It is now mid-September, and the Western Divisions are providing all of the excitement. The Angels beat the Athletics last night in a great game, and are now tied for first place. The game-winning hit was delivered by Scott Spiezio, who is certainly not a good first baseman, but who has surprised everybody by not being all that bad, either.

In the National League, the Giants and Dodgers are tied for the Wild Card. And finally, after being ignored all season, Jeff Kent is slowly emerging as an MVP candidate. Kent is playing almost as well as he did in his MVP season of two years ago, and is by far the best infielder in the National League — and that includes first basemen, too.

I don't think Kent should win — Barry Bonds is the best in baseball. But Kent deserves to rank in the top five; he might be having a better season than anyone except Bonds (and if that's true, how weak is the rest of the Giants' lineup?).

A lot has been made about the switch that Dusty Baker made earlier in the season, switching Kent and Bonds' spots in the batting order. The idea was that Kent was struggling at the plate, and wasn't providing much protection for Bonds... so Bonds might as well protect Kent. If you believe that hype, then Kent has been great ever since the batting order switch.

Personally, I don't care one bit for the "protection" theory, that hitters benefit from seeing better pitches if they have a good hitter behind them. It's a great theory, no doubt, but it never, ever works out. But it never goes away; here in Toronto, Buck Martinez tried about 100 different lineups during his tenure as manager, while fans and media debated how best to "protect" Carlos Delgado. It may be fun to debate, but it's a waste of time; Delgado's performance depends entirely on Carlos and not on who is batting behind him.

So now we are hearing about how good Kent has been since Bonds started to protect him. Never mind that Kent won an MVP Award in 2000 batting behind Bonds. Last year, a lot of people said that Bonds couldn't hit 73 homers without Kent protecting him, and now, Kent is having a big season because Bonds is protecting him... oh, never mind.

The first day that Kent batted in front of Bonds was June 27, after 76 games — he drove in six runs that day. At the time of the switch, Kent was batting .302 with 40 RBI. A month earlier, he was batting .267 with 23 RBI — so in the 30 days before the switch he raised his batting average 35 points and almost doubled his RBI total. In the 70 games since then, he has raised his average to .319, and his RBI count to 102.

In short, I don't think that Kent is doing any better since the lineup switch than he was in the month beforehand. He's driving in some more runs, but then, the Giants have also played all ten of their games in Colorado since the switch and scored about a billion runs there. Jeff Kent is just a terrific player, with or without Barry Bonds in front or behind him. And the protection theory fails to live up to its billing again.