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It was said his two seasons pitching in the Colorado purgatorio compromised him as it does too many, but a close gaze upon his earned run averages suggests something slightly awry in the perception. Remove from his first eleven seasons his two in Colorado and his earned run average is .10 below his league - but include the Colorado seasons and it is .13 below league. And in the season now ended he was .04 below league.

However, in his nearly two-and-a-half seasons with St. Louis, Darryl Kile was very good, well above average: 41-24, a .631 winning percentage, with a 3.54 ERA. Contrast that with the two preceding years in Colorado: 21-30, .412 winning %, 5.84 ERA.

Kile had off-season shoulder surgery, so he got off to a slow start this year. His record this year was 5-4, 3.72, but he had really picked it up in the last month, was pitching great, and looked like he might end up with numbers like last year (16-11, 3.09; in 2000, he was 20-9, 3.91).

So I think those two "rockie" years ('98-'99) really skew his career statistics.

So I think those two "rockie" years ('98-'99) really skew his career statistics.

Kile himself might be the first to question that, since his walk totals jumped while he was there and he often enough said giving up the walks was killing him even in a park already hell on pitching. His two St. Louis seasons would be considered his best had he not had that 1997 season for Houston, but on the whole his earned run averages being that close to the league median doesn't augur well for his whole assessment. And at the time of his very tragic death, his ERA was, I repeat, just .04 below the league.

It might have been interesting to see him in the post-All Star pennant race heat, since historically his two best months had been April (23-18; 4.19 lifetime) and May (22-18; 3.72 lifetime) while from June-September he's 90-81 with a 4.25 ERA and 1.38 WHIP (this is .03 below his overall career WHIP), and he had occasionally shown, in the heat of a pennant race, above-average pitching.

His death came too soon for this decent man, but the evidence shows me little more than an average pitcher (in only one season - 1997 - did his ERA fall 1.00 or more below his league's average) with occasional tendencies to pitch above his head. He never led his league in strikeouts and finished in the top ten in strikeouts four times; he did lead his league in walks once and finished in the top ten in walks allowed seven times. In only two of his seasons did he finish in the top ten in ERA.

He was as game a pitcher as they came (if you wanted a good innings eater, Darryl Kile was an awfully good man to have - this guy never refused the ball even when he was likely to be assassinated on a given night) and probably deserved better. But you can do an awful lot worse than leave a legacy as a pretty good pitcher (an average major league pitcher is still a good pitcher) yet a Hall of Fame human being. As a pitcher, you'd want him to hold the third slot in your starting rotation; as a man, you'd wish he owned the team, that's how highly he was thought of as a person.