{"id":336047,"date":"2025-12-08T01:02:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-08T01:02:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/336047\/"},"modified":"2025-12-08T01:02:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-08T01:02:07","slug":"jeff-kent-elected-to-baseball-hall-of-fame","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/336047\/","title":{"rendered":"Jeff Kent Elected To Baseball Hall Of Fame"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jeff Kent<\/a> was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, as revealed by the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee tonight.\u00a0 Kent received 14 of a possible 16 votes from the Era Committee, making him the only candidate of the eight considered to cross the 75% (12 of 16) threshold needed for induction to Cooperstown.\u00a0 Carlos Delgado<\/a> was the next-closest candidate with nine votes, and Dale Murphy and Don Mattingly each received six votes.\u00a0 Barry Bonds<\/a>, Roger Clemens<\/a>, Gary Sheffield<\/a>, and Fernando Valenzuela<\/a> each received less than five votes.<\/p>\n

Formerly known as the Veterans Committee, the Era Committee is the latest incarnation of the process that for decades has given some fresh evaluation and a second chance to players initially overlooked on the writers\u2019 ballot.\u00a0 This year\u2019s version of the Era Committee focused on players whose greatest contributions came during the \u201cContemporary Baseball\u201d (1980-present) era.\u00a0 Next year\u2019s ballot will focus on managers, executives, and umpires from the Contemporary Baseball era, and the 2027 ballot will consider candidates from the \u201cClassic Baseball\u201d era (prior to 1980) before Contemporary Players are again considered in 2028.<\/p>\n

A rule change introduced this year added an extra layer of intrigue (or even controversy) to this year\u2019s proceedings.\u00a0 Because they received less than five votes on this year\u2019s ballot, Bonds, Clemens, Sheffield, and Valenzuela must be omitted from the next voting cycle, and can\u2019t return to the Contemporary Players ballot until at least 2031.\u00a0 If any of these four players then don\u2019t receive at least five votes in 2031 or on any future ballot, they are no longer eligible for inclusion on any Contemporary Players ballot.<\/p>\n

The aim of this new rule is to allow more candidates to be included on Era Committee ballots on a regular basis.\u00a0 The concept of permanent disqualification from ballots, however, has been viewed by some as a way for the Hall of Fame to sidestep the ongoing controversy about Bonds, Clemens, Sheffield, or other prominent superstars (i.e. Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa<\/a>, Rafael Palmeiro<\/a>) who were linked to PEDs.\u00a0 While obviously Era Committee rules could again be altered down the road, for now, the path has gotten even narrower for Bonds, Clemens, or Sheffield to make it to Cooperstown.<\/p>\n

The results of the writers\u2019 ballot will be announced on January 20, with such players as Carlos Beltran<\/a> and Andruw Jones<\/a> seen as strong candidates to finally get over the 75% threshold after multiple years on the ballot (nine years for Jones, four years for Beltran).\u00a0 Any players elected on January 20 will join Kent in being officially inducted into the Hall of Fame on July 26 in Cooperstown.<\/p>\n

The 16 members of this year\u2019s Era Committee could vote for as many as three players, and as few as zero players.\u00a0 This year\u2019s Era Committee was comprised of seven Hall of Famers (Ferguson Jenkins, Jim Kaat, Juan Marichal, Tony Perez, Ozzie Smith, Alan Trammell, Robin Yount), four former MLB general managers (Doug Melvin, Kim Ng, Tony Reagins, Terry Ryan), two current MLB owners (the Brewers\u2019 Mark Attansio and the Angels\u2019 Arte Moreno), two media members (the Athletic\u2019s Tyler Kepner and Jayson Stark), and historian Steve Hirdt.<\/p>\n

More to come\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jeff Kent was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, as revealed by the Contemporary Baseball Era Committee…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":336048,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[169649,363,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-336047","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-jeff-kent","9":"tag-mlb","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336047","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=336047"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336047\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/336048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=336047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=336047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=336047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}