Kenny Lofton appeared on the 2013 BBWAA Ballot for the Hall of Fame vote, got 18 votes (or 3.2 percent of the writers) and vanished from the ballot. Does this mean he's run out of chances? No. Harold Baines received 4.8 percent of the vote in 2011, his fifth year on the ballot, and though that meant he was removed, he was then inducted by the Veterans Committee less than a decade later.
But it also puts Lofton in interesting company. Andres Galarraga, with a career 31.7 bWAR, drew a 4.1 percent vote. Mark Grace, with a career 46.4 bWAR, got 4.1 percent. There are Hall of Famers with bWAR figures in the 30s and 40s, like Baines (38.7), Lou Brock (45.4) and Jim Rice (47.7).
Meanwhile, Lofton, with his paltry 3.2 percent share of the vote, has a career bWAR of 68.4. That's the 12th highest total for a non-Hall-of-Fame, inactive position player. What's more is that there are several guys ahead of him that are not in for obvious reasons, like Barry Bonds, Pete Rose and Rafael Palmeiro, as well as those who are not yet eligible, like Adrian Beltre. But Lofton isn't excluded from the Hall for any of those reasons — he simply just didn't get the support he needed.
And though Lofton did not say that he feels as though he was snubbed from the Hall or that he's angry he fell off in his first go-around, he has said that he "was expecting to do better" and recently admitted that he may not get the recognition he deserves.
“I felt like I never got rewarded for what I did on the field,” Lofton told Phillies writer Matt Gelb. “Because it was more about how many home runs people hit.”
It's not that Lofton couldn't hit home runs — he certainly could, getting into double digits seven times and finishing with a modest total of 130 in his career. But the other areas of his game that led him to six All-Star appearances and four Gold Glove awards — the speed, the defense, the ability to hit for contact — didn't lead to quite a resounding impression on fans and voters. He led the league in stolen bases five times, currently ranking in the top 15 all-time in that stat. His career average of .299 and his .372 on-base percentage are both very impressive figures. He's just outside the top 100 in triples (116). He is fifth all-time among center fielders in total zone runs (117), a metric regarded as the "best all-inclusive defensive statistic" which determines “the number of runs above or below average the player was worth based on the number of plays made.”
Needless to say, Lofton could make an impact all over the board, and he knows it. But without the home runs, he felt it could be hard to see. Thankfully, Charlie Manuel had the same line of thinking as Lofton, and they're both trying to imprint that on young Phillies outfielder Roman Quinn.
"The reason I was successful in the game is that I used my God-given talents," Lofton said. "And I know what worked for me. And I tried to explain to him (Quinn) that he needs to listen to Charlie Manuel. Charlie Manuel is the guy that I looked up to. People don’t understand how simple Charlie Manuel kept the game. He was very smart. He understood the game. And he always told each individual player to, ‘Know thyself.’ That was his main thing. And people took that to heart."
The Phillies are attempting to do the same thing with Quinn, whose speed is by far his strongest asset but has not come into play as much as it should have in recent years due to how the game is played today. Lofton got a call from Manuel, with the latter telling Lofton that Quinn is "one of the fastest guys" he's seen since Lofton and that "if he can put two and two together," Quinn can be just as good as Lofton.
Should Quinn be able to put that aforementioned "two and two together," we could see the lost art of contact hitting and devastating speed resurface in the 2021 season.
"To be honest,” Lofton said of that lost art, “it feels sad to where I don’t know how to explain it."
We'll see if Quinn can come through and play Lofton-esque baseball, which is something that would make the Phillies coaching staff and fan base — and Lofton — very happy.
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