Junior Griffey 600

Last night in Miami, Florida, against the Florida Marlins, Ken Griffey Jr. of the Cincinnati Reds, hit career homerun number 600. The milestone homerun came off of Marlins' pitcher, Mark Hendrickson. Junior is the 6th player in the history of the game to reach the 600 career homerun milestone (can you name the other 5? answer below...).

For 12 of the first 13 years of his career, Griffey was putting together, perhaps, the greatest career anyone has ever had in the history of the game. Excluding 1995 (where he only played 72 games), he hit 443 homeruns, knocked in 1293 runs, scored over 100 runs 6 times, had an On Base Percentage (OBP) of around .375, slugged (SLG) around .580, was a 11-time All-Star, 1-time MVP, 7-time Silver Slugger winner, and 10-time Gold Glover (every year of the '90s). He was named player of the decade for the 1990s and was also named to the All-Century team. To put it simply, Junior was well on his way to being the greatest player of my generation....

Injuries started to mount up on Griffey after his trade from Seattle to Cincinnati. He had a couple of injuries in 1994 and 95 with the Mariners, limiting him to 111 and 72 games respectively. After one fairly healthy season with the Reds, the next 7 have been close to a nightmare. Between 2002-2004, he never played more than 83 games. His last few years, while playing over 100 games, have still ended with various leg injuries. Just think, if Griffey was healthy, he would probably have been the one chasing Hank Aaron first, not Barry Bonds.

Those are the "what if's" though...The question is now, where do you put Griffey among the greatest to ever play the game? There is no doubt, he is a first ballot Hall-of-Famer. In his prime, was he better than Bonds? Better than Mays? Better than Mantle? That's the real debate right now. I find it hard to compare players of different eras. I find it almost more difficult to compare players from this era, due to the rampant use of Performance Enhancing Drugs. We will probably never know (unless they confess), how many players truly used these drugs. One thing is for sure, there has never been any rumors tying Griffey with any drug use. That's what makes this debate intriguing. Bonds was a comparable player to Griffey, both offensively and defensively. If you look at Bonds' numbers, just in the 90s, he hit 361 homeruns, compared to Junior's 382. Bonds drove in 1076 runs to Junior's 1011. The most interesting stats are the OBP and SLG averages. Bonds OBP is well over .400 and his SLG is well over .600. Griffey's OBP is around .370 and SLG around .575. Bonds' also stole a lot more bases as well.

So who was the most complete player during that period? Just going by numbers, you'd have to say Bonds' has a slight edge. Bonds' numbers in the 2000s are up for debate with steroid allegations hanging heavy over his head. It is believed, he didn't use any during his time with Pittsburgh and his first couple of years in San Francisco. A lot of people would probably choose Griffey though as the better player, simply because, he never had any questions surrounding how he compiled his numbers. What is a shame is, that injuries took such a toll on this great player. We will never know hat his numbers could have amounted to. One thing I will always remember though, is that he was as complete a player as the game has ever seen. His homeruns were sometimes outshined by his amazing plays defensively. If you ask me, he is the greatest defensive outfielder I have ever seen.

Congratulations Junior on number 600. Enjoy the moment. I certainly have enjoyed your career.


Trivia question answer: Sosa (609), Mays (660), Ruth (714), Aaron (755), Bonds (762).