The Nationwide Baseball Corridor of Fame introduced on Tuesday night time that Scott Rolen was the one member of this winter’s poll to earn induction into Cooperstown by advantage of showing on greater than 75 p.c of the ballots forged by the Baseball Writers Affiliation of America. Whereas Rolen had purpose to rejoice, others had purpose to be disenchanted, together with Jeff Kent, who got here up quick in what amounted to his tenth (and remaining) yr on the BBWAA poll.
Kent, in fact, appeared in elements of 17 big-league seasons, primarily as a second baseman. He made 5 All-Star Video games and earned 4 Silver Slugger Awards. He additionally received the Nationwide League’s Most Invaluable Participant Award in 2000. Kent gathered a 123 OPS+ for his profession, in addition to 377 dwelling runs and 55.4 Wins Above Alternative. However, he appeared on fewer than 47 p.c of the ballots this yr, his first time clearing the 35 p.c threshold.
Kent supplied his clarification for why he fell effectively wanting induction, putting the blame on “a pair non-voting stat of us.”
“The voting over time has been an excessive amount of of a head-scratching embarrassment,” Kent mentioned in a textual content to the San Francisco Chronicle. “Baseball is shedding a pair generations of nice gamers that have been the perfect of their period as a result of a pair non-voting stat of us maintain evaluating these gamers to gamers already voted in from generations previous and are influencing the votes. It is unfair to the perfect gamers in their very own period and people already voted in, in my view.”
Our personal Matt Snyder occurs to be a type of people who makes use of statistics and precedent to research the Corridor of Fame. He famous that Kent’s offensive manufacturing gave him a robust “Corridor of Famer” pull, but in addition warned that Kent’s potential induction would seemingly come via a committee vote due to how his below-average protection pulled down his total-value metrics.
To blockquote Snyder:
Kent sits nineteenth in WAR amongst second basemen, effectively under the common present Corridor of Famer and within the ballpark of Ian Kinsler, Dustin Pedroia and Tony Phillips. In JAWS, he is twenty first and truly trails Pedroia and Kinsler. He isn’t too far forward of Ben Zobrist. All excellent gamers, to be clear, however this is not the corporate a surefire Corridor of Famer could be holding.
Sadly for Kent, the Up to date Baseball Period committee met this previous winter, after they selected to induct Fred McGriff. They will not meet and vote once more till winter 2025. Which means Kent would possibly make it to Cooperstown in spite of everything, however he will not be capable of give his speech till 2026.