If you are any kind of baseball fan at all you know that the newest inductees into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown New York will be Ken Griffey, Jr. and Mike Piazza.
Some people are heavily invested in the question of who should be in the hall and who should not be there. Personally I am not that into it. For the borderline guys like Curt Schilling, Mike Mussina, and Tim Raines it does not matter much to me whether they are voted in or never make it.
I acknowledge my own and baseball’s hypocrisy in keeping Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire, Roger Clemens, and the other known PED cheaters out. My Strat-O-Matic baseball team had both Bonds and Sosa on it and they combined for 439 home runs during the 1999 through 2002 seasons. Of course we all knew or at least strongly suspected that they were juicing but it was easy enough to rationalize that if they were not smashing dingers for my team then they would be doing so for someone else against my team.
When Brian Joura asked the writers here at Mets 360 to submit a Hall of Fame ballot mine was a good bit shorter than most. It had just four names on it.
One player on my ballot only garnered 16.6% of the votes in this his third year of eligibility. That player was Jeff Kent.
While he played for the Mets during the 1992 to 1996 seasons most of us remember him as a San Francisco Giant during his early to mid 30s.
Offensively it seems hard to deny his credentials. Check out this table pared down from Baseball Reference.
| Year | Tm | AB | HR | RBI | BA | OBP | SLG | OPS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1992 | TOT | 305 | 11 | 50 | 0.239 | 0.312 | 0.430 | 0.741 |
| 1993 | NYM | 496 | 21 | 80 | 0.270 | 0.320 | 0.446 | 0.765 |
| 1994 | NYM | 415 | 14 | 68 | 0.292 | 0.341 | 0.475 | 0.816 |
| 1995 | NYM | 472 | 20 | 65 | 0.278 | 0.327 | 0.464 | 0.791 |
| 1996 | TOT | 437 | 12 | 55 | 0.284 | 0.330 | 0.432 | 0.762 |
| 1997 | SFG | 580 | 29 | 121 | 0.250 | 0.316 | 0.472 | 0.789 |
| 1998 | SFG | 526 | 31 | 128 | 0.297 | 0.359 | 0.555 | 0.914 |
| 1999 ★ | SFG | 511 | 23 | 101 | 0.290 | 0.366 | 0.511 | 0.877 |
| 2000 ★ | SFG | 587 | 33 | 125 | 0.334 | 0.424 | 0.596 | 1.021 |
| 2001 ★ | SFG | 607 | 22 | 106 | 0.298 | 0.369 | 0.507 | 0.877 |
| 2002 | SFG | 623 | 37 | 108 | 0.313 | 0.368 | 0.565 | 0.933 |
| 2003 | HOU | 505 | 22 | 93 | 0.297 | 0.351 | 0.509 | 0.860 |
| 2004 ★ | HOU | 540 | 27 | 107 | 0.289 | 0.348 | 0.531 | 0.880 |
| 2005 ★ | LAD | 553 | 29 | 105 | 0.289 | 0.377 | 0.512 | 0.889 |
| 2006 | LAD | 407 | 14 | 68 | 0.292 | 0.385 | 0.477 | 0.861 |
| 2007 | LAD | 494 | 20 | 79 | 0.302 | 0.375 | 0.500 | 0.875 |
| 2008 | LAD | 440 | 12 | 59 | 0.280 | 0.327 | 0.418 | 0.745 |
While the whole thing is mighty impressive one must look closely at the numbers this player put up between 1997 and 2007 and factor in the position he played: second base. Other than Joe Morgan and Rogers Hornsby who else at that position carried this impressive a stick?
On a radio interview last week one writer admitted that he considered voting for Kent but then did not because, “he was such a butcher in the field.”
That statement clashes with my recollection. Yes, Kent was not a gold glover or anything close to it. My idea of a butcher in the field at second base was Alfonso Soriano in his early Yankee years. My take on a poor fielding second sacker would be Daniel Murphy. It can be expected that new Met Neil Walker will be better than Murphy but still not particularly good. Jeff Kent defensively, at least in my opinion, was a comparable fielder back then to what Neil Walker is now. That’s not a butcher and not someone who should be kept out of the Hall of Fame for just that reason.
What it seems to come down to is that Kent was not a particularly popular fellow with the fans of his various teams, his teammates, and with local and national media. Open a thesaurus to the word “surly” and you can find a few dozen adjectives like that which over the years were applied to Jeff Kent.
Could this unpopularity be all that is keeping Kent from the immortality that is attached to being enshrined in Cooperstown? Probably not but if he were ever to get his vote totals into the 60+% range it would not be a shocker that his lack of niceness might keep him out.
So what has this to do with Mike Piazza and David Wright?
No one denies that Piazza was an awesome hitting catcher. Those who don’t want to call him the greatest offensive catcher of all time certainly would not put him any lower than third on their list while putting Johnny Bench and possibly Yogi Berra in front of him.
Piazza took the normal route to the hall as he was in his fourth year of eligibility and saw his vote total improve each year. Those who did not vote for him originally were swayed (probably) by the unsubstantiated rumors that he did PEDs. But over the last few years it became clear that no hard evidence existed that he cheated. With his offensive numbers and the fact that everything else about Piazza is favorable – he’s just a likeable guy – his enshrinement became inevitable.
In all likelihood David Wright will not finish out his career with the types of seasons we Mets fans enjoyed viewing through the 2013 season. That was his last season with an OPS over 900.
But if somehow he can overcome his medical woes and put up two or three more David Wright seasons he just could enter the Hall of Fame discussion some year.
Were that to occur one could expect that the likeability factor could work big time in his favor. Wright is deservedly an extremely well liked athlete across the board: baseball fans everywhere, the media, his teammates. There has never been a hint of scandal about him. Should his numbers end up even close to Hall of Fame worthy one could expect the captain’s niceness factor to sweep him in.
FWIW – Kent finished with a positive fielding component in fWAR in 11 of his first 13 years in the majors. It wasn’t until his final four years where he was a consistently poor fielder.
Bobby Bonilla also had some nice statistical seasons when he was riding on Bonds’ coattails. I don’t see him getting HOF consideration. Aside from that variable and perceived lousy defense, Kent was known as a jerk and there’s been PED suspicion. That all may be too much to overcome.
I know he put up good offensive numbers for a middle infielder and even won an MVP, but he broke zero records, won zero WS rings, never led the league in anything and was never thought of as a top 10 player. I would sooner have voted for guys like Mattingly and Garciaparra, who, while they had their playing days cuts too short by injury to accumulate big career stats, were, at least for a stretch, thought of as among the best players in the game,
Mr. Smith…OMG, What planet did you grow up on? Your saying Neil Walker (soon to become part time) is better than Daniel Murphy gave me a huge laugh. Walker is a good player but statistically doesn’t measure up to Daniel. Perhaps you should make the comparison (not cherry pick). Oh I get it. Because Murphy signed with the Nats you want to belittle him now. At the end of the 2016 just compare the statistics. Read then weep.
Old Joe,
Here’s what the article says about Murphy/Walker. “My take on a poor fielding second sacker would be Daniel Murphy. It can be expected that new Met Neil Walker will be better than Murphy but still not particularly good.”. The only comparison made is their defensive prowess never addresses the question of who is the better ballplayer.
Are you trying to say that Daniel Murphy is a better fielding second baseman than Neil Walker? If so I and many others would strongly disagree with you.
Over the years I have written many columns about Daniel Murphy who has always been one of my favorite players. He still is even though he’s a Nat. But I try to be objective about his defense which has always been well below average.
What’s keeping Kent from the HOF is his career. Very good one dimensional hitter in an era where there were many many many very good one dimensional hitters. You can’t compare 2nd basemen from different era’s especially not the steroid era.
It’s not the Hall of Very Good. It’s related to the top 1% of players. Kent was not elite.
What’s keeping Kent from more serious consideration is the backlog of strong candidates, of which he is one.
Kent wasn’t one dimensional. He hit for average, in the middle of his career he learned to take a walk, he hit for power and until late in his career he was an above-average defensive second baseman.
OPS+ is designed to compare hitters from different eras, regardless if that era was the deadball early 1900s, the live ball 1930s, the giant mound 1960s or the small park 1990s. It does this by accounting for both ballpark and run environments. Dante Bichette played in a hitter’s park in a high-scoring run era and put up a .340/.364/.620 slash line in 1995 but that was only good for a 130 OPS+ once the adjustments were made.
Contrast that with 2015 Miguel Cabrera, who posted an OPS 10 points lower than Bichette did in 1995 but ended up with an OPS+ of 170 last year.
Kent had 10 seasons with an OPS+ of 119 and above, including a top five of 131, 133, 142, 147 and 162. Compare that to the top five of Ryne Sandberg, who posted these marks as his best: 134, 138, 140, 140 and 145. Or Roberto Alomar, whose top five best marks were 134 136, 140, 141 and 150. Kent was similar, but better, than these Hall of Fame 2B as a hitter. He wasn’t as good as either of them defensively, which turns him from a surefire HOFer into someone who merits serious consideration.
But because the BBWAA has done such a piss poor job of voting, Kent is likely to fall through the cracks without being given the consideration that he deserves.
The “piss poor job of voting” by the BBWAA goes hand-in-hand with Larry Smith’s citing Kent as being “surly.”
The voting for the HoF is in need of an overhaul. While no method short of a computer doing the voting would remove the human equation, there has to be a better way to pick the entrants.
Niceness definitely matters. Why do you think Ray Knight only got 3 HOF votes?
He probably wouldn’t have gotten
in anyway due to his low BA, but 3 votes?
Guess you shouldn’t anger sports writers since they’re the ones who vote.