Thank You Junior

In an era where all the numbers appear to be tainted, one man has done it the right way. One man has held on to the integrity of the game. One man played clean even though many of his opponents did not. For that, I say “Thank You Ken Griffey Jr.”

How quickly we forget that before Big Mac and Sammy brought us the thrill of the 98 season and before Barry Bonds’ head doubled in size, ‘the kid’ was already hitting homeruns with the most beautiful swing you have ever seen. Before the infamous 98 season, Junior had already hit 40 or more homeruns in a season 4 times. This got me to thinking, “what could have been?”

Griffey missed most of the 95, 01, 02, 03 and 04 seasons due to injuries. Obviously, injuries are part of the game and there is nothing you can do about it, but I wanted to know where he would stand had he not been injured. I removed his stats from those 5 seasons and then took an average of the rest of his career. Then I projected those numbers over 5 more seasons to see where he would be today. Through 21 seasons, Grif would have scored 1964 Runs (9th), 3276 Hits (12th), 613 Doubles (11th), 743 Home Runs (3rd), 2178 RBIs (3rd) and have a .291 average. Sure, he wouldn’t be first on any of the lists. However, the guys ahead of him all played more than 21 seasons (except for the Babe who played 21) and all have many more ABs. Hank Aaron played 23 seasons and had over 4200 more at-bats. Babe Ruth had 370 more at-bats and Barry Bonds played 22 seasons (although he missed most of the 2005 season) and had over 1850 more at-bats. So, since we still aren’t comparing apples to apples, I decided to take it one step farther and figure out, on average, how many at-bats between homeruns. There was no comparison. Griffey hits a home run ever 10.8 at-bats. The next closest was the Babe at one every 11.7 at-bats followed by Bonds (12.9 at-bats) and Aaron (16.3 at-bats). I decided to check today’s stars against these numbers as well. The closest is Albert Pujols with a home run every 14 at-bats followed by Alex Rodriguez (14.2) and Manny Ramirez (14.6).

Ultimately, Griffey was/is the greatest player of my generation and arguably ever. But, we’ll never know. Many people would never have know it either because Griffey did it with class and little fan fare. We all missed out on one of the greatest the game has ever seen. So once again, I say “Thank You Griffey, Jr.”