2026 Contemporary Baseball Era Committee Candidate: Jeff Kent

The following article is part of my ongoing look at the candidates on the 2026 Contemporary Baseball Era Committee ballot. Originally written for the 2014 election at SI.com, it has been updated to reflect recent voting results as well as additional research. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, use the navigation tool above. An introduction to JAWS can be found here.

Jeff Kent took a long time to find a home. Drafted by the Blue Jays in 1989, he passed through the hands of three teams that didn’t quite realize the value of what they had. Not until a trade to the Giants in November 1996 — prior to his age-29 season — did he really settle in. Once he did, he established himself as a standout complement to Barry Bonds, helping the Giants become perennial contenders and spending more than a decade as a middle-of-the-lineup force.

Despite his late-arriving stardom and a prickly personality that sometimes rubbed teammates and media the wrong way, Kent earned All-Star honors five times, won an MVP award, and helped four different franchises reach the playoffs a total of seven times. His résumé gives him a claim as the best-hitting second baseman of the post-1960 expansion era — not an iron-clad one, but not one that’s easily dismissed. For starters, he holds the all-time record for most home runs by a second baseman (not counting any other positions) with 351. That’s 35 more than Robinson Canó, 74 more than Ryne Sandberg, 85 more than Joe Morgan, and 87 more than Rogers Hornsby — all Hall of Famers, and in Hornsby’s case, one from before the expansion era. Among players with at least 7,000 plate appearances who spent at least half their time at second base, only Hornsby (.577) has a higher slugging percentage than Kent’s .500. From that latter set, only Hornsby (1.010) and another pre-expansion Hall of Famer, Charlie Gehringer (.884), have a higher OPS than Kent (.855).

Offense isn’t everything for a second baseman, however, and in a Hall of Fame discussion, it needs to be set in its proper context, particularly given the high-scoring era in which Kent played. For example, his 123 OPS+ is a more modest 10th among players who spent at least 50% of their careers at second and have reached the 7,000-plate appearance threshold. Taking the measure of all facets of his game, Kent appears to have a weaker case with regards to advanced statistics than traditional ones.

On crowded BBWAA ballots chock full of candidates with stronger cases on both fronts, Kent struggled to gain support, debuting at 15.2% in 2014 and not reaching 20% until his seventh year of eligibility (2020), when he pulled 27.5%. Thanks to a final-year surge, he reached 46.5% in 2023, a share that sets him up for a long look from the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee. On a ballot where the two hitters with bigger career numbers, Bonds and Gary Sheffield, have been linked to performance-enhancing drugs, Kent might be the most likely candidate for election.

Jeffrey Franklin Kent was born in Bellflower, California (a suburb of Los Angeles) on March 7, 1968, the oldest of three sons of Alan and Sherry Kent. While Alan, a motorcycle cop, took his sons to Dodgers games, they were more interested in motocross — a sport in which their father competed — than baseball. “I never watched baseball on TV,” Jeff told Sports Illustrated’s Franz Lidz in 1999 with no apparent trace of irony. “It’s slow and boring. I’m not a fan. Never was.”

Alan, a stern figure and self-described perfectionist, instilled a rather joyless brand of perfectionism in his son. “I’d go 3-for-4, and he’d chastise me for the out. I’d throw a one-hitter, and he’d tell me I could have gotten the hitter on a curve,” Jeff told Lidz. Five years earlier, while playing for the Mets, he told the New York Times’ Jennifer Frey, “I’m a negative guy. I’m not a positive guy. That’s what motivates me — the negatives of the game. The fear of failure, the embarrassment of failure, the fear that I’ll let my teammates down — all that drives me.”

Kent played baseball at Edison High School in Huntington Beach, but despite being an all-county selection as a shortstop, he was kicked off his team as a senior due to a personality conflict. In a 1992 profile for the Los Angeles Times, coach Ron La Ruffa told Mike DiGiovanna that Kent had “an attitude problem” and “a bad case of senioritis.” Kent, for his part, had found himself as a middle man between a demanding coach and unhappy teammates who wanted their star player to speak on their behalf, a no-win situation.

Playing American Legion and Connie Mack League baseball that summer instead, Kent still secured a partial baseball scholarship to the University of California, Berkeley. He helped Cal to the College World Series as a sophomore in 1988, but a broken wrist ended his junior season (his only one under full scholarship), scared away scouts, and dropped his draft stock. Nonetheless, he signed with the Blue Jays when they chose him in the 20th round of the 1989 draft, agreeing to just a $15,000 bonus. Splitting his first professional season between shortstop and third base, he struggled both in the field and at the plate, but showed good power at every minor league stop, as well as a greater aptitude for second base. He was set to start the 1992 season at Triple-A Syracuse, but injuries opened a roster spot in Toronto and playing time at third and second. In his major league debut on April 12, 1992, he doubled off the Orioles’ Jose Mesa; two days later, he hit his first home run, off the Yankees’ Lee Guetterman.

Kent played 65 games for the Blue Jays, hitting .240/.324/.443, but on August 27 — mere days after Dave Winfield joked in the pages of Sports Illustrated that he was Wally Pipp-ing injured third baseman Kelly Gruber — they sent him and a player to be named later to the Mets for David Cone, who went on to help Toronto win the World Series.

Alas, the Mets were headed in the opposite direction, bound for their second straight losing season after seven (1984–90) with at least 87 wins. The 1992 squad gained infamy as The Worst Team Money Could Buy (after the book of the same name), but the ’93 one truly stunk: New York went 59–103, the team’s worst showing since ’65. The 25-year-old Kent spent most of that season as the starting second baseman, hitting a respectable .270/.320/.446 (105 OPS+) with 21 homers in 140 games, but he was terrible in the field (-20 runs, according to Total Zone), offsetting nearly all of his value with the bat; he finished with 0.3 WAR.

Kent maintained that offensive level over the next three seasons, hitting a combined .284/.333/.457 (108 OPS+) and averaging 15 homers a year from 1994 to ’96, and his defense improved enough that he averaged 2.8 WAR across that stretch. Even so, he disliked a 1996 shift to third base, and it took its toll. More from Lidz’ 1999 profile:

“I hated third,” he says. It showed. Once, after a Shea Stadium ball girl backhanded a foul ball, a fan shouted, “Hey, Kent. You should trade positions with her.” When errors — 21 in 89 games — began mounting faster than the national debt, Kent became defensive about his defense. “Bobbling a ball would so humiliate me that I couldn’t speak,” he says.

The Mets remained mired below .500, but Kent caught a break when he was traded to Cleveland in a four-player deal that sent Carlos Baerga to New York; the Mets, on the other hand, caught a falling knife in Baerga, but that’s a story for another day. Cleveland had won the American League pennant the year before and was bound for 99 wins and another postseason appearance. Kent filled in at first, second, third, and designated hitter down the stretch and started twice in a losing cause in the Division Series. On November 13, he was part of a six-player trade that sent him to San Francisco, with slugging third baseman Matt Williams headlining Cleveland’s end of the deal.

Giants manager Dusty Baker wasn’t wild about the trade because of Kent’s temper, but he did return him to second base and batted him cleanup behind Bonds. Now 29 years old, Kent responded by setting career highs with 155 games, 29 homers, 121 RBIs, and 4.1 WAR despite a rather lopsided .250/.316/.472 line that equated to a modest 105 OPS+. The Giants won the National League West at 90–72, but they were swept by the Marlins in the Division Series despite a pair of solo homers from Kent in Game 3. He received down-ballot support in the MVP race, finishing eighth in the voting.

Thus began Kent’s six-year run of 20-homer/100-RBI seasons, thanks in part to hitting behind Bonds, an on-base machine as well as an elite slugger. Kent matured at the plate, suddenly able to hit for both average and power after altering his stance by holding his hands higher, an epiphany that came from watching Edgar Martinez. In 1998, Kent hit .297/.359/.555 with 31 homers and 4.5 WAR, but the Giants lost a Game 163 play-in for the Wild Card — something they might have avoided had they not gone 11–13 while Kent missed most of June due to a hyperextended knee.

Kent earned All-Star honors for the first time in 1999, then took his game to a new level in 2000 as the Giants moved into brand new Pacific Bell Park (now Oracle Park) and won the NL West with a 97–65 mark; he hit .334/.424/.596 with 33 homers and 7.2 WAR that year, all career bests. The latter mark ranked fourth in the league, but thanks to his 125 RBIs, he beat out Bonds (who hit .306/.440/.688 with 49 homers, 106 RBIs and 7.7 WAR) in the MVP race. The Giants lost the Division Series to the Mets in four games despite Kent going 6-for-16.

The 2001 season was Bonds’ turn to shine, as he bashed 73 homers to shatter the single-season record and won his fourth MVP award. By that point, however, tensions between the two stars were bubbling to the surface. In the August 27 issue of SI, Kent told Rick Reilly, “On the field, we’re fine, but off the field, I don’t care about Barry and Barry doesn’t care about me. [Pause.] Or anybody else.” Kent himself had a good year (.298/.369/.507, 5.2 WAR) and earned All-Star honors, but the Giants missed the playoffs.

The 2002 season saw highs and lows for the 34-year-old Kent. On March 1, he broke a bone in his wrist, initially claiming it happened while washing his truck. Soon it surfaced that eyewitnesses reported seeing a motorcyclist crash while doing a wheelie near Scottsdale Stadium in Arizona, the Giants’ spring training home; further information showed that it was Kent, riding in violation of his contract. The incident became the butt of jokes, but the Giants showed leniency, and Kent wound up missing just four games. On June 25, after yelling at third baseman David Bell, Kent scuffled with Bonds in the dugout. Afterward, he dismissed the altercation, saying it wasn’t a “big deal” and adding it to the “half-dozen times we’ve done it before.” Even so, he was also reported as telling Baker afterwards, “I want off this team.”

For all of the tension, Kent set a new career high with 37 homers, hitting .313/.368/.565 en route to 7.1 WAR (second in the league), helping the Giants win 96 games and the NL Wild Card; they proceeded to beat the Braves and Cardinals to advance to the World Series against the Angels. Kent hit .276/.290/.621 in 31 plate appearances in the Series, homering in a losing cause in Game 2, then homering twice and driving in four runs in a 16–4 rout in Game 5 that put the Giants within one win of their first championship since moving to San Francisco in 1958.

In Game 6, the Giants were up 5–0 with nine outs to go when all hell broke loose after a pair of three-run Angels rallies, the second keyed by a Bonds error. San Francisco lost the last two games, with Kent going 0-for-4 with two strikeouts in Game 7.

That was it for Kent’s run in San Francisco. In December, he signed a two-year, $18.2 million deal with the Astros, bumping All-Star second baseman Craig Biggio to center field. Superficially, Kent’s performance with Houston (.293/.350/.521 in 2003–04) looked a whole lot like his six years in San Francisco (.297/.368/.535), but in reality, hitter-friendly Minute Maid Park was masking his decline. He totaled just 6.7 WAR over those two years; his OPS+, meanwhile, went from 136 as a Giant to 121 as an Astro — good, but not outstanding. Kent missed four weeks in 2003 due to wrist inflammation, and again, his injury probably cost his team a playoff spot. Despite the presence of Biggio, Jeff Bagwell, and Lance Berkman, the Astros went 12–11 in his absence and lost the NL Central by one game.

Kent earned All-Star honors for the fourth time in 2004 and hit 27 homers. Career home run no. 300 came off St. Louis’ Jeff Suppan on September 29, and no. 278 as a second baseman — the record-breaker at the position — came on October 2 off Colorado’s Adam Bernero. Bolstered by the midseason arrival of Carlos Beltrán, the Astros won 92 games and the Wild Card, then beat the Braves to advance to the NLCS against the Cardinals. Kent homered three times in the series, with his three-run shot off Jason Isringhausen in the ninth inning of Game 5 providing all of the scoring and putting Houston one win away from their first trip to the World Series, but the team lost the next two.

A free agent again, Kent came full circle, not only returning to California but signing a two-year deal with the Dodgers, who had won the NL West in 2004. Alas, he was one of the few bright spots on a squad that tumbled to 71–91 amid such a slew of injuries that he was one of just two players to reach 100 hits. Kent himself was limited to 115 games and 0.7 WAR the following year due to wrist and oblique injuries, not to mention deteriorating defense (-18 Defensive Runs Saved). His 14 homers and 68 RBIs ended a string of nine straight years of at least 22 homers and 93 RBIs, though his last homer was noteworthy. Hit on September 18, 2006 off the Padres’ Jon Adkins, it was the first of four consecutive ninth-inning homers that allowed the Dodgers to tie a game they ultimately won. Los Angeles soon claimed the NL West flag, but despite Kent going bananas in the Division Series against the Mets (8-for-13 with a double and a homer), the Dodgers were nonetheless swept.

In March 2006, Kent signed an extension to cover the ’07 season with an option for ’08. At 39, he had one more big year with the stick left (.302/.375/.500, 21 home runs), though bad defense (-12 DRS) again offset much of his value, limiting him to 2.2 WAR. Late in the year, as the Dodgers’ playoff hopes slipped away, he made waves by criticizing the professionalism of some of the team’s young players, particularly Matt Kemp. Kent mulled retirement but returned for 2008, then hit just .280/.327/.418 with 12 homers. He needed late-August knee surgery before coming back for the playoffs — the Dodgers had won the NL West at 84–78 — but was limited to a bench role. In January of the following year, he announced his retirement.

…

Kent finished with respectable counting stats (2,461 hits and 377 homers) to accompany a hefty .290/.356/.500 line, particularly for a player who spent almost 90% of his career as a middle infielder. Among post-expansion players who spent most of their careers at the keystone, only Biggio (3,060), Roberto Alomar (2,724), Canó (2,639), and Morgan (2,517) accumulated more hits, though Jose Altuve (2,388) could surpass Kent next season. Canó’s 335 homers is the next closest total to Kent’s 377 (it’s 316 to 351 going by the strict split as second basemen), but where he once had a shot of claiming the record, a pair of PED suspensions — including a full-season one in 2021 — and a quick decline thereafter doomed that quest. Kent is also the runaway leader in RBIs among second basemen, with a 1,518 to 1,306 edge over Canó, and Biggio (1,175) a very distant third.

At a cutoff of 7,000 plate appearances for players who spent the majority of their careers at second base (of whom there are 47), Kent’s slugging percentage is second, and his batting average is in a virtual tie for 14th, but his on-base percentage is in a virtual tie for for 23rd. Adjusting for the offensive environment of his era, his 123 OPS+ ranks 10th within that group, though among post-expansion second basemen, it’s a more impressive fifth behind Morgan (132), Altuve (127), the unjustly bypassed Bobby Grich (125), and Canó (124). From that vantage, his candidacy for Cooperstown certainly has credibility, particularly because second base is generally a defense-first position where the offensive bar is lower.

But that bar is lower because in the middle infield, defense counts, and Kent not only didn’t add extra value with the leather relative to other post-expansion second basemen, he was in the red — and again, this is including those players’ time at all positions. By Baseball Reference’s combination of Total Zone and Defensive Runs Saved, he’s 42 runs below average for his career, which ranks 41st among those 47 longtime second basemen. Hall of Famers Morgan (-48) and Biggio (-100) both rank below him, albeit in considerably longer careers, and Altuve (-96) is below him as well. Forty-two runs below average isn’t a great place to be, although — to bring in a comparison to another candidate on this ballot — it’s nowhere near as bad as Sheffield’s -195 runs at third base and in the outfield, a figure so ridiculous I can only read it as hyperbole.

Coupling offense and defense and adjusting for ballpark and era, Kent’s total of 55.4 WAR ranks 19th among second basemen, respectable but nonetheless 14.1 WAR below the average enshrined second baseman and better than just seven of the 20 enshrined, none of them BBWAA selections. Even among those below the Hall average, he’s a mile behind Sandberg (68.0), Alomar (67.0), Biggio (65.5, even with inferior defense), and Chase Utley (64.6), whose careers overlapped with his. Only twice did he even have a WAR that cracked the league’s top 10.

That puts a dent in his peak WAR, which covers his best seven seasons; his 35.8 is tied for 28th. Kent is almost nine wins behind the average Hall of Fame second baseman and below 14 of the 20 enshrined because he had just three seasons of at least 5.0 WAR and two more seasons of at least 4.0. By comparison, Morgan had 10 seasons of at least 5.0 WAR, and Canó had seven; Alomar, Grich, Ian Kinsler, Dustin Pedroia, Sandberg, and Utley had six apiece. Even at the 4.0-WAR bar, 12 post-expansion second basemen had more big seasons.

In the end, Kent’s 45.6 JAWS is 11.4 points below the Hall standard for second basemen, 22nd all-time, below 12 of the 20 Hall of Famers. To return to the Sheffield comparison, since I mentioned his defensive metrics, his 49.5 JAWS is 6.5 points below the standard among right fielders, a substantial difference.

Kent’s JAWS gap is too wide to be made up for by the parts of his résumé that the system doesn’t capture, mainly the awards and the postseason performance (a characteristic .276/.340/.500 with nine homers in 189 plate appearances). Outside of his 2000 MVP award, his highest finish was sixth; he made just five All-Star teams and never won a Gold Glove. Kent scores 122 (“a good possibility”) on the Bill James Hall of Fame Monitor, but the average score for a Hall of Fame second baseman is 161.

When Kent debuted on the 2014 ballot, I noted that it was rare that my own system surprised me to such an extent, as the distance between him and the JAWS standard for second baseman was a case where the data ran counter to my gut feeling at the time. That said, it bears remembering that Kent played in such a high-offense era that 40 players with at least 5,000 plate appearances over the span of his career (1992–2008) surpassed his OPS+, in contrast to only six surpassing his RBI total, and it was the ribbies that made his reputation. Moreover, while he accumulated 9,537 plate appearances, he reached 600 in only six seasons due to injuries and the players’ strike, and only 500 in 11. Only some of that owes to being mishandled by the Mets; health is another factor.

As I suspected when he debuted, voters had a hard time finding room for Kent. Each of his first five years on the ballot featured at least 10 players who score above the JAWS average at their position, the maximum that an individual can vote for under the rules. The count eventually decreased:

Kent debuted with just 15.2% in 2014 and spent the next few years riding a very tiny rollercoaster, with a low of 14.0% in ’15 and a high of 18.1% in ’19. With ballot space less of an issue in 2020, he not only cleared 20% for the first time but jumped to 27.5% — a solid gain, but just the seventh-largest of that cycle. He reached 32.4% in 2021, then basically replicated that with 32.7% in ’22 before jumping to 46.5% in ’23. It took until his final cycle for him to post his first double-digit gain.

Still, that late surge is significant. Kent has the eighth-highest share of any player who has yet to gain entry; three of those players will be on this year’s BBWAA ballot (which will be announced next Monday) and could be elected soon, while Kent is one of four on this ballot:

Everybody else who has surpassed Maris’ share of the vote has eventually been elected via either the writers or a committee. Some, like Jack Morris (who peaked at 67.7%) and Lee Smith (50.6%) to call upon a couple of recent examples, had comparatively short waits while others, such as Gil Hodges (63.4%), Tony Oliva (47.3%), and Ron Santo (43.1%) had to wait decades; Hodges and Santo were elected posthumously. Relative to the seven players above him on the list, Kent is probably the most scandal-free, with no links to PEDs, illegal sign stealing, domestic violence, sexual harassment, or, uh, electoral self-sabotage. His motorcycle mishap is quaintly amusing by comparison, and his battles with Bonds and vocal advocacy for PED testing points in his favor, at least in some quarters. Post-career, aside from appearing on a season of the reality show Survivor, one of his most visible actions was a $531,000 donation to endow women’s sports scholarships at Cal, building on annual contributions he made throughout his playing days.

Kent appears to be following in the footsteps of two players who would have grazed that list several years ago, namely Alan Trammell and Fred McGriff. Trammell debuted with 15.7% on the 2002 ballot but didn’t surpass 20% until 2010, his ninth year of eligibility (this was back when candidates had 15 years on the writers’ ballot). He jumped to 36.8% in 2012, the year before Bonds and company started clogging the ballot, but slipped below 30% for a couple of years before finishing with 40.9% in 2016; he was elected by the Modern Baseball Era Committee two years later. McGriff debuted with 21.5% in 2010, and eight years later had only grown his support to 23.2%, having topped that mark just once, by less than a point, along the way. In 2019, his 10th and final year of BBWAA eligibility, he surged to 39.8%, and then was elected via the 2022 Contemporary Baseball ballot.

Between his PED-free reputation and a statistical case that’s more appealing in terms of home runs and RBIs than WAR and JAWS, Kent is the archetype of an Era Committee selection — a middle-infield McGriff (44.3 JAWS), perhaps with less charisma. I wouldn’t include him on my ballot if I had one, but then I never found room for him on my virtual or actual ballots either given how far he was below the second base standard. Still, I won’t be the least bit surprised if he’s elected, and if he’s the only one from this panel who gains entry this year.