It is generally agreed that Barry Bonds is having the best season of any everyday player in the National League. Not universally agreed, mind you, especially in St. Louis, where only things Cardinal-related are to be noticed and applauded, but generally.

	Jeff Kent Second Base San Francisco Giants Profile
	2002 SEASON STATISTICS GM HR RBI R SB AVG 136 33 101 93 5 .323

But who's having the most interesting season, the one that proves there is nothing quite so mighty as the power of the walk year?

Oh, it's not always that simple. In fact, nothing is that simple. Talent has this way of rising out of even a pile of gravel. Still, by rights, Giants second baseman Jeff Kent should have had a crummy year, and instead is having the second-best year of his career. Just in time, as it happens, for free agency.

The year began with him taking a dive off a motorcycle during spring training, breaking his wrist and putting a punch-hole in his credibility. He said something about falling off his truck, which was found to be an elaborate fib. He missed a few games at the start of the season and was the hit of the chat show circuit ("Athlete gets caught doing something dangerous, and then tells silly whopper to cover his tracks"). The season, clearly, started poorly, and everyone was sure he was playing his last in San Francisco.

When he returned, he hit only sporadically for awhile. That chaffed general manager Brian Sabean all the more and seemingly insured that whatever offer he might scare up in the offseason would not be matched, or even reciprocated, by the Giants.

Then he got into the famous shoving match with Bonds in the dugout in San Diego and the subsequent argument with manager Dusty Baker about whose team the Giants actually are (Kent suggested Bonds, Baker suggested shutting up). Everybody was sure he would be available for the right package at the trading deadline.

Baker took a flyer, either as the result of personal inspiration or as a suggestion triggered by discussions with others. The genesis doesn't matter much, only the result.

And the result is, rehabilitation.

He went from batting behind Bonds to batting ahead of him on June 27. That day, he had three hits and drove in six runs. Since then, he's hit 22 more homers and driven in another 55, and become the same vexing problem for opponents that he was two years ago, when he won the MVP award.

And now people wonder if he is playing his last season in San Francisco.

This isn't a simple matter of being moved in front of Bonds on the lineup card, although he is hitting better than .350 in that time. In fact, Kent started to hit in mid-May, after a good month working out what should have been worked out in spring training.

But it has been worked out, and despite the Giants' obvious shortcomings as a contender (no staff knockout artist, too many outs in the lineup for a playoff team), they're tied with the Dodgers in the wild-card race, and only 5½ behind the faltering Diamondbacks in the NL West.

Kent, though, has gotten little enough notice because (a) Bonds has been chasing a batting title to go along with his home run title and MVP trophy of the year before, and (b) because nobody is quite sure about his future.

On the one hand, he is having exactly the kind of season a walk-year guy ought to have, the kind that would surely scare up a few very lucrative offers. On the other, that's what we thought about Bonds last year, and he only got one offer -- the one from the Giants.

Kent, you see, is 34, which is not the same as Bonds' being 37 but still of advanced age as baseball players hoping for 10-figure contracts go. The new labor agreement may have induced new timidity about those massive deals, although we won't know until we've gone through a market cycle.

More specifically, Kent's position with the Giants remains iffy because management keeps saying its payroll is maxed out (which is always wrong, since nobody's payroll maxes out on its own accord), and in any event may not swell to double Kent's current salary of $6 million a year.

What can't be known is who needs a second baseman badly enough to ratchet up the number beyond San Francisco's willingness to pay. What can only be guessed at is whether his dodgy relationship with Bonds and his cycling mishap irritated managing general check-signer Peter Magowan beyond repair.

But at least we have a debate again. Two months ago, Kent was a former Giant walking, and you couldn't have found a taker for Kent's return when summer began. Now, it's not only a discussible point but, for the Giants, a worthwhile one. I mean, they've won for five years with the second baseman and left fielder having no use for each other, and their debt load tells us they are in no mood to tempt fate by breaking them up.

More immediately, the Giants need Jeff Kent in his way just as much as they need Barry Bonds in his, as galling a notion as that might be to them both. Kent has played his way back into the Giants' future, just as he has their present.

Ray Ratto is a columnist with the San Francisco Chronicle and a regular contributor to ESPN.com