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Kenny Lofton was a damn good centerfielder. After the
shambolic votes for this year’s Baseball Hall of Fame were reported, I was sad
to see that Kenny Lofton would not be on the ballot again in the future. He
deserved a better fate and more recognition. Instead his career got caught up
in the incessant arguments about the steroid era and he will never get is due.
Kenny Kenny, as I like to refer to him, was the catalyst to
the great Cleveland Indians offense in the mid-90s. I will always remember him
with his big hitch in his left-handed swing mashing balls to right and slashing
others to left. I’ll also remember him for the swagger he played the game with
and especially that awesome gold diamond pendant with the “K” in the middle
(That pendant was boss and I’m glad to see it is Kenny’s background photo for his Twitter account). He was a great centerfielder with prototypical leadoff
skills.
Kenny broke finally broke into the league in 1991 after
being in the minors for a few years and finishing a great college BASKETBALL
career at Arizona. Yes, basketball. Kenny Lofton did not even play baseball
until his junior year of college and he was drafted that year by the Astros (he
played minor league ball that summer, but went back to UA to get his degree and
finish his senior season of basketball). Kenny Kenny hit his stride until 1992
when he was traded to the Indians. In 1992, he ended with 6.3 WAR (calculatedby FanGraphs) and followed that up with a 7.3 WAR season in 1993 and a 6.9 in
1994. According to FanGraphs rule-of-thumb WAR chart, those are three MVP type
seasons during Kenny’s first three full seasons in the bigs. Pretty freaking
good. Kenny followed that up with three more “Superstar” and “All-Star” seasons
during his career.
Kenny Lofton's WAR by Year
Year WAR Caliber
1993 7.3 MVP
1994 6.9 MVP
1992 6.3 MVP
1998 5.9 Superstar
1997 5.5 Superstar
1996 5.1 Superstar
1999 4.8 All-Star
2003 4.4 All-Star
1995 4.1 All-Star
2005 3.9 Good Player
2000 3.1 Good Player
2007 2.8 Solid Starter
2002 2.6 Solid Starter
2006 1.6 Role Player
2001 1.5 Role Player
2004 0.5 Scrub
When evaluating a player’s career, I don’t really like to
count the number of MVPs, Gold Gloves, All-Star appearances, etc. because they
all have qualitative elements that depend on who was voting for those awards.
Instead I prefer to look at career WAR and use that to compare players of the
generation of interest. I define a generation of players as those who careers
either start or end during the career of the player being evaluated. For
example, Kenny Lofton’s generation of players are those whose careers included playing
between 1992 and 2007. The first season that Kenny Lofton logged more than 130
at bats (thus, making him ineligible for the Rookie of the Year award) was 1992
(the same year he lit Cleveland on fire with a 6.3 WAR). And Kenny’s last
season was 2007. Therefore, his generation of players includes any players that
played at least one season between 1992 and 2007.
Now that we defined Kenny’s generation of players lets see
how he stacks up against them in Career WAR (cWAR). Kenny’s career ended with
him accumulating 66.3 cWAR, which is ranked 40th amongst batters in
his generation. By comparison, Kenny’s cWAR is less than Gary Sheffield (66.6)
and Dave Winfield (67.7), but greater than Sammy Sosa (64.2) and Andre Dawson (62.9). Not
to shabby.
If we look at Kenny compared to other centerfielders of his
generation we more of his true value. I always like to compare players to
others who played the same position. I think it gives a more fair assessment of
how this player compared to his peers. First baseman and centerfielders are
going to have very different profiles. When comparing Kenny to other CFs, he
has the 4th highest cWAR of players who careers spanned 1992-2007. Ken
Griffey, Jr. is number one in cWAR, accumulating 85.2 wins, followed by Andruw Jones
(67.9) and Jim Edmonds (66.8).
Kenny Lofton was a damn good player and a borderline Hall of
Famer. I’m going to reserve judgment on whether or not I truly think he
deserves to be in the Hall until I get some better perspective on the cWAR of
other centerfielders already in the Hall of Fame. I big factor here is whether
or not Andruw Jones and Jim Edmonds are Hall of Famers also. Regardless, I will
always remember Kenny Kenny for his big hitch from the left hand side, his awesome
pendant, and for motoring around the bases with his helmet ready to fall of at
any second. I hope one day Kenny gets the recognition from baseball fans he
deserves. At the very least he deserves to be in the discussion for the Hall of
Fame for more time.
