Dodgers addition through subtraction

There are so many factors to why the Dodgers are off to such an amazing start and could have this division sewn up by the All Star Break.

There is the Manny Ramirez factor.

There is Joe Torre's steady guiding hand.

There is the line up filled with solid young players and veterans like Casey Blake and Orlando Hudson.

There are the dynamic young pitchers.

But I also wonder how much the purging of some veterans may have helped too.

Nobody on the planet seems to like Jeff Kent and the team played so much better last year when he was hurt.  

It pains me to say it because he played his butt off for the Red Sox, but Nomar Garciaparra had become dead weight on the Dodgers team. 

And Brad Penny didn't seem to be worth more than his last name in the clubhouse.

And, along with Luis Gonzalez, were evidently the main veteran players, who created the us versus them mentality with the young players during the 2007 season... with Grady Little in charge.

Now all of the veterans who brought tension to the clubhouse have been purged and the result is baseball's first 20 win team, the best home start since the 1911 Detroit Tigers and what could be a waltz to the NL West title.

Hmmm.

The Red Sox dump Nomar and they win the World Series.

The Dodgers don't resign Nomar and they get off to a blistering start.

Maybe the A's should dump Nomar.

When does 50 equal 40 and 500 equal 400?

OK, I got a little bit of flack about my post on Jeff Kent and why I don't think he's a Hall of Famer.

And I also got a few questions about my criteria for the Hall of Fame in the dreaded Steroid era.

So I think I need to clarify my position on both and try to do it with as little snark as possible.

I am NOT saying Kent should be excluded from the Hall because he was a jerk. There are plenty of jerks in the Hall.

Ty Cobb was a psychotic.
Rogers Hornsby was an intense racist.
Don Sutton had a white guy Afro.
They all belong in the Hall.

I was just having fun pointing out that he was a unique jerk: One that other players confirmed was an a--hole, not just a guy who didn't talk to reporters.

But the players who played in the Steroids Era need to have overwhelming stats to be considered a Hall of Famer in my book.

You simply can't put everyone from the 'Roid era into the Hall who had gaudy numbers.
There are so many reasons why offense spiked in the post strike/pre testing days.

A rash of new ballparks all seemed to favor hitters.
Pitchers couldn't pitch inside or they were warned.
Hitters wore all sorts of armor so they could constantly dig in.
The mound was low.
Insane pitch counts meant the starting pitcher would be often lifted earlier in favor of a mediocre middle reliever.

And yes, a bunch of guys were injecting God Knows What into their bodies.

The result was an insane number of players who reached plateaus that were once reserved for the best of the best.
Take the 50 home run mark.

Between 1920 and 1994 a grand total of 11 people reached it.
Since 1995, 13 more people have reached it.

Now have the home run hitters since the strike (and when the admitted steroid users all claim it was rampant) all just been better?
Did they all eat their Wheaties?

Nor can you exclude them all either.

You can't wipe out an era based on suspicion.

Basically you need to adopt some new math in order to make it fair.

You have to look at a 50 home run season the way we used to look at a 40 home run season.
A 30 dinger season was like an old 20 home run year.

500 home runs (formerly the bench mark of greatness) should be looked on as a 400 homer season.

And you have to be a consistent MVP candidate.

In other words just compiling numbers over this period isn't enough in my book.

Jim Thome has put up some great numbers and seems like a great guy... but most of the time he wasn't even the best slugger on his own team!



So that brings us to Jeff Kent.
The guy had 4 legitimately great seasons... and they just happened to be while he was playing in the hornets nest of performance enhancing drugs.

He had two Thirty home run seasons in the age of inflated numbers.
He fell well short of 400 homers in the age of inflated numbers.
He fell far short of 2,500 hits in the age of inflated numbers.
He cracked the top ten of OPS in a grand total of one season.

If he had these numbers in the 1980s, I'd be more willing to listen.
But four great seasons do not make a Hall of Famer.

Dave Parker had five great seasons, had as many MVPs as Kent, helped two teams win the World Series and his teammates didn't give a sigh of relief when he went on the DL... and so far he can't even sniff the Hall of Fame.

Am I being tough?
Sure.

It's the Hall of Fame we're talking about.

And Kent was making around $8 million a year for a while. He can afford a ticket!

Jeff Kent Hall of Famer? HA! That's a good one!

Well, Jeff Kent has retired and he will be missed by those teammates who enjoyed his company… both of them.

There’s something to be said about how big a jerk you are when Barry Bonds actually stood up from his recliner to defend young players from Kent.

You can’t help but wonder how big an a—hole he is behind the scenes when tight lipped James Loney says on the air “Jeff Kent isn’t our leader. We don’t listen to what he says.”

The total tonnage of his d-baggery probably can’t be measured when one his Astros teammates said “Jeff Kent isn’t a racist. He’s hates everyone.”

The astronomical levels of dickdom he reached can almost be measured. It was mainly Kent who made Grady Little’s life miserable when the 2007 Dodgers collapsed down the stretch. And when Kent went on the disabled list in 2008, the Dodgers went on a tear. When he came back they slumped.

What complete enveloping of creepiness do you need to have Milton Bradley call you out on your leadership skills?

How much of a jackass can you be to trash Vin Scully?

You do you know what unattainable level of sh-ttiness he reached? Kevin Kennedy had a bad thing to say about him on his XM Show! I love Kevin Kennedy, but he doesn’t have a bad thing to say about ANYONE!!!!! And yesterday he was on his show saying Kent was a bad influence.

That’s Sir Edmund Hillary territory… a peak scaled by nobody before!

And now you hear people calling him a Hall of Famer.
A guy who was a mediocre fielder at best.
A guy hated by every team he played for. (Remember when he was Jeff Can’t in New York?)
A guy whose teams tend to IMPROVE when he leaves.
A guy whose Hall of Fame stats were padded while he played in San Francisco as a teammate of Bonds with Giambi and Tejada across the Bay… I wonder if we should be suspicious?

Spare me any discussion of Jeff Kent in the Hall of Fame.

Is there a soul who would rather have Kent over Lou Whitaker, Bret Boone, Marty Barrett, Tony Phillips, Chuck Knoblauch, Luis Castillo, Placido Polanco or Fernando Vina at second base defensively or in the clubhouse?

Of course not. And none of those guys are Hall of Famers.

And if he does get elected, don’t expect a single Blue Jays, Mets, Indians, Giants, Astros or Dodgers fan to show up.

Hell, I wonder if even JEFF would show up!!!