitt).

I don't know. In a time where we are literally running out of true Hall of Fame-caliber players, why should writers put in guys who were serviceably good, but not great? Isn't that what a HOF represents? The greatest to play the game? Jeff Kent, by the numbers, was good, but both Alomar and Biggio were better longer, offensively and defensively, and Kent will still probably get in first. Hell, I'd put in Alvaro Espinoza if we were just going to put ANYBODY in.

(That was for you, C)