89 Giants made it to the Series with basically no names at all.

Agreed, but they're only the second champion we've been able to come up with i think, besides the Angels.

Did you see my posts about the Cubs (#33) and Royals (#3)? Sorry, I know I’ve posted a lot in this thread.

OH, right you are, my mindset going in was teams from the past, not teams with current players but those are good.

I thought of them too, but Goose Gossage was on the team for most of the season (though he left before the post season).

Oops. I didn't remember that, only his fellow 73 Topps rookie Rick Reuschel.

If you don't like Molina's chances the 2011 Cardinals maybe? Am I missing someone there, I don't think Wainwright makes it.

Pujols was on the 2011 Cardinals

Kent has a WAR a lot lower than Utley, Grich and Whitaker. Thrre are a number of second baseman who it's hard to see how one gets in but others don't.

Oral Hershiser has 200 wins and 56 WAR, a Cy Young and 3 other top 4 finishes. I am not saying he will make it, but Jim Kaat just made it with 50.5 WAR and finished 4th in the Cy Young voting once.

Ah, I was off in my mind by a year on his departure.

Jeff Kent
 

If Jeff Kent had put up the bulk of his traditional stats as a 2nd Baseman in almost any other period of baseball history other then the late 90's to mid 2000's (and playing in the shadow/infamy of Bonds), he likely would have sailed in to the Hall a long time ago.

A lot of the players around him dampened his analytical numbers (and let's be honest, that's what we go by nowadays), with all of the monster offensive seasons going on around the rest of the league during that time period, he was killed by the grading curve of the era.

If Kent put up the same stats as a 2nd baseman, that he put up in 1997 to 2007, from 1977 to 1987 instead, he'd probably have a career WAR number in the range of Joe Morgan.

Lastly, I don't recall Kent ever being implicated in PEDS, but I'm sure it's hard for a lot of voters to shake a couple thoughts:

#1. He was Bonds team-mate for so long (even if they hated each other), along with team-mates with lots of other suspected PEDs cheats on other teams...and

#2. All his best seasons were essentially post prime seasons for most other players in the league (age 30 to 39).

It might just be guilt by association, but it does create certain doubts.

How did the players around him dampen his analytical numbers?

Kent has some surface level totals that might impress you if you only looked at his raw numbers for home runs but baseball Reference has him ranked as the 21st best second baseman, with Ian Kinsler ranked just above him.

All of his advanced stats are below the average 2B Hall of Famer.

But isn't the point of the analytics that Kent likely would NOT have put up those same numbers in a different era?

Maybe I'm not being clear enough. I'm not posing an argument for why Jeff Kent SHOULD be in the HOF, but rather, why he is not...regardless of my personal beliefs.

That Giants team reminds me of the 1986 Mets. Only HOF: Gary Carter.

The more other players have monster seasons around you (whether they are on PEDS or not), the less valuable your semi-monster season is going to be, from a replacement value perspective.

Again, I'm not arguing for him to be in the HOF, but when you say "surface level"...do you mean HR's, RBI's, Runs, Extra Base Hits, OBP, etc., etc., etc....

Baseball Reference has him ranked based on WAR alone.

However, Jeff Kent ranks 43rd All-Time in extra base hits...(a pretty good catch-all for your quality of batted balls to me). The only regular 2nd basemen ahead of him are Rogers Hornsby and Craig Biggio.

He's 54th All-Time in RBI's. Hornsby and Lajoie are the only regular 2nd basemen ahead of him in this category.

His surface level lifetime BA, Slugging%, OBP, OPS, and even OPS+ are all pretty impressive for a 2nd baseman IMO.

He was a competent but not spectacular 2nd baseman defensively. This does not help his overall WAR. He was thought of highly enough for multiple teams to keep trotting him out there though. Even supplanting an aging Biggio in Houston near the end of his own career.

I wasn't arguing otherwise. Just hypothesizing what his raw stats might have translated to in a slightly different era.

Isn't your WAR based on your performance alone? I'm not understanding how another player having a good year would negatively affect your own WAR.

Many of WAR’s components are contextual - it won’t value the same stat line the same way in 1927, 1967, and 2007. Because much of it is contextual to the league when you have lots of guys posting monster numbers you don’t necessarily get monster WAR. Hence why there aren’t 25 guys from c. 2000 with 100 WAR.

It's not just "another" player. It's all the other players in that particular season. All your immediate contemporaries. It's basically being judged on a curve, according to everybody else's performance. Stats were generally inflated across much of the league during most of his best years, therefore his stats don't look quite as impressive in the context of his times, therefore he gets dinged on his overall WIN Shares by the algorithm.

If Jeff Kent puts up the same stat line as a 2nd baseman in 1978 as he did in 1998, I'd guess he'd have accumulated at least 3 more Win Shares that season.

I'm not saying he would have, I'm saying "if he did".

In the end, I guess it doesn't really mean anything. Just more chatter in the year 2023. ;)

I would have saved a lot of time, if I had figured out how to say what you had just said. :D:D

Before Larkin was inexplicably let into the HOF, my answer would have been the 1990 Reds.

I think a good argument can still be made that the Reds did not have a legit HOF caliber player that year and still won it all.

I think the same could be said about the 1940 Reds, whose only Hall of Famer was Ernie Lombardi, who is probably the weakest catcher in the HOF besides Rick Ferrell.

I think Larkin, a 12x all-star, 9x silver slugger, and former MVP is HOF material, myself. Larkin also hit .353 in the World Series in their sweep of the A's.

Fred McGriff was probably impacted by this as well since his 493 home runs didn't seem as impressive when guys are getting to 600 and 700.

Why does Lombardi get no love? Two batting titles as a catcher is pretty impressive.

Fred McGriff really kind of gets screwed by this and the steroid guys. The Hall standard the the steroid guys can't make it but the writers don't want to put in guys at offensive positions who didn't post numbers as gaudy as the steroid guys makes for an extremely high standard different from previous eras. Was glad to see the committee put him in.

Are you really saying Larkin is not HOF quality? In addition to the stats already listed, he is the best SS of the 1990s, has a peak performance as good as Jeter, was a 20/20 member in 1991, and became the first 30/30 SS in 1996. Barry Larkin (like Ripken Jr, and Yount) are the bridge generation from defense first SS to dual threat shortstops.

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SS's in the Hall better than Larkin:
Appling
Banks
Boudreau
Cronin
Davis
Jeter
Ripken
Vaughn
Wagner
Yount

SS's in the Hall I'm undecided if are better than Larkin:
Wallace


SS's in the Hall worse than Larkin:
Aparicio
Bancroft
Jackson
Maranville
Reese
Rizzuto
Sewell
Smith (unpopular opinion)
Tinker
Trammell


I have a hard time seeing how Larkin is 1) not a deserving HOF SS, and 2) so ill-deserved that his election is inexplicable. He's better than about 50% of the SS's in. He's certainly better than the bottom 5.

Any reasonable argument here, or just hot take bias?

I assume you are looking at WAR. But I read some years ago that JAWS has Jeter and Larkin neck-and-neck, the difference being .5 pts.

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I didn't use WAR, I used my own judgement. WAR and JAWS values the two of them about the same, with a huge gap in bat in favor of Jeter and a huge gap in glove in favor of Larkin.

I still think the answer is the 2005 White Sox. Frank Thomas played 34 games but got hurt early and didn't appear in the postseason at all.

I know they got knocked out of the ALDS, but it's hard to leave the 2002 Oakland A's out for me. They should have won it all.

Someone mentioned the 2002 Angels. I'd say that if there's such as thing as a Hall of Fame closer, Francisco Rodríguez would at least have to be in the conversation. He's 4th all time in saves.