The Cardinals missed the playoffs for the third straight season in 2018, and their bullpen was a major reason why. The unit ranked among the NL’s worst by multiple measures, despite the team’s substantial investment in the ever-volatile reliever free agent market. With little choice but to dive back in, the team has made an even more substantial investment, signing 33-year-old lefty Andrew Miller to a two-year, $25 million deal.

The full details, via The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal:

Both the $12.5 million average annual value and $25 million total are slightly above the two-year, $22 million estimates from Kiley McDaniel and our Top 50 Free Agents crowdsourcing project. From among the handful of reliever deals signed thus far this winter, Miller’s AAV surpasses Jeurys Familia‘s $10 million AAV deal with the Mets. That one is for three years, so it remains the largest, with Miller tied for second in total value with Joe Kelly’s $25 million, three-year deal with the Dodgers. If Miller falls short of 110 appearances — a level he reached in any pair of consecutive seasons from 2013-2017 — across 2019-2020, then his 2021 vesting option becomes a club option with the $2.5 million buyout. According to Yahoo Sports’ Jeff Passan, Miller had “a number of two-year offers in hand,” but the Cardinals evidently provided enough bells and whistles — not to mention the chance to win — for their offer to stand out.

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The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2019 Hall of Fame ballot. Originally written for the 2016 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, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Billy Wagner was the ultimate underdog. Undersized and from both a broken home and an impoverished rural background, he channeled his frustrations into throwing incredibly hard — with his left hand, despite being a natural righty, for he broke his right arm twice as a child. Scouts overlooked him because he wasn’t anywhere close to six feet tall, but they couldn’t disregard his dominance of collegiate hitters using a mid-90s fastball. The Astros made him a first-round pick, and once he was converted to a relief role, his velocity went even higher.

Thanks to outstanding lower-body strength, coordination, and extraordinary range of motion, the 5-foot-10 Wagner was able to reach 100 mph with consistency — 159 times in 2003, according to The Bill James Handbook. Using a pitch learned from teammate (and 2018 ballot-mate) Brad Lidge, he kept blowing the ball by hitters into his late 30s to such an extent that he owns the record for the highest strikeout rate of any pitcher with at least 800 innings. He was still dominant when he walked away from the game following the 2010 season, fresh off posting a career-best ERA.

Lacking the longevity of fellow 2016 Hall of Fame ballot newcomer Trevor Hoffman, Wagner never set any saves records or even led his league once, and his innings total is well below those of every enshrined reliever. Hoffman’s status as the former all-time saves leader helped him get elected in 2018, but Wagner, who created similar value in his career, has major hurdles to surmount after receiving a high of 11.1% in three years on the ballot. Nonetheless, his advantages over Hoffman — and virtually every other reliever in history when it comes to rate stats — provide a compelling reason to study his career more closely. Given how far he’s come, who wants to bet against Billy Wags?

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The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2019 Hall of Fame ballot. It is based on earlier work done for SI.com. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Roy Oswalt spent a decade as one of the National League’s top pitchers before injuries took their toll. Though listed as just six feet tall and 180 pounds — size that caused him to be overlooked by scouts during his amateur days — he spent nearly a decade as a staple of the Astros’ rotation and a perennial Cy Young contender. Relying primarily on a mid-90s fastball/curve combination with an almost 20 mph differential, he never took home an award, or won a championship, but he played a key part on five postseason-bound teams in Houston and Philadelphia.

Had Oswalt enjoyed better luck in the health department, his career probably would have been the subject of spirited debate on, say, the 2024 Hall of Fame ballot. Alas, lower back woes caused by a pair of degenerative discs curtailed Oswalt’s major league career. His last effective season was in 2011, his age-33 season, and he threw his last pitch one month past his 36th birthday. His total of 2,245.1 innings is fewer than those of all but one Hall of Fame starter — and no, it’s not Sandy Koufax, it’s Dizzy Dean. While he may not truly be a viable candidate, he’s on a separate tier from the one-and-dones whom I’ll cover in brief later in this series.

Born in Kosciusko, Mississippi on August 29, 1977, Oswalt grew up in nearby Weir, a tiny town with a population of just 550. His father Billy Joe, a logger and rec league softball player, saw his son excel in Little League and eventually petitioned the school board to start up a baseball program at his high school, Weir Attendance Center; Billy Joe volunteered to clear pine trees for a ball field using his own equipment. Looking to get every advantage he could out of his small stature, the younger Oswalt came up with an unorthodox delivery. From a 2006 profile for ESPN Magazine by Buster Olney:

Because he was so slightly built, he had to use everything he had to propel the baseball-arm, legs, soul.

Young Roy had seen enough to know that most pitchers start their delivery with one foot parallel to the rubber. This made no sense to him. He was trying to drive himself toward the batter, like a sprinter breaking out of the blocks. Sprinters, he thought, don’t plant their feet parallel to the starting line; their feet are pointed forward.

So that’s how Oswalt designed his pitching mechanics, with his back foot, his right foot, angled slightly forward. He raises his left foot, pauses slightly, then hurls his body at the batter, more like a javelin-tosser than a sprinter in the end. Nobody else in the majors uses mechanics like these, and no pitching coach would teach them unless he was considering a change of profession. But batters have confessed that Oswalt’s motion can be unnerving, this wiry six footer leaping at them like a mugger.

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The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2019 Hall of Fame ballot. Originally written for the 2013 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, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule, and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

If Roger Clemens has a reasonable claim as the greatest pitcher of all time, then the same goes for Barry Bonds as the greatest position player. Babe Ruth played in a time before integration, and Ted Williams bridged the pre- and post-integration eras, but while both were dominant at the plate, neither was much to write home about on the base paths or in the field. Bonds’ godfather, Willie Mays, was a big plus in both of those areas, but he didn’t dominate opposing pitchers to the same extent. Bonds used his blend of speed, power, and surgical precision in the strike zone to outdo them all. He set the single-season home run record with 73 in 2001 and the all-time home run record with 762, reached base more often than any player this side of Pete Rose, and won a record seven MVP awards along the way.

Despite his claim to greatness, Bonds may have inspired more fear and loathing than any ballplayer in modern history. Fear because opposing pitchers and managers simply refused to engage him at his peak, intentionally walking him a record 688 times — once with the bases loaded — and giving him a free pass a total of 2,558 times, also a record. Loathing because even as a young player, he rubbed teammates and media the wrong way and approached the game with a chip on his shoulder because of the way his father, three-time All-Star Bobby Bonds, had been driven from the game due to alcoholism.

As he aged, media and fans turned against Bonds once evidence — most of it illegally leaked to the press by anonymous sources — mounted that he had used performance-enhancing drugs during the latter part of his career. With his name in the headlines more regarding his legal situation than his on-field exploits, his pursuit and eclipse of Hank Aaron’s 33-year-old home run record turned into a joyless drag, and he disappeared from the majors soon after breaking the record in 2007 despite ranking among the game’s most dangerous hitters even at age 43. Not until 2014 did he even debut as a spring training guest instructor for the Giants. The reversal of his felony obstruction of justice conviction in April 2015 freed him of legal hassles, and he spent the 2016 season as the Marlins’ hitting coach, though he was dismissed at season’s end.

Bonds is hardly alone among Hall of Fame candidates with links to PEDs. As with Clemens, the support he has received during his first six election cycles has been far short of unanimous, but significantly stronger than the showings of Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, and Rafael Palmeiro, either in their ballot debuts or since. Debuting at 36.2% in 2013, Bonds spun his wheels for two years before climbing to 44.3% in 2016 and 53.8% in 2017 thanks to a confluence of factors. In the wake of both Bonds and Clemens crossing the historically significant 50% threshold, the Hall — which in 2014 unilaterally truncated candidacies from 15 years to 10 so as to curtail debate over the PED-linked ones — made its strongest statement yet that it would like to avoid honoring them in the form of a plea to voters from vice chairman Joe Morgan not to honor players connected to steroids. The letter was not well received by voters, but Bonds gained just 2.6 percentage points. Like Clemens, he needs to recapture his momentum to have a shot at reaching 75% by the time his eligibility runs out in 2022.

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The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2019 Hall of Fame ballot. Originally written for the 2013 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, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule, and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Roger Clemens has a reasonable claim as the greatest pitcher of all time. Cy Young, Christy Mathewson, Walter Johnson, and Grover Cleveland Alexander spent all or most of their careers in the dead-ball era, before the home run was a real threat, and pitched while the color line was still in effect, barring some of the game’s most talented players from participating. Sandy Koufax and Tom Seaver pitched when scoring levels were much lower and pitchers held a greater advantage. Koufax and 2015 inductees Randy Johnson and Pedro Martinez didn’t sustain their greatness for nearly as long. Greg Maddux didn’t dominate hitters to nearly the same extent.

Clemens, meanwhile, spent 24 years in the majors and racked up a record seven Cy Young awards, not to mention an MVP award. He won 354 games, led his leagues in the Triple Crown categories (wins, strikeouts and ERA) a total of 16 times, and helped his teams to six pennants and a pair of world championships.

Alas, whatever claim “The Rocket” may have on such an exalted title is clouded by suspicions that he used performance-enhancing drugs. When those suspicions came to light in the Mitchell Report in 2007, Clemens took the otherwise unprecedented step of challenging the findings during a Congressional hearing, but nearly painted himself into a legal corner; he was subject to a high-profile trial for six counts of perjury, obstruction of justice, and making false statements to Congress. After a mistrial in 2011, he was acquitted on all counts the following year. But despite the verdicts, the specter of PEDs won’t leave Clemens’ case anytime soon, even given that in March 2015, he settled the defamation lawsuit filed by former personal trainer Brian McNamee for an unspecified amount.

Amid the ongoing Hall of Fame-related debates over hitters connected to PEDs — most prominently Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, and Sammy Sosa — it’s worth remembering that the chemical arms race involved pitchers as well, leveling the playing field a lot more than some critics of the aforementioned sluggers would admit. The voters certainly haven’t forgotten that when it comes to Clemens, whose share of the vote has approximated that of Bonds. Clemens debuted with 37.6% of the vote in 2013 and only in 2016 began making significant headway, climbing to 45.2% thanks largely to the Hall’s purge of voters more than 10 years removed from covering the game. Like Bonds, he surged above 50% — a historically significant marker towards future election — in 2017, benefiting from voters rethinking their positions in the wake of the election of Bud Selig. The former commissioner’s roles in the late-1980s collusion scandal and in presiding over the proliferation of PEDs within the game dwarf the impact of individual PED users and call into question the so-called “character clause.”

Clemens’ march towards Cooperstown stalled somewhat last year even as he climbed 3.2 percentage points to 57.3%. Whether or not the open letter from Hall of Fame Vice Chairman Joe Morgan pleading to voters not to honor players connected to steroids had an impact, the end result was another year run off the clock. He still has a shot at reaching 75% before his eligibility runs out in 2022, but he needs to regain momentum.

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Earlier this month, Mets general manager Brodie Van Wagenen made the first big splash of his tenure with a blockbuster trade geared towards contending in 2019, bringing Robinson Cano and Edwin Diaz from Seattle in exchange for two former first-round picks and some expensive ballast. After considering a variety of trade scenarios involving Marlins catcher J.T. Realmuto, Van Wagenen went a more conservative route to fill one of the team’s glaring needs, signing free agent Wilson Ramos to a two-year, $19 million deal with a club option for 2021. It’s an appropriate bit of restraint that nonetheless provides a solid upgrade.

The 31-year-old Ramos split his 2018 season between the Rays (78 games) and Phillies (33 games), hitting .306/.358/.487 with 15 homers. His 131 wRC+ was tops among catchers, and his 2.4 WAR fifth. He earned All-Star honors for the second time in three seasons but missed the game itself due to a left hamstring strain that sidelined him for a month. During his time on the disabled list, he was traded to Philadelphia for a player to be named later or cash on July 31.

The big knock on Ramos is that he’s had a hard time staying healthy during his nine-year major league career. The 2015 and 2016 seasons are the only ones in the past seven years in which he’s avoided the DL. He’s had three surgeries (two in 2012, one in 2017) to repair the meniscus and ACL in his right knee, served three stints for hamstring strains (2013 and 2014 being the others), and suffered a foul tip-induced fractured hamate that required surgery in his left wrist in 2014. He’s averaged just 92 games a year since arriving for good in the majors in 2011.

The hamate fracture was a fluke injury, but the lower-body woes are of a concern for a catcher who lists at 245 pounds. In our Top 50 Free Agents rankings, Ramos was 17th, nine spots lower than fellow free agent catcher Yasmani Grandal, in part due to his size and durability issues. While he’s been the slightly better hitter of the pair over the past three seasons, with a 120 wRC+ to Grandal’s 116, he’s made 296 fewer plate appearances in that span, including 102 fewer in 2018. He’s also 15 months older, and nowhere near Grandal’s class as a defender. Baseball Prospectus’ pitch framing-inclusive metrics have Ramos 6.1 runs above average over the past three seasons but slightly in the red in both 2017 and 2018. By comparison, Grandal was 79 runs above average in that three-year span, including an MLB-best 15.7 above average in the framing department in 2018; by DRS, the three-year, framing-inclusive tally is -11 runs for Ramos, 39 for Grandal.

Thus you can understand why teams might prefer Grandal, though his postseason pitch-blocking woes might hurt the perception of him. Also working against Grandal is his attachment to a rejected qualifying offer for the Dodgers. Had the Mets signed him, they would have forfeited their second 2019 draft pick and $500,000 of international pool money.

The surprise is in Ramos’ price tag. The New York Times‘ James Wagner reported that Ramos will make $8.25 million in 2019 and $9.25 million in 2020. He’s got a $10 million club option for 2021, with a $1.5 million buyout for a total guarantee of $19 million. The salary is just over half of the $36 million (spread over three years) that both Kiley McDaniel and our crowdsource project estimated he would receive when we made up our free agent list. By comparison, the estimates for Grandal range from $39 million to $45 million for three years.

As for Realmuto, the Mets were reportedly very interested in him, but balked at the possibility of including major league talent such as Michael Conforto, Brandon Nimmo, and/or Amed Rosario in exchange — to say nothing of a rumored three-way trade involving the Yankees that would also have required dealing Noah Syndergaard.

Now that they have Ramos, the key for the Mets is finding another catcher with whom to pair him. Between Kevin Plawecki, Devin Mesoraco, Tomas Nido, Jose Lobaton and Travis d’Arnaud, the team got just an 82 wRC+ offensive showing (.208/.297/.355) from its catchers in 2018, and a total of 0.7 WAR by our measures (0.8 via Baseball-Reference, and 1.5 WARP via Baseball Prospectus). Mesoraco and Lobaton are both free agents, while the going-on-30-year-old d’Arnaud, the best defender of the bunch (41.8 FRAA career, 11.4 FRAA in 2017) is coming off April 2018 Tommy John surgery and has a track record for health that would make Ramos blanch.

All told, our Depth Charts projections suggest that the signing of Ramos eyeballs as about a one-win upgrade over a Plawecki/d’Arnaud pairing. Given that the Mets now project as an 86-win team, this is exactly the type of move they should be making, one that significantly increases their odds of securing a playoff spot without compromising their longer-term resources. When was the last time anybody could say that about a move that the Mets made?

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2019 Hall of Fame ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

As much as Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada, Mariano Rivera, and Bernie Williams, Andy Pettitte was a pillar of the Joe Torre-era Yankees dynasty. The tall Texan lefty played such a vital role on 13 pinstriped playoff teams and seven pennant winners — plus another trip to the World Series during his three-year run Houston — that he holds several major postseason records. In fact, no pitcher ever started more potential series clinchers, both in the World Series and the postseason as a whole.

For as important as Pettitte was to the “Core Four” (Williams always gets the short end of the stick on that one) that anchored five championships from 1996 to 2009, he seldom made a case as one of the game’s top pitchers. High win totals driven by excellent offensive support helped him finish in the top five of his leagues’ Cy Young voting four times, but only three times did he place among the top 10 in ERA or WAR, and he never ranked higher than sixth in strikeouts. He made just three All-Star teams.

Indeed, Pettitte was more plow horse than racehorse. A sinker- and cutter-driven groundballer whose pickoff move was legendary, he was a championship-level innings-eater, a grinder (his word) rather than a dominator, a pitcher whose strong work ethic, mental preparation, and focus — visually exemplified by his peering in for the sign from the catcher with eyes barely visible underneath the brim of his cap — compensated for his lack of dazzling stuff. Ten times he made at least 32 starts, a mark that’s tied for seventh in the post-1994 strike era. His total of 10 200-inning seasons is tied for fourth in that same span, and his 12 seasons of qualifying for the ERA title with an ERA+ of 100 or better is tied for second. He had his ups and downs in the postseason, but only once during his 18-year career (2004, when he underwent season-ending elbow surgery) was he unavailable to pitch once his team made the playoffs.

On a ballot with two multi-Cy Young winners (Roger Clemens and Roy Halladay) as well as two other starters (Mike Mussina and Curt Schilling) who were better at preventing runs and racking up strikeouts — and also had plenty of postseason success — Pettitte would appear to be a long shot for Cooperstown. And that’s before factoring in his 2007 inclusion in the Mitchell Report for having used human growth hormone to recover from an elbow injury. Thanks to his championship rings and his high win total, he’ll probably receive enough support to persist on the ballot nonetheless.

About those wins: Regular readers know that I generally avoid dwelling upon pitcher win totals, because in this increasingly specialized era, they owe as much to adequate offensive, defensive, and bullpen support as they do to a pitcher’s own performance. While one needn’t know how many wins Pettitte amassed in a season or a career to appreciate his true value, those totals have affected the popular perception of his career.

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The Padres have been connected to big names like J.T. Realmuto, Noah Syndergaard, Nathan Eovaldi and even Bryce Harper, all of which suggests that after three straight seasons of 90-some losses and eight straight with records below .500, they’re ready to get out of the business of losing. So far, no dice on the marquee additions, and last winter’s big Eric Hosmer contract isn’t sitting so well, but on Friday, they did score something of a bargain, signing second baseman Ian Kinsler to two-year deal worth $8 million, with a club option of unspecified value also included, according to The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal. The implication is that Kinsler’s days as an everyday player are numbered, and that he’s ready instead for that sage veteran mentor/utility role, à la Chase Utley with the Dodgers.

(Or maybe he just wants to knock back some quality craft beers and fish tacos. San Diego is great for that, but perhaps I’m just projecting.)

The 36-year-old Kinsler was last seen making a mess of things in the World Series, going 1-for-10 for the Red Sox and most notably committing base running and fielding gaffes in the epic, 18-inning Game 3. As pinch-runner for J.D. Martinez, he was thrown out at home plate on the back end of an inning-ending double play in the 10th, and then, after the Red Sox had taken the lead in the top of the 13th, he threw away a Yasiel Puig grounder that allowed the tying run to score. Not great. The Red Sox lost that game, and while they won the Series, Kinsler didn’t make another appearance.

Aside from winning that elusive championship ring, it really wasn’t a season to write home about for Kinsler. After being traded from the Tigers to the Angels last December 13 (for minor leaguers Wilkel Hernandez and Troy Montgomery), he scuffled, and once the Angels fell out of contention, he was dealt again on July 30, this time to Boston, in exchange for relievers Ty Buttrey and Williams Jerez. He had started the year so slowly that in June I explored whether he was cooked, though his bat perked up long enough for him to be of interest to a Dustin Pedroia-less Boston team that featured Eduardo Nunez and Brock Holt scraping by with replacement-level production. It must have been contagious, because Kinsler went from hitting .239/.304/.406 (97 wRC+) with 2.2 WAR in 391 PA with the Halos to .242/.294/.311 (62 wRC+) with 0.0 WAR in 143 PA with the Sox. The saving grace of his season was his defense; he was 9.4 runs above average according to UZR, 10 above average via DRS, and over the past two years, he’s been +17.5 and +16 by those two metrics while batting just .238/.308/.397 for a 90 wRC+ but 4.9 WAR. That’s still an above-average player, if not a terribly sexy one.

The bat is worrisome, though. According to Baseball Savant, Kinsler’s 85.3 mph average exit velocity ranked in the bottom 8% of the league, and his xwOBACON (expected wOBA on contact) plummeted from .350 in 2017 to .303 in 2018. As I noted in June, his downturn owes largely to two major problems: first, he’s struggled against four-seam fastballs, particularly ones 95 mph or higher; and second, he’s stopped hitting lefties. Despite a career 135 wRC+ against heaters as a group, he’s been at 88 and 94 over the past two seasons, and as for the high-velo stuff, here’s an updated version of a table I made for the previous article:

The trend isn’t uniform, but it isn’t good. Neither is hitting .191/.236/.250 for a 33 wRC+ in 144 PA against lefties, especially when you’re a righty. That aspect of his performance may well have been a fluke, the flip side of his .278/.357/.539 (135 wRC+) line against southpaws in 129 PA in 2017. For his career, he has a fairly typical split (127 wRC+ against RHP, 101 against LHP), but over the two-year period, his 81 wRC+ against lefties is in the 24th percentile among righty swingers, which is worrisome.

Here’s the thing, though: the Padres got less than nothing out of their second basemen in 2018. Jose Pirela, Carlos Asuaje, Cory Spangenberg and three other guys combined for a 78 wRC+ and -0.1 WAR at the spot. Spangenberg was released in November, and Asuaje was just claimed off waivers by the Rangers, so they’re out of the picture. Luis Urias, who hit .208/.264/.354 in 53 PA for the Pad squad, is the future, a 55 FV prospect who is currently number three on the Padres list (behind shortstop Fernando Tatis Jr and lefty MacKenzie Gore) and number 21 overall. He’s just 21 years old, though, and while MLB.com’s A.J. Cassavell recently reported that he’s expected to open the season at the keystone, it would surprise nobody if he were to start the year back in Triple-A. Since Tatis is just 19 and hasn’t played above Double-A (and has just 102 games there overall), there’s talk that Urias could even start the year at shortstop, a position he’s continued to spot-start at as he’s moved up the ladder.

All of which is to say that Kinsler, a 13-year veteran with 47.7 WAR, four All-Star appearances, and a pair of Gold Gloves to his name, could be Urias’ double play partner, or his placeholder, or his backup/mentor, depending upon how things unfold. He might even get a chance to play third base in a utility role, if and when both Tatis and Urias are in the bigs. Maybe he’ll become such a natural in this capacity that the Padres will view him as a surrogate dad, as some of the Dodgers did with Utley. The Padres’ padre? Why not?

Considering that Kinsler was projected to produce 1.8 WAR in 490 PA — though now, it would be a surprise if he got that much playing time — and that in our free agent preview the estimates for his salary ran for $6-8 million for a single season, two years and $8 million seems quite reasonable for San Diego. His presence probably won’t change the course of the Padres’ 2019 season, but if he helps Urias adapt to the majors and fulfill his potential, it’s a small price to pay.

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2019 Hall of Fame 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, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule, and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

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 who 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 resumé 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 with 351. That’s 74 more than Ryne Sandberg, 85 more than Joe Morgan, and 86 more than Rogers Hornsby — all Hall of Famers, and in Hornsby’s case, one from before the expansion era (note that I’m not counting homers hit while playing other positions). Among players with at least 7,000 plate appearances in their career 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.

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. Taking the measure of all facets of his game, he appears to have a weaker case with regards to advanced statistics than to traditional ones. On a crowded ballot chockfull of candidates with stronger cases on both fronts, he has struggled to gain support, topping out at 16.7% in 2017, his fourth year on the ballot.

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