There’s no crying in baseball, which may or may not explain why Jeff Kent‘s stoic facade crumbled during the press conference in which he announced his retirement last week. A notoriously gruff and prickly personality, Kent had spent the better part of two decades distancing himself from his teammates and the media as much as possible. Thus the sight of him fighting back the tears was surprising, even shocking, given his apparent lack of emotional range. As the legendary sportswriter Frank Graham once wrote of Yankees outfielder Bob Meusel, “He’s learning to say hello when it’s time to say goodbye.”
Less than two months shy of his 41st birthday, there’s little doubt that the time to say goodbye had arrived for Kent. He hit .280/.327/.418 for the Dodgers in 2008, with a career-low .264 EqA and just 12 homers, his lowest total since 1996. He missed most of the final month of the season due to a torn medial meniscus that required surgery; though he rehabbed doggedly and made the Dodgers’ post-season roster, he was confined to bench duty while Blake DeWitt took over at second base. A future as a part-time player was unthinkable for Kent, who had once declared, upon being sidelined by a more minor injury, “I hate watching baseball.”
While Kent hasn’t been the object of many fond farewells, the widespread consensus in the mainstream media is that he’s bound for the Hall of Fame. From a traditional perspective, it’s not difficult to see why. Although he didn’t debut in the majors until he was 24 and didn’t top 400 plate appearances until the following year, Kent nonetheless racked up 2,461 hits and 377 homers, reached the postseason seven times, made five All-Star teams, and won the 2000 NL MVP award. The 351 home runs he hit as a second baseman are tops for the position, far outdistancing the second-, third-, and fourth-ranked second-sackers-Ryne Sandberg (277), Joe Morgan (266), and Rogers Hornsby (263)-all of whom are enshrined in Cooperstown. He also leads all second basemen in RBI and extra-base hits, while ranking 12th in games played at the position; several articles pertaining to his retirement credited him as ranking fifth in games played, but someone clearly failed to do their homework:
Games Player 2650 Eddie Collins 2526 Joe Morgan 2320 Roberto Alomar 2306 Lou Whitaker 2295 Nellie Fox 2206 Charlie Gehringer 2153 Willie Randolph 2153 Frank White 2126 Bid McPhee 2094 Bill Mazeroski 2035 Nap Lajoie 2034 Jeff Kent 1995 Ryne Sandberg 1989 Craig Biggio 1852 Bobby Doerr 1843 Ray Durham 1834 Red Schoendienst 1813 Billy Herman 1767 Bobby Grich 1763 Bret Boone
If Kent’s case for Cooperstown appears on firm footing from a traditional standpoint, it’s on shakier ground sabermetrically. On the one hand, his Bill James Hall of Fame Standards and Hall of Fame Monitor scores are in line with the averages, or at least the averages at the time James created his system some 25 years ago; Kent scores 50.9 on the Standards, where 50 is average, and 122.5 on the Monitor, where 100 is average. Basically, this means that he did the things that typical Hall of Famers do. Furthermore, he fares well on the more subjective Keltner Test, through which Joe Sheehan ran Kent’s case back in early 2007.
As noted in that previous link, Kent does not fare nearly so well when it comes to JAWS, and I say that as someone whose first impulse would be to vote for him if the BBWAA granted me a ballot today. I’ve explored his case before, but with his final two seasons of play, as well as a major adjustment in the WARP system’s replacement level-one that’s not yet reflected on our player cards, alas-it’s appropriate to take another look. Here are the rankings for the position:
Player Career Peak JAWS Eddie Collins 137.9 72.7 105.3* Rogers Hornsby 128.6 76.6 102.6* Joe Morgan 127.5 73.5 100.5* Nap Lajoie 125.7 71.7 98.7* Bobby Grich 92.3 63.6 78.0 Lou Whitaker 103.4 51.6 77.5 Craig Biggio 90.0 55.0 72.5 Rod Carew 86.1 53.0 69.6* Charlie Gehringer 84.8 54.2 69.5* Frankie Frisch 83.3 50.1 66.7* Roberto Alomar 81.0 51.8 66.4 Ryne Sandberg 75.6 56.4 66.0* Billy Herman 77.8 51.2 64.5** Jeff Kent 80.1 47.9 64.0 Jackie Robinson 68.0 57.5 62.8* Joe Gordon 67.5 53.9 60.7** Bobby Doerr 72.8 47.7 60.3** Bid McPhee 77.7 41.7 59.7** Willie Randolph 70.3 42.4 56.4 Davey Lopes 64.5 47.8 56.2 Avg HoF 2B 84.9 54.6 69.8 *BBWAA elected **VC elected
Kent ranks 12th in career WARP, 20th in peak WARP (best seven seasons), and 14th overall among all second basemen. As odd as it sounds for a player who lasted through his age-40 season, he’s hampered by a lack of durability. Kent topped 145 games just five times (including in 2002, the season he infamously broke his wrist while “washing his truck”) and averaged only 133 games a year over his last six seasons, the Houston and Los Angeles phases of his career. He’s got just four seasons above 5.5 WARP via the new system, and just three above 7.0. Overall, his JAWS score tops only one of the nine second basemen elected by the Baseball Writers Association of America, that being Jackie Robinson, whose career was shortened by the color barrier but who nonetheless had a peak that was well above average, to say nothing of his monumentally larger role in history.
It won’t get much better for Kent, either. By the time he actually reaches the 2014 ballot in the company of fellow first-year eligibles Greg Maddux and Mike Mussina, both Biggio and Alomar will likely be enshrined. The former is a lock given his 3,060 hits, while the latter’s round-number combination of a .300 lifetime batting average and 10 Gold Gloves probably put him into the no-brainer category for many a voter.
The introduction of a play-by-play based system for the defensive component of WARP and thus JAWS-something that’s in the works, which is why the above numbers haven’t made it to our player cards-likely won’t help Kent either. Right now he’s actually got a higher FRAA (+9) than either Biggio (-56) or Alomar (-63); suffice to say that none of these guys aged very well at the keystone. It would be surprising if that order held up given both the stronger reputations of the other two players (Biggio won four Gold Gloves, while it’s tough to imagine Kent ever coming up in a Gold Glove conversation) and the late-career Ultimate Zone Rating figures from Fangraphs, which show Kent even less charity than the FRAA numbers do.
In chewing on Kent’s candidacy, it’s worth noting that second base has long been something of an odd duck in the JAWS pond. In my annual analyses of the 2006, 2007, and 2008 ballots-dating back to the point where I redefined the peak component from a player’s best five consecutive years (a definition used for the 2004 and 2005 ballots) to his best seven years at large-the second basemen had the highest JAWS score of any position. That changed with this year’s ballot, which uses a long-awaited higher replacement level for hitters. The third basemen actually overtook the second basemen, as did the right fielders:
Pos Career Peak JAWS C 78.3 50.9 64.6 1B 75.8 48.4 62.1 2B 84.9 54.6 69.8 3B 89.4 56.1 72.8 SS 79.5 52.2 65.9 LF 79.8 49.1 64.5 CF 84.2 52.5 68.4 RF 87.9 52.2 70.1
This isn’t simply a built-in advantage for second basemen, it’s more likely a product of small sample sizes, as the Hall’s ranks include just 11 third basemen. The top 40 second basemen (a group chosen because it incorporates all of the Hall of Famers down to bottom-ranked Johnny Evers) have an average JAWS score (60.2) which ranks fourth among the eight positions, 0.3 higher than the third basemen. Looking back at the individual rankings, the list is unmistakably top-heavy, as there’s a gulf between Lajoie at number four and Grich at number five which is founded in that top quartet’s career-long excellence as hitters. Collins, Hornsby, Morgan, and Lajoie average 1,045 Batting Runs Above Replacement and 740 Batting Runs Above Average apiece; only Carew comes within 250 runs on either count, while Gehringer comes up more than 400 short in both categories, and the rest all fall behind him. Furthermore, only the top four players on the list are actually above the JAWS standard at the position and in the Hall of Fame, though two more are pretty much dead even, and Biggio is virtually guaranteed entry unless somebody shows up with a sordid performance-enhancing drug scandal to lay at his feet.
That such a small number of second basemen outdo the standards at the position is not terribly unique to the JAWS universe, as only about one-third of the left fielders and center fielders in the Hall do so:
Pos AVG+ # Pct C 7 13 53.8 SS 10 21 47.6 3B 5 11 45.5 1B 8 18 44.4 P 24 61 39.3 RF 9 23 39.1 LF 7 20 35.0 CF 5 17 29.4 2B 4 18 22.2 Total 79 202 39.1
In the table above, AVG+ is the number of players with JAWS scores exceeding the positional standard, and # represents the total number of enshrined players at that position who have full enough careers to make a JAWS analysis worthwhile (i.e., not including the Negro Leaguers or late-career crossovers like Satchel Paige or Monte Irvin). As noted before, Carew and Gehringer are so close-less than 10 runs between them-that we could conceivably bump the second basemen ahead of the center fielders with 33.3 percent; no other position has anyone who misses by what may as well be a rounding error.
This top-heaviness will be taken by some as grounds for suggesting the use of median scores at each position, rather than the adjusted means (the means once the lowest score at each position-invariably a laughably awful VC selection-is thrown out), a subject I’ve tackled before. Though it wasn’t the case this year, in the past I’ve found that comparing a typical BBWAA ballot’s worth of players against the medians results in a system that flags more players as worthy of votes than there are spots on a Hall of Fame ballot. Within the broad range of opinions held by actual voters and interested observers, I doubt one could find a single credible analysis that reached such a conclusion. Going lower than the median-one commenter even suggested down to the 20th percentile, which among second basemen would mean touting Chuck Knoblauch and Julio Franco for the Hall-is an even worse idea.
Kent does inch over the second base median (63.7), but he remains squarely below the JAWS standard for second baseman. Unless one attaches special importance to his leading the position in homers, which has much to do with his era, it’s difficult to draw the conclusion that the credentials which WARP can’t capture are enough to close the gap. His HOFS and HOFM scores, which tally things like his All-Star appearances, awards, and league leads in important categories, may be solid, but they’re still well below those of contemporaries Alomar (55.9, 193.5) and Biggio (55.9, 169.0), and not necessarily superior to the stylistically similar Sandberg (41.9, 157.5). He never won a World Series ring (though he received one from the 1992 Blue Jays, who traded him to the Mets for David Cone midway through his rookie season), and his .276/.340/.500 performance in the postseason is respectable, but hardly spectacular enough to merit extra credit. His MVP award came in the rare year that he outperformed teammate Barry Bonds, but his 8.7 WARP was still just fifth in the NL; he finished third in the NL in 2002 with 9.6 for the pennant-winning Giants, but Bonds’ 13.7 WARP trumps that considerably. No extra credit to be had there either.
Kent was a very good player for a long time, and an often misunderstood one. His lack of charisma and his businesslike approach made him an easy target, though his humorlessness should never have been confused with a lack of passion for the game. From this vantage point, he looks to be a borderline Hall of Famer at best. Even with no particular love lost for him as a fan-one who spent years rooting against him as a Giant before settling down and appreciating his uneven virtues with the Dodgers-I’ll admit that this still contradicts my gut instinct, but then that’s one of the reasons for the five-year waiting period before a player reaches the ballot. Nonetheless, I strongly suspect he’ll find his way into Cooperstown in due time, and if that’s the case, it will hardly be the crime of the century.
Thank you for reading
This is a free article. If you enjoyed it, consider subscribing to Baseball Prospectus. Subscriptions support ongoing public baseball research and analysis in an increasingly proprietary environment.
Subscribe now
Having Alomar and Biggio inducted ahead of Kent can only help - can you imagine the BBWAA putting those 2 in and not including a guy who had more counting stats?
As you note, the 2B standard is skewed by the existence of 4 Immortals who were so far ahead of the rest of the pack. We don\'t want to penalize the Charlie Gehringers of the world for only being Charlie Gehringer and not Rogers Hornsby, but we also don\'t want to just ignore what\'s possible at the high end when trying to identify greatness.
Have you played around with eliminating outliers at the high end, as well as the low end, when computing your adjusted average for the position? That would also help in LF, where Williams and Henderson and Bonds would stop distorting the standard for \"worthy HOF inductee\".
More concretely: suppose we say that the center 50% of HOF JAWS scores defines what it means to be a worthy HOF inductee at each position. That corrects not only for horrible bad past choices, but also for Ruthian distortions. How do the positional standards change, and who becomes more (or less) worthy by the new metric?
While this avenue may merit a deeper exploration, I\'m not testing anything new until the defensive upgrade happens -- hopefully sooner rather than later.
And with the work being done by Tom Tango and positional adjustments, I wonder what\'s the best way to handle defense. Even good systems (+/-, BIS UZR, STATS UZR, etc.) still disagree a lot, and until we see BP\'s Play-By-Play numbers it\'ll be hard to evaluate that--and thus be able to better judge JAWS as a tool.
More RBI than Mickey Mantle, more HR, RBI, and doubles than any other second baseman, and he\'s only a borderline Hall of Famer?
Maybe you\'re squinting a little too hard. The Hall of Fame isn\'t just for us prospectus types. In the eyes of most baseball fans, Jeff Kent\'s traditional numbers don\'t just make him a hall of famer, they make him a slam dunk hall of famer. If he was a little bit more gregarious, he\'d probably get Henderson-like numbers his first year. Either way, he\'ll be in on the first ballot, as he should.
That Kent may have more RBI than Mickey Mantle is only slightly more relevant to his Hall of Fame case than the fact that he\'s 511 wins behind Cy Young. Kent played in an era of inflated offense, where runs and thus RBI were considerably easier to accumulate than in the Mick\'s day. Over the course of his career, he used up about 450 more outs to drive in all of nine runs more than Mantle, and did so in an environment where the park-adjusted league OPS was about 50 points higher than in Mantle\'s day.
Oh, did I mention he hit more World Series homers than Ted Williams? Forget the plaque, let\'s build him his own wing in Cooperstown.
In fact, it\'s fair to point out that Kent\'s actually a better hitter than the JAWS standard for second basemen once you take into account all of the other facets of his offensive game - walks, outs, singles, triples, stolen bases, hit-by-pitches, the whole shebang. His .292 EQA bests the JAWS standard among second basemen by four points. It\'s a whole 50 points short of Mantle\'s EQA, but only one point below that of Jim Rice. Among second basemen, it\'s hell-and-gone from the big four, but three points ahead of Charlie Gehringer and eight above Ryne Sandberg. Those are points in Kent\'s favor.
Furthermore, his 644 Batting Runs Above Replacement and 361 Batting Runs Above Average outdo the average Hall second-sacker (569 BRAR and 299 BRAA). He\'s a better hitter than the average Hall of Fame second baseman, a statement that could have stood an emphasis in the article proper.
The problem, then, comes down to defense, where Kent\'s offensive advantages over the average HOF second baseman evaporate; he\'s 368 Fielding Runs Above Replacement, and nine Fielding Runs Above Average, where the standard is 447 and 86. Runs prevented are worth slightly more than runs scored (see Baseball Between the Numbers for the math), which is why Kent falls slightly on the low side relative to the Hall second basemen by this reckoning, at least until a play-by-play metric tells us otherwise. I know that\'s not what you asked at all, but it\'s the flip side of the best talking point I can give you in this realm.
As I said in the piece, I do think Kent will get into the Hall; my guess would be within five years on the ballot but almost certainly not on the first try, going up against Maddux. THAT is a slam-dunk Hall of Famer.
What I\'m saying is that, for a large portion of baseball fans, AVG, HR, and RBI are the most important statistics a player can have. And, by that standard, Kent not only is above where he needs to be, but he\'s way, way above where he needs to be. For an awful lot of people, Kent is a slam-dunk hall of famer. My argument is that traditional, less nuanced statistics have a bigger place in the hall of fame because they reflect the perception of most baseball fans better than a lot of the more advanced statistics.
Of course AVG, HR, RBI are the most important statistics to that large portion of people, and if they can\'t look beyond that, then JAWS - hell, the field of sabermetrics - has absolutely nothing to tell them about the Hall of Fame, or about baseball history in general. Boy, hitters were great in the 1930s and they\'re great now, but they sure sucked in the 1960s and especially in the Deadball Era, when they couldn\'t hit homers for ****.
Those people - many of them in the BBWAA, alas - will vote the Jim Rices in and keep the Tim Raineses out based on their home run totals, forget about any kind of value-based accounting for player performance, forget about adjusting for anything, forget about looking at anything in a way that contradicts what people knew about baseball 25 or even 50 years ago. Run back to the TV and let Joe Morgan and Peter Gammons tell you all you need to know about what makes a Hall of Famer, because there\'s nothing to see here.
2)I don\'t know that Kent makes it in on the first ballot, but see him taking the Sandberg route - 3 years, maybe 5. He will lose out in his first go round, competing with Maddux, Mussina and his diametric position player opposite - Sean Casey.
The notion that Kent has a better fielding rating than Alomar is laughable.
After a lot of digging and observation, what everyone decided (if I recall correctly) was that Alomar was very weak at making plays to his right. He played shaded toward first, and make any number of spectacular plays behind him and to his left, but anything up the middle was a hit. The data saw that; the live observers simply noted \"ball out of reach, not his fault\".
I\'d be very curious to see what the retroactive play-by-play defensive evaluation of Alomar looks like.
If I believed that my approach to any statistical question I tried to answer was impervious to a second look, or to have turned tail at a bit of criticism -- even the not-so-constructive kind -- I\'d never have made it to BP in the first place.
And before this thread goes cold, I just want to make it clear, because some people have missed the point entirely: the system is not saying, \"Jeff Kent should not be in the Hall of Fame.\" It\'s saying, \"Jeff Kent would not be an above-average Hall of Famer.\" Since the number one stated goal of JAWS is and has always been to raise the standards of the Hall by endorsing only the above-average candidates, I would therefore not vote for him unless the combination of my numbers and my reckoning on the more subjective areas of his career (which in Kent\'s case I judge to have some value but not an overwhelming amount) convince me otherwise. That day may come - he\'s got five years before he reaches the ballot, obviously - but it\'s not here yet.