And, apparently, Fox's "The Buzzer" is making this a regular practice. Probably to generate cheap page views of crappy touts of baseball players it claims might be headed to Cooperstown.
But, I think I can safely say that Ian Kinsler does not currently belong in Baseball Hall of Fame conversation, and will not be there when he ends his career.
A man who probably won't break 2,200 hits or 1,000 RBI, especially one whose entire home career to date has been spent at one of baseball's most hitter-friendly parks, and in the AL to boot, has no business being currently touted, unless the "business" is Fox seeking page views, and even then, it's pushing to hit sub-ESPN credibility.
I'll be generous, and project Kinsler at 2,300 career hits, 1,050 RBI, 1,250 runs. I'll also predict his career OPS+ falls short of 110, a starting-point red line for even being considered for the HOF.
Call me back two years from now to talk about whether he's got full membership in the Hall of Very Good, let alone the Hall of Fame.
And, no, I'm not linking to the Fox piece. It can get cheap page views from others. And, I think the same strategy plays out for ESPN from now on. When it wrote about Carlos Beltran, that was someone who was legitimate for borderline discussion at least. Kinsler's not close. But, if ESPN pulls a Kinsler-type story out of its ass, I'm not linking to it, either.
I mean, this is why I stopped reading the baseball blog High Heat Stats on anything but the rarest of glances. Post after post were nothing other than a header of a Twitter hashtag with that player's name, then some attempt at content to justify writing a blog post with that header.
So, in a sense, this is more than a complaint about Fox and ESPN. It's part of my Dark Side of the Internet series, now. Click the tag below this post for more.
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