Is Jeff Kent a HoFer?

How many HOF voters have: A) been around long enough to have been shat on by Rice, and B) are unprofessional enough not to vote for him because of it? A very small number, I would guess. The whole idea that voters let personal bias affect their votes is overblown, I think. I'm not saying it never happens, but based on the people I know who have a vote, I think it's exceedingly rare.

 

Fair enough....so are you saying Kent is HoF-worthy while Rice is not?

They're about on the same level on my non-BBWAA-voting HoF radar, for the little it's worth - just missing the cut.

 

I can't imagine anyone, anywhere ever looking at a schedule, seeing the Mets or Giants coming to town and saying, "Sweet, Jeff Kent'll be in town. Let's get tickets. You gotta see him at least once." Now, granted, most of his time on the Giants, people did that for Bonds. But if Bonds hadn't been there, Kent wouldn't have been anything of a draw.

That's obviously not a bona fide standard for HOF admission, because if it was, McGwire, Bonds and Sosa would be first-ballot locks. But still.

 

There are loads of guys who are in the HoF and shouldn't be, often because they played for successful teams and/or were favored by fans and media (if I was trying to condense this into a small copy space I'd do it in two words with "Phil Rizzuto") and then some guys in the deadball era who nobody remembers. These are usually the domain of the Veterans Committee, and perhaps sometime down the road they'll hit a trend where they forget about the whole 'roids thing and start putting marginal guys like Jeff Kent in Cooperstown.

No offense to Jeff - I've been in somewhat close proximity to him (never interviewed him directly) and he's not as bad as he's made out to be....just aloof. It makes pretty good sense that he and Bonds didn't get along and that he fit in a lot better in Houston's clubhouse - of course what you did to fit in that clubhouse was don't get crossways with Biggio or Bagwell - two guys that are getting in long ahead of Kent if he ever made it at all.

 

when jim rice gets into the hall, i piss on the doorstep.

 

Man, I read that thread title, and in my head HoFer sounds like "huffer," and I'm wondering, Is Jeff Kent huffing paint out of a paper bag?

 

No today.
No tomorrow.
No next week.
No next year.
No five years from now.
No 100 years from now.
No forever.

 

Perfect.

 

First of all, the whole "someone's not voting for Rice b/c he wasn't nice argument" doesn't wash...if that was the case, why are the Boston papers annually filled with columnists pitching Rice's HOF candidacy?

You also can't compare Spahn and Rice, because the electorate was far stricter back then. Joe D. didn't get in on the first ballot.

A three-year stretch of 39 HRs and 200 hits is awesome, but it's not enough to get one into the HOF. Otherwise Don Mattingly would be there for a stretch of similiar dominance.

This isn't just one year where less than 75 percent of the electorate has said no to Rice. It's 14 straight years. At some point, doesn't it become less about a vendetta towards Rice or the electorate's stupidity and more about, hey, maybe he just doesn't measure up?

 

This is a very good point.

There are any number of guys who are debated about today who wouldn't be debated about at all in 1960. They just wouldn't be considered.

 

even better point.

 

Players base everything on their personal experience. "He hit a home run off me. Hell, yes, he should be in the Hall of Fame."

If it were up to players, the Hall of Fame class would be about 30 every year. I had a fairly intelligent manager ask me why Jerry Koosman isn't in the Hall. What qualifies him? "He shoved the bats up our ass all the time." Oh.

Seriously, most players are irrational on stuff like this. I used to have to collect all-star ballots from them and some of the shit they turned in was incredible, dumber than something the dumbest fan would have done.