Jeff Kent has been elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens may be running out of chances to ever join him.
The Contemporary Baseball Era committee voted on Sunday to induct Kent, one of the best offensive second basemen in history, who won an MVP award during a late-career peak with the San Francisco Giants in the early 2000s. Fourteen of the 16 committee members voted in favor of Kent.
Fewer than five voted for either Bonds or Clemens.
Due to a new rule implemented this year, any player who receives less than five votes on an Era Committee ballot will be ineligible for consideration when the ballot is next considered in three years. Furthermore, a player who receives less than five votes on multiple ballots will be ineligible for all future ballots (vote totals before this year do not count toward future eligibility).
That means Bonds and Clemens will not be up for consideration again until 2031, and if they get fewer than five votes then, they will be ineligible for future consideration.
Kent never received as much as 50 percent of the vote on the BBWAA ballot but had been trending upward when he was last eligible in 2023 (he got 46.5 percent of the vote that year). This was Kent’s first time being eligible for an Era Committee ballot.
A good but unspectacular player in the first part of his career, Kent went to the Giants in 1997 and had a breakout season at age 29. He made his first All-Star Game at 31 and won the MVP award at 32 when he produced a career-best 7.4 fWAR and 1.021 OPS. After hitting 107 home runs in his 20s, Kent hit 258 in his 30s, going to All-Star Games as a member of the Giants, Houston Astros and Los Angeles Dodgers.
Kent’s induction with 56 fWAR and 45.6 JAWS could open the door to other second basemen — among them: Chase Utley, Lou Whitaker, Willie Randolph and Dustin Pedroia — who have similar if not better numbers, but as a purely offensive second baseman, Kent stands out. He has the most home runs ever at the position and his OPS+ is higher than Hall of Famers Roberto Alomar, Craig Biggio and Ryne Sandberg.
Kent was the only player who got the required 75 percent of the Era Committee’s support. Carlos Delgado got the second-most votes with nine, while Don Mattingly and Dale Murphy got six votes apiece. Bonds, Clemens, Gary Sheffield and Fernando Valenzuela each received less than five votes, continuing a trend that does not look good for Bonds and Clemens.
Statistically in the upper echelon of all-time greats but tainted by suspicions of performance-enhancing drugs, both Bonds and Clemens last appeared on the BBWAA ballot in 2022 when Bonds got 66 percent of the vote and Clemens got 65.2 percent. Each came roughly 40 votes shy of election and were almost immediately up for reconsideration 11 months later when they were put on the 2022 Contemporary Era ballot, where they got even less support.
The Hall of Fame does not announce exact vote totals for players who get less than 25 percent of support from the Eras Committee, but both Bonds and Clemens were among those who got fewer than four votes in 2022. Fred McGriff was elected unanimously by the 2022 committee, while Mattingly got eight votes and Murphy got six.
This time around, President Trump weighed in with a social media post in August saying Clemens “should be in the Baseball Hall of Fame, NOW!” and doubled down on that demand Sunday when he posted that Clemens should “sue the hell out of Major League Baseball” if he’s not elected. It seemingly made little difference to the 16-member committee that voted Sunday at baseball’s Winter Meetings.
The Era Committees have replaced the Veterans Committee as the Hall of Fame’s method of considering candidates who have exhausted their 10 years of BBWAA ballot eligibility. The Contemporary Baseball Era player ballot (for players whose greatest impact came since 1980), Contemporary Baseball Era manager/executive/umpire ballot (for the same time period) and the Classic Baseball Era (for those who mostly played prior to 1980) are considered on a rotating, three-year cycle. The committees elected former manager Jim Leyland in 2023 and former MVPs Dave Parker and Dick Allen in 2024.
Pete Rose will be among the players eligible for the Classic Era ballot in 2027.
This year’s Contemporary Era Committee consisted of Hall of Fame members Fergie Jenkins, Jim Kaat, Juan Marichal, Tony Pérez, Ozzie Smith, Alan Trammell and Robin Yount; executives Mark Attanasio, Doug Melvin, Arte Moreno, Kim Ng, Tony Reagins and Terry Ryan; statistician and historian Steve Hirdt, and veteran baseball writers for The Athletic, Tyler Kepner and Jayson Stark.