It is still anyone’s guess whether or not Paul Konerko will attempt to return for another season or retire. At this point it could go either way and there is no real guarantee where he would play if he did come back. The Chicago White Sox and Robin Ventura gave him a nice goodbye from the Sox fans just in case this is the final season for Konerko. Either way the question on some minds is whether or not Konerko has had a Hall of Fame career. I think Konerko falls short of the mark.

His sheer power numbers are impressive but he doesn’t have the big numbers that are considered automatically Hall of Fame numbers. The closest one is 434 home runs but with him getting only 12 this season, there is little reason to believe he could play long enough to reach the 500 mark. Looking at the ever more popular WAR stat, we can also see that he falls short of the value of a Hall of Famer by the voters apparent standards.

For comparison purposes we can see that Willie Mays, a clear and obvious Hall of Famer has a career WAR of 149.9. There isn’t a person alive that doesn’t agree Mays deserves to sit in the Hall. From there we can look at recent snub Dale Murphy. Many thought Murphy was good enough to get in without the magic numbers. His career WAR is 44.3. Konerko currently comes in at around 26 for WAR.

If Murphy wasn’t valuable enough at his number then it can be assumed Konerko will also fall short without one of the big magic offensive numbers. He had a great career and there are few people that would ever say different but especially with the way voting has gone lately I think he falls just short of getting into the hallowed hall.

David Miller is a Senior Writer for www.RantSports.com. Follow him on Twitter @davidmillerrant, “Like” him on Facebook or add him to your network on Google

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