Where Would Griffey Stand?

by Ryan Dragoon, Nyjer Please

Currently, Ken Griffey Jr. has 2,500 career hits, 589 Home runs and 13 Gold Gloves, but missed much of 4 seasons in his prime due to injury.

Where would Griffey stand if he was healthy those 4 years? Let's take a look:

In 2001, Griffey played in 111 games, hitting 22 homers with 104 hits and 65 RBI. Extrapolated to 160 games, Griffey would have hit 32 homers with 150 hits and 97 RBI.

In 2002 and 2003, his injuries really started hampering his play. He only appeared in 70 and 43 games respectively. It was obvious that even when he was out there, he was not playing up to his ability level. Easily, Griffey would have hit at least 30 homers and drove in 100 runs in both of those seasons with somewhere in between 150-200 hits.

In 2004, Griffey appeared in the second half of the season, hitting 20 homers and driving in 60. Extrapolated to a full season, Griffey would have hit 38 homers, and drive in 116 with 146 hits.

The next two seasons, Griffey was relatively healthy, playing in 128 games in 2005 and 109 games in 2006. He is now getting up there in age, so it was expected for him to miss some time, but in the years before, he shouldn't have broke down.

By my estimations, if Griffey was healthy from 2002-2004, he would be passing Willie Mays with 660 homers, be close to 2,000 RBI and 3,000 hits, and he would probably rank second all time to Willie Mays for being the best player to ever play this game.