Sloop your personal bias against Kent is making you use some very weak logic in your arguments.
-As far as throwing numbers away and just look at players how exactly do you do that? Numbers are how a players performance is defined. Baseball is the most stat driven sport there is and thats exactly what is measured when deciding HOF credentials.
-If being the best player on the team is a requisite for HOF induction who gets left out of the HOF from the 27 Yankees?
-Kents stats haven't dropped dramatically upon leaving SF. He's still hitting 20+ HRs and 100+ RBI's for 2 different teams after leaving Bond's protection.
You just need to give up trying to make a logical argument that Jeff Kent doesn't belong in the HOF and say "I don't like Jeff Kent and hope he doesn't get elected to the HOF" that not only would be a sound statement I would agree with you 100%.
Players don't get elected to the HOF based on their single best year. Its a career award. Also I clealy demonstarated earlier that Kents best was better than Knoblauchs. If your asking me who I would take to build a dream team its not even a question...Kent hands down.Sloopy45 said:First off, you're comparing career stats. The argument was, IN THEIR PRIME, who was a better player, Kent or Knobby?
The only category he smokes kent in is SB's and I'll take the HR and RBI's over 30-40 SB any day of the week.Obviously, Kent is going to smoke Knobby in the power categories, and Knobby will smoke Kent in the speed categories.
-If you go down that trail for Kent then you better go down it for a lot of others.Secondly, lets take this into account: Knobby (after Puckett retired) was the best player on the Twins. Kent was a 2nd wheel to Bonds. I don't care what anybody says, if Kent doesn't have Barroid batting in front of him, he doesn't sniff an MVP. Sorry. Throw the numbers away, and just look at the players: could Kent stand alone as the best player on a team? No way.
-As far as throwing numbers away and just look at players how exactly do you do that? Numbers are how a players performance is defined. Baseball is the most stat driven sport there is and thats exactly what is measured when deciding HOF credentials.
-If being the best player on the team is a requisite for HOF induction who gets left out of the HOF from the 27 Yankees?
-Kents stats haven't dropped dramatically upon leaving SF. He's still hitting 20+ HRs and 100+ RBI's for 2 different teams after leaving Bond's protection.
Simply an untrue statement. Kent hit 20+ HR his first full year in the majors(was his 3rd overall but played very little the first 2) and has only played 13 years including 2005. Thats 2 fewer than Sandberg and 12 fewer(iirc) than Hornsby.Thirdly, Kent is another one of those guys (a la Rafael Palmeiro, Sammy Sosa, Luis Gonzalez, Bret Boone, etc - if you catch my drift) who was in the Big Leagues FOREVER & was just a decent offensive player before coming out of nowhere to put up huge stats. You can draw your own conclusions from that.
"As far as the Jeff Kent HOF argument goes how in the hell do you put Sandberg in and not Kent?"
Who has been better offensively than Kent at 2B for the past 13 years?Dude, its different eras - in the 80's, there was only one 2B in baseball that put up 20+ dongs, 80+ RBI, 30+ SB, a .300 AVG, & a Gold Glove every season: and his name was Ryne Sandberg. He was unquestionably the best player at his position in baseball for 10 years, and nobody else was close.
Kent can't claim anything close to that.
The 80's were far from a deadball era however the difference in era is moot, the HOF looks at career totals and how someone did vs their peers. Kent has no peer at 2B over his career. Call me when Soriano does it for 10 plus years."Kent has better offensive numbers in every category and they are even in MVP's."
Doesn't matter. Kent played in the juiced ball/steroid/small ballpark era. Sandberg never had a great hitter to help him in the line-up, and played in a dead ball era.
"Sandberg has a bunch of GG's but Kents the all time HR leader for 2B how do you not put him in the HOF?"
Pitchers aren't elected to the HOF based on offensive stats and DH is not a real position and has not been around that long as far as baseball history goes. To make such a ridiculous argument clearly shows how your bias is clouding your judgement. Also you just finished trying to tell me you could determine how players of different era's were better or worse than others. Well if hitting 300+ HR's is so fucking easy for a 2B why hasn't anyone else been able to do it?Simply because if you are the All-time leading HR hitter as a pitcher or a DH, does that mean you should have instant election to Cooperstown? No. So that shouldn't be an automatic selection for any other position. Especially since Kent has a very pedestrian total of 300 lifetime homers. If he could tack on 200 more to that total, THEN we're talking HOF.
"Kent also has better offensive stats than Joe Morgan and Tony Lazzeri."
So now were back to an all era's argument? If thats the case then its over because the simple cold hard fact of the matter is he has better stats than Morgan/Lazzeri and Sandberg.See the same Ryno argument above.
"Ozzie Smith is the only one I can think of thats in for the leather."
OK thats 2.Brooks Robinson too.
You just need to give up trying to make a logical argument that Jeff Kent doesn't belong in the HOF and say "I don't like Jeff Kent and hope he doesn't get elected to the HOF" that not only would be a sound statement I would agree with you 100%.
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