Giants’ Kent overlooked again for Hall of Fame
Second baseman has most HRs for his position
He was prickly with the press. He was sometimes a primadonna. He could be considered a poor teammate.
No, not Barry Bonds.
I’m talking about Jeff Kent.
The Hall of Fame voting results were released Tuesday and Kent received 32.4 percent, not even close to the 75 percent needed for enshrinement. Kent is like Tom Hanks in “Castaway.” He’s miles away from civilization and he may start talking to a volleyball soon.
We all know the arguments against Bonds and fellow steroid abuser Roger Clemens. We know the beef with Curt Schilling.
But what’s the explanation behind not voting for Kent, a career .290 hitter with eight seasons of 100-plus RBIs? He appeared in seven postseasons and won an MVP. In 17 seasons, his OPS (onbase plus slugging) was .855.
He has the most homers of any second baseman in history with 377. Rogers Hornsby is second with 301.
Ryne Sandberg, who was a third-ballot Hall of Famer, had a career OPS of .795. Hall of Famer Bill Mazeroski had a ghastly OPS of .667.
Obviously Kent was not in the same class as those two when it comes to fielding, but he wasn’t a butcher either. He had average range but turned the double play well and more than made up for his fielding limitations with the bat.
Kent was ordinary early in his career, bouncing from the Blue Jays to the Mets to the Indians before being dealt in the thencontroversial deal with Giants star Matt Williams. Kent wasn’t even considered to be the key player in that deal as Julián Tavárez was projected to be a star.
The knock on Kent was that he benefited from hitting before or after Bonds, one of the most explosive players of his generation\ — steroids or not. My answer to that is — Bonds also benefited from Kent. The best teams always have more than one superstar.
The other problem with the Bonds argument is that Kent had three more prolific seasons after he left the Giants — two with the Astros and another with the Dodgers before age finally started to catch up to him.
Kent even starred in the postseason for the Astros, hitting a walkoff, three-run homer against the Cardinals to give his team a 3-2 series lead in the 2004 NLCS. You can’t credit that to Bonds, right?
He drove in 97, 107 and 105 runs in those three years. Even in Kent’s second-to-last season in the
bigs, he hit 20 homers and drove in 79. He didn’t exactly limp to the finish line like some players.
Kent played in the steroid era but there has never been a whiff about him connected to performing-enhancing drugs. Given that Kent wasn’t always the most popular guy in the locker room, someone likely would have ratted him out by now.
Maybe Kent’s career Wins Above Replacement of 55.4 is holding him back. I won’t discount WAR entirely but it shouldn’t be the only factor when evaluating players for Cooperstown.
Writer Chris Bodig had this to say about Kent:
“Considering Kent’s prodigious offensive record, I still find his lack of support strikingly odd. We know he has the most home runs in baseball history for a second baseman. We know he has the most RBI in the last 100 years for a second
sacker. For the analytically minded, he has the most “WAR Runs from batting” and the second highest OPS+ with a minimum of 6,000 PA (to the PEDtainted Robinson Cano) in the last 40 years. But for all the reasons cited previously, not enough voters consider that to be sufficient.”
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think Kent’s credentials are perfect. He is far from a first-ballot Hall of Fame due to the slow start to his career and lack of speed and defense. But should the best power hitting second baseman of all time deserve 32 percent of the vote?
There were 14 blank ballots submitted for the Hall of Fame this year.
I continue to draw a blank on the lack of support for Kent.