Is Jeff Kent a HoFer?

So? They checked the bats with which he broke all the records. No cork. He only started using the corked bat after getting beaned in the head with a 96-mph fastball. He was never the same player after that.

 

Runs Hits 2B HR RBIs Avg.
1,579 2,930 541 301 1,584 .358
1,650 2,517 449 268 1,133 .271
1,318 2,386 403 282 1,061 .285
1,508 2,724 504 210 1,134 .300
1,289 2,360 543 368 1,471 .290

Those are the numbers of five of the best offensive second baseman in baseball history. For comparison's sake, on the field, it's extremely tough to argue one doesn't belong when the others -- three now, possibly four in a couple years -- are in the Hall of Fame. Obviously, one is/was a lock. The other four are remarkably similar, though No. 5 looks to be a better choice, aside from the total hits.

 

Oh, I'm not talking just about the Hall of Fame. I think Sosa's in, regardless. (Just like Bonds, unless his legal problems really, really escalate.) He was a complete player, one of the best in the game for a long time. No question in my mind that he's a Hall of Famer -- even if you think his numbers are inflated because of his era.

I'm just asking: If Sosa's numbers are "legit" ... in the sense that he wasn't heavily doped up on HGH and steroids, maybe just legal creatine or any of the GNC-bought stuff that everybody's taking ... and he was arguably the prime beneficiary of a perfect storm in the late 1990s that encouraged and allowed those type of inflated numbers to be compiled -- and remember, everybody was putting up obscene offensive numbers, even the "legit" guys -- what do you think of him then?

Is he no better than a modern-day Hack Wilson, who put up inflated numbers in the 1930s but who isn't taken seriously as an all-time great (he wasn't)?

Or is he a little closer to a Jimmie Foxx, whose legacy isn't in doubt?

 

I find it hard to consider the hypothetical question of "What if Sosa's numbers are legit" because it seems so unlikely that they are. We don't need to do the whole debate about the evidence against him, but c'mon, the man's body ballooned and he started hitting 60+ HRs a season. And when you say that even the "legit" guys were putting up obscene numbers, who are the legit guys, exactly, and how do we know they were legit?

 

Woodwork, and miserable prick, too. Anybody who can make Barry Bonds looks like the good guy has issues. Shit for defense, couldn't run.

So, I guess I'd say no.

 

Let's assume for a second that Sosa was legit; that, as buck is saying, he was the beneficiary of some perfect storm in the mid-to-late '90s that aided his power boom.

Look at the seasons heading up to 1998-2001, the four-year boom that made Sammy Sosa a legend and really brought him under suspicion once the PED stuff began.

In 1993, he hit 33 home runs. In 1994, he hit 25 in just 105 games. In 1995, he's up to 36 in 144 games; 1996, he hits 40 in just 124. And in 1997, he hits 36 in 162 games. Now, obviously those numbers make the jump to 66 in 1998 look suspicious (I'll acknowledge that), but that was right about the time baseball's home run numbers finally settled at an abnormally large number: in 1993, the league had about 4,000 total HRs; the league total jumped to more than 5,000 for the first time in 1998, so all of baseball experienced a boom from 1996-1998.

Now, compare Sosa to Ken Griffey, Jr., another prolific power hitter. The consensus around Griffey is that he's been clean.

From 1996-2002, Sosa hit 368 home runs. That works out to about 53 per season and about one every 11.2 ABs.

From 1996-2000, Griffey hit 249 home runs, or about 50 per season and one every 11.6 ABs. Griffey hit only 30 home runs over the next two seasons as he battled injuries, but if he'd have stayed on that 50 home run per season pace, he's at 349 home runs, just 17 behind Sosa during the seven-year stretch.

So, to answer buck's question: If Sammy Sosa wasn't a cheating cocksucker, which in my mind is still a very big "if," I'd put him somewhere in the second-tier of home run hitters. I still think Aaron, Ruth, Griffey and Mays were all better power hitters -- mostly because they had consistency that Sosa never had outside of a five-year stretch.

But if he's legit, he's closer to Jimmie Foxx than he is Hack Wilson.

 

1. I hate to say this, but at this point the "older" writers who saw Rice play are like, well, me. I vote for him. He is, by historic standards, a solid lower-tier Hall of Famer. I think it's the younger voters who're passing Rice by because, to be blunt, the Cult of Supreme Baseball Seriousness in the seamhead writing game that makes sitting a baseball press box torture instead of fun didn't really get going until Rice was done.
2. You cannot, or should not, vote against someone for the Hall because you "know" they did drugs if they have not been cited by authority for doing so. You know shit. A Hall of Fame voter is, in my opinion, serving on a jury. You're not allowed to put yourself above the law. If baseball says Sosa's clean, and it does so far, then that is the presumption the voter must make.

 

OK, since his name was brought up earlier, and this thread has already gotten kind of jacked _ is Jim Thome an HoFer? I ask only because I just don't think of him as one, even though he's passed that so-called magic 500-HR mark.

 

I think so. I think only Bonds and Griffey are the only other left-handed hitters more feared during this generation.

 

How so? And who's providing any evidence that they're not?

We need to define what's "legit" anyway. The fact is, every hitter who got any regular playing time in the mid-1990s was hitting more home runs in that era than at any other point in baseball history. Are ALL the numbers illegitimate, then? (I wouldn't object if you said they were -- but outside of the PED guys (10 percent? 20 percent? 70?) the playing field was "level," so to speak, for everybody. Sosa put up his numbers in the same conditions that everyone else was hitting in.)

We don't know. And that's the whole point.

Who are we to say that Sosa's numbers aren't "legit", barring any evidence against him besides the observation that his body "ballooned"?

Can't we at least consider the possibility that his numbers are as valid as anybody else's -- which is to say, they're as inflated as any offensive numbers in this era?

Or have you already made up your mind on him? Because I think it's at least plausible that a 27-28-29-30 year-old power hitter (remember, Sosa wasn't doing this at the tail end of his career like McGwire) in the most offense-crazy era in history, in an expansion era with bandbox ballparks (plus pre-humidor Denver) and diluted pitching, with the game's powers-that-be encouraging more and more and more ... could put up numbers like he did for a few years. With or without PEDs.

There was no other time that it could have happened.

 

Thome: doesn't even have 2000 hits yet, though should get there this year. Only one Silver Slugger, no Gold Gloves, top five in MVP voting only once, 3rd all time in strikeouts. But he always got a lot of walks (meaning his OBP is high). He was a huge part of those Indians teams of the late '90s, though he wasn't a great postseason hitter and those teams fell short in the World Series twice (and unless the White Sox turn it around or he changes teams, he probably won't have a chance to improve on those postseason numbers). All he's really got going for him is the home runs. I guess it depends how much he's got left in the tank. If he can manage to get to 600, then maybe he gets in as a Rafael Palmeiro-type, minus the steroids: a steady performer, feared by pitchers, wasn't a DH until late in his career (so had at least some fielding ability), appears to have been clean PED-wise, and a key part of some teams that went deep into the postseason.

To me, Thome seems borderline; I could easily see us arguing Kent and Thome in 2020 when they're been on the ballot for several years.

 

And that in a nutshell (for those who haven't figured out who's who) is why Kent is really a difficult case.