The Contemporary Baseball Committee Tabs Kent While Moving Towards Burying Bonds, Clemens, and Sheffield

The following article is part of my ongoing look at the candidates on the 2026 Contemporary Baseball Era Committee ballot. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, use the navigation tool above. An introduction to JAWS can be found here.

On an eight-man Hall of Fame ballot featuring three players who were linked to performance-enhancing drugs, and four others who had shortened careers that ended by age 37 due to declines accelerated by injuries, it appeared from the outset of this cycle that Jeff Kent — a former MVP who holds the record for most home runs by a second baseman — had the easiest path to a plaque. Sure enough, when the votes from the 16-member Contemporary Baseball Era Committee were counted at the Winter Meetings on Sunday in Orlando, Kent was the lone candidate elected to the Hall. He’ll be inducted on July 26, 2026 in Cooperstown alongside any candidates elected by the BBWAA.

Meanwhile, in a repudiation that echoed the one that he received from the 2023 edition of this committee, Kent’s former Giants teammate and clubhouse nemesis Barry Bonds again received fewer than five votes. So did Roger Clemens (again) and first-timer Gary Sheffield, the two other candidates connected to PEDs, as well as the late Fernando Valenzuela. Based on a new rule introduced earlier this year, all four are ineligible for consideration on the 2029 Contemporary Baseball ballot, assuming the format goes unchanged; the earliest they can next appear is the 2032 ballot, to be voted on in December 2031. If any of those candidates again slips into the fewer-than-five zone, they will be ineligible for future consideration, period — an aspect of the rule that appears ripe for abuse given the heavy hand the Hall has demonstrated when choosing its committees.

Astute readers of my coverage will note that those four candidates were the ones from this ballot whom I endorsed for election. I argued that Valenzuela, who barely made a dent in two years on the BBWAA ballot (2003–04), should be considered primarily as a modern-day pioneer for serving as a beloved global ambassador and international icon who brought generations of Mexican American and Latino fans to baseball. That’s on top of a very good — but not Hall-caliber — playing career which included six All-Star selections and four top-five finishes in the Cy Young voting, highlighted by his incredible age-20 season, in which he won the NL Rookie of the Year and Cy Young awards, led the Dodgers to their first championship in 16 years, and emerged as the centerpiece of a cultural phenomenon, Fernandomania.

As for Bonds, Clemens, and Sheffield, this was an extension of the support I gave them during their tenures on the BBWAA ballot, first virtually and then once I joined the voting pool starting with the 2021 cycle. All three were among the very best of their day, with Bonds and Clemens perhaps the best position player and pitcher of all time — period. As for their connections to PEDs, I’ve long drawn a distinction between PED use that dated to the time before testing and penalties were in place, when a complete institutional failure prevented the league and the union from adopting a coherent drug policy. This isn’t a fringe view within the BBWAA electorate, either. Particularly once Bud Selig, who as commissioner presided over the game’s steroid mess, was elected to the Hall via the 2017 Today’s Game election, all three received support from a substantial majority of Hall voters, climbing to at least 63% by the end of their runs on the ballot (2022 for Bonds and Clemens, 2024 for Sheffield).

Judged by the outcome, this committee was far less forgiving on that front. The full results:

In a career spent with the Blue Jays (1992), Mets (1992–96), Cleveland (1996), Giants (1997–2002), Astros (2003–04), and Dodgers (2005–08), Kent made five All-Star teams, won the 2000 NL MVP award, and racked up 2,461 hits, 377 home runs (of which 351 were hit as a second baseman), and a .290/.356/.500 batting line. Hitting behind Bonds as he drew a bajillion walks per season, Kent drove in 100 or more runs eight out of nine seasons from 1997–2005, the last two after he’d left San Francisco. Among players with at least 7,000 plate appearances who spent at least half their time at second base, only Rogers Hornsby (.577) has a higher slugging percentage, though part of that owed to playing in a high-offense era. Among that same group, Hornsby and eight other players had a higher OPS+ than Kent’s 123. Between his modest on-base percentages and subpar defensive metrics, Kent’s 45.6 JAWS (55.4 career WAR, 35.8 peak WAR) ranks just 22nd at the position, not only below 12 of the 20 non-Negro Leagues Hall of Famers but also current BBWAA candidates Chase Utley and Dustin Pedroia; the still-active Jose Altuve; and Lou Whitaker, who despite being eligible for inclusion on this ballot was omitted, just as he was in 2023.

Whether by traditional or advanced stats, Kent’s case — not the least bit helped by a prickly public persona, and memories of his lying about a 2002 motorcycle mishap in which he was injured — never resonated with many BBWAA voters. He didn’t reach 20% until 2020, his seventh year on the ballot, and didn’t surpass 33% until 2023, when in his 10th and final year of eligibility he rallied to 46.5%. Given that 2023 Contemporary honoree Fred McGriff followed a similar pattern, with traditional stats that stood out more than advanced ones, and a 10th-year surge to 39.8% after nine years of falling short of 24%, it wasn’t hard to see this one coming. “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,” I concluded in Kent’s candidate profile.

With Hall of Fame chairman of the board Jane Forbes Clark serving as the non-voting chairman, the 16-member committee that considered the candidates — each allowed to vote for no more than three — consisted of the following:

• Hall of Famers Fergie Jenkins, Jim Kaat, Juan Marichal, Tony Pérez, Ozzie Smith, Alan Trammell, and Robin Yount
• Major league executives Mark Attanasio, Doug Melvin, Arte Moreno, Kim Ng, Tony Reagins and Terry Ryan
• Media members/historians Steve Hirdt, Tyler Kepner, and Jayson Stark

The Hall’s choices for this panel managed to sidestep the ongoing concerns regarding cronyism — a well-documented problem in committee elections not only in recent elections but those that date back more than half a century — that emerge when multiple voters are prominently connected to certain candidates. Yount did play with Sheffield at the outset of the latter’s career in Milwaukee, Pérez was a special assistant to the general manager during Sheffield’s years with the Marlins, and Kaat served as a broadcaster for the Yankees while Mattingly played, but the group wasn’t as saturated with connections in the manner of the 2023 Contemporary ballot, from which McGriff was elected by a panel that included two former teammates (Greg Maddux and Kenny Williams, with Chipper Jones scratched due to illness) and former Blue Jays executive Paul Beeston. Not to belabor the point, but the 2019 Today’s Game election of Harold Baines, as well as Lee Smith and the 2025 Contemporary Baseball election of Dave Parker, were similarly colored by a multitude of committee connections.

The committee skewed older, at least in terms of the Hall of Famers, with none having played into the 21st century. Smith and Trammell last played in 1996, with Yount (1993), Pérez (1986), Jenkins and Kaat (1983), and Marichal (1975) having hung up their spikes even earlier. Conventional wisdom suggested those players might favor the older candidates, against whom they were more likely to have competed under similar playing conditions — before the game’s big home run surge and the proliferation of PEDs — or otherwise crossed paths. But for Murphy (who played from 1976–93) and Mattingly (1982–95), the 19th time proved not to be the charm. While both were MVP-winning superstars at their peaks, they turned into ordinary players in their 30s due to injuries, with Mattingly bowing out after his age-34 season and Murphy after his age-37 season. Both fell short of major milestones and got little attention during 15-year runs on the BBWAA ballot, with Murphy topping 20% only in his second year (23.2% in 2000) and Mattingly debuting at 28.2% in 2001 but sinking below 20% for good by 2003, and into single digits by the end of his run. Both finished below the reporting threshold on the 2018 and 2020 Modern Baseball Era Committee ballots before showing signs of life on the 2023 one, with Mattingly receiving eight votes (50%) and Murphy six (37.5%). Based on the endless recycling of their candidacies, the Hall appears desperate for voters to elect these two wholesome icons despite their statistical shortcomings. Don’t be surprised when they reappear on the 2029 ballot, crowding out candidates overdue for a second look.

As for the notion that those older voters would take hard-line approaches with regards to PED-linked candidates, only Smith seemed to fit that bill in the manner of 2023 Contemporary members Jack Morris, Ryne Sandberg, and Frank Thomas, who were considered among the most outspoken on the subject. As The Athletic’s Andrew Baggarly noted, Smith said in a 2010 interview with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, “From my perspective, if a guy tested positive or admitted using, he automatically eliminated himself from being part of the Hall of Fame.” None of the three players in question did test positive, and when Sheffield told the BALCO grand jury that he briefly used the testosterone-based steroid known as “the cream” while training with Bonds, he said he was not told it contained an illegal steroid.

Baggarly additionally pointed to statements by Marichal, Kaat, and Yount in which they all publicly offered nuanced views when it came to PEDs, at least as they pertained to the period before testing was in place:

“I think that they have been unfair to guys who were never found guilty of anything,” Marichal told The Associated Press in 2013 while explaining why he believes Bonds, Clemens and Sammy Sosa belong in the Hall of Fame…

“The players have been tagged as the most culpable, and I would suggest that they are not culpable at all,” Kaat wrote in a column published in 2008. Kaat also said this to the New York Post in 2009: “Heck, there weren’t any rules in our day. We were trying to get the edge. Who’s to say we wouldn’t have done the same thing?”

Yount told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in 2010 that he empathized with players who felt they had to use steroids to keep up with the competition… “There’s a side of me that doesn’t really hold it against those guys when there was no testing.

“But I’ll tell you, I’d be the first one to jump all over somebody who was caught doing it now that testing is in place and they’re out there breaking records.”

Stark voted for Bonds and Clemens every year they were on the ballot, while Kepner, who per company policy was prohibited from voting during his run at the New York Times, understood the PED usage in the context of a complete institutional failure: “But players could have pushed for testing in the 1990s; management could have aggressively confronted the issue; reporters could have raised more suspicions. We all failed, and now we must decide what the mutated records really mean,” he wrote in 2012.

Views such as those at least suggested the PED-linked candidates wouldn’t again be so buried, but they were. As for Valenzuela, weighing his combination of contributions as a player, broadcaster, and global ambassador against the more familiar collections of accolades and milestones of the other candidates was always going to be a tall task. The election of Buck O’Neil on the 2022 Early Baseball ballot was facilitated by half a panel’s worth of historians and experts who recognized him for the breadth of his work as a pioneer in a career that extended beyond playing and managing in the Negro Leagues to include scouting and coaching in the integrated majors, co-founding the Negro Leagues Museum, and serving as a beloved ambassador for the game. Beyond that, it must be repeated that no election takes place in a vacuum; each candidate isn’t just being judged on his own merits but competing for precious ballot space. Even very good candidates can be left with the short straw.

One of the most surprising results was the strong showing of Delgado, the rare candidate to gain placement on an Era Committee ballot after going one-and-done on a BBWAA one. A socially conscious athlete who dared to speak out on issues as weighty as the Iraq War and the United States Navy’s use of the Puerto Rican island of Vieques as a bomb-testing site, Delgado clubbed 473 homers in his career but never led his league, and made just two All-Star teams. As with McGriff, the notion that some of the sluggers who overshadowed him were chemically enhanced must have resonated with a sizable portion of the electorate.

Even with five of this ballot’s eight candidates ruled out for 2029, the 11-member BBWAA Historical Overview Committee that creates the next slate faces a challenge, as the list of intriguing candidates is only growing. Setting aside the PED-linked Manny Ramirez, who with two positive tests isn’t going to leapfrog Bonds et al. into Cooperstown, candidates who could fill those vacancies in 2029 include Whitaker and Dwight Evans, both frozen out after solid showings on the 2020 Modern Baseball ballot, plus Jim Edmonds, Keith Hernandez, Kenny Lofton, Johan Santana, and Omar Vizquel, none of whom has appeared on an Era Committee ballot before.

With its reputation for cronyism and for choosing candidates who don’t measure up to their BBWAA-elected brethren, the Era Committees, like the Veterans Committees before them, have often invited criticism and even cynicism. Perhaps the joke is on any of us who looked at this slate and dared to imagine that this time it could be different, that voters could break free of past patterns by finding nuance within the Steroid Era, or even break new ground by recognizing a modern-day pioneer. In the end, the only consensus reached was on the ballot’s safest pick. Welcome to the byzantine world of Cooperstown, Jeff Kent.