Austin Kearns played some centerfield in 2003 (I presume when Griffey was hurt) but only managed a .822 zone rating which was not good. The man is a right-fielder.
He has a pretty long injury history. I gathered much, but not all, of the medical info from Will Carroll's Under the Knife archives:
May 2001 - Kearns tears ligament in his right thumb and misses two months of AA ball.March 2002 - Kearns throws some kind of temper tantrum when he is demoted to AA ball at the end of spring training. Bowden says he has to go back and finish that year of AA ball he missed in 2001.
April 2002 - Kearns makes his major-league debut after hitting five home runs in four games at AA. Injuries on the big-league team create this chance for him.
April 2002 - Kearns puts up .455 / .571 / .727 numbers in 33 at-bats.
May 2002 - Kearns hits .261 / .377 / .477 in 88 at-bats.
June 2002 - Kearns hits .214 / .295 / .314 in 70 at-bats. Typical rookie inconsistency.
July 2002 - Kearns hits .333 / .413 / .478 in 90 at-bats.
August 2002 - Kearns hits .374 / .448 / .604 in 91 at-bats before injuring his left hamstring beating out an infield single. He's in a lot of pain, put on crutches, and declared all but done for year the next day. The magnitude of the injury is downplayed significantly within a week. But he does not return to action and does not win the Rookie of the Year award.
March 2003 - Kearns experiences difficulty with the hammy he tore and rehabbed in late 2002.
March 2003 - Kearns has surgery on his elbow to remove three bone chips and plays again in two weeks. Carroll writes on March 10: "Kearns has a reputation as hard to shut down, and as someone who can overdo it and damage his recovery, so the timing of the elbow procedure is probably not coincidental. Kearns' hamstring is of greater long-term concern." (WC)
April 2003 - Kearns hits .303 / .431 / .640 in 89 at-bats.
May 2003 - Kearns hits .287 / .368 / .455 in 101 at-bats.
May 2003 - Kearns injures his right (throwing) shoulder in a home-plate collision; injury is reported as a "shoulder bruise" (WC).
June, July 2003 - Kearns has no power at the plate as a result of the shoulder injury: he hits .229 / .319 / .337 in 83 June at-bats and .125 / .176 / .125 in 16 July at-bats.
August 2003 - After some weeks of rest, Kearns has surgery on his right (throwing) shoulder.
March 2004 - Kearns is not 100% in Spring Training yet remains "the only untouchable" on the Reds' roster (WC).
April 2004 - Kearns is slumping as he struggles to regain form lost to shoulder surgery: hits .137 / .290 / .333 in 51 April at-bats.
April 2004 - Kearns snaps his ulna, "the large bone on the medial side of the forearm," on an inside pitch (WC).
May 2004 - Kearns come back quickly from the snapped arm bone, but hits only .286 / .390 / .371 in 35 at-bats.
June 2004 - Kearns develops a mysterious wound, a "hole in his hand," that won't heal (WC). It originally "started as a blister, but has wavered in severity, never enough to get him back in the lineup" (WC). He is fitted with special gloves padded to protect bone spurs near his thumb but soon has surgery "to remove bone spurs, scar tissue, and close the wound on his right thumb" (WC). He strikes out in his only June at-bat.
July 2004 - Does not play.
August 2004 - Kearns has "a blood clot over the area of his thumb that was recently surgically repaired" (WC) and also misses a little time with pinkeye. In 26 at-bats, he manages a .308 / .400 / .346 line.
September 2004 - Kearns has his first decent month since May 2003, going .269 / .320 / .559 in 93 at-bats. He hits seven doubles and six home runs. FWIW, he homers off Wes Obermueller, Ben Hendrickson, Victor Santos, Frank Brooks, Jon Leicester, and Mark Prior.
October 2004 - Kearns goes 0-for-11 in the team's few games.
December 2004 - Right before Christmas, the Reds sign 35-year-old Joe Randa. They had considered playing Kearns at third base. After the Randa signing, GM O'Brien insists that Kearns remains a big part of the club. But there are rumors that the Reds will shop him for a proven starting pitcher or bullpen help.
The man has been hurt in the thumb, the hand, the forearm, the elbow, the shoulder, and the hamstring. No back problems! And nothing appears to be wrong with his head.
If it weren't for the one good month at the end of 2004, I'd wonder if he hadn't lost all of his skills to surgery. There's not much evidence that he ever "came back" from the May 2003 shoulder surgery until the last month of last season. And then we're looking for evidence that he came back from the snapped arm bone, the mysterious hole in his hand, the bone-spur surgery, the blood clot, and the pinkeye.
He's missed significant time for each of the last four years. If you put his good playing time into a table, you get this:
Year - # of good months
2002 - 4
2003 - 2
2004 - 1
Do you see a pattern?
If the Reds will send him to us for Matt Peterson, why not plug him into right field and see what happens? He could push Craig Wilson to first and Ward can start the year in the minors again. Even if Kearns only gives us one or two good months, that still has a lot of value, especially if the team has a lot of versatile depth around him.
Kearns wouldn't solve the centerfield problem, but it would be an adventure to acquire him. I'm game. How about you?
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