Well, since it's Hall of Fame week and all (until tomorrow, which is Nick Punto Day), I might as well indulge again.

After the Albert Belle debate the other day, I started thinking about Belle's neighbor in that Cleveland outfield. Center fielder Kenny Lofton is probably remembered by most people now as a journeyman third-and-a-half outfielder, after playing for an amazing nine different teams in the last six years of his career. And in all, he played for eleven different teams -- more than everyone who has ever played except two relief pitchers -- and had three different tours with Cleveland, the only team for which he played more than one season. You can understand why he'd be remembered for something like that.

But Lofton also:

• played 16 full seasons, 2103 games;
• hit .299 and collected 2478 hits;
• stole 622 bases, 15th all time, and led his league five years in a row;
• scored 1528 runs, 56th all time, scoring 100+ six times and 90+ six more times; and
• played in six straight All-Star Games.

That's the kind of resume that, while it certainly doesn't scream "Hall of Fame," at least deserves another look. Is Kenny Lofton a Hall of Famer?
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Well, I've never thought so, and by "never," I mean right up to about ten minutes ago. His OPS+ was just 107, which would put him in a tie for 127th among Hall of Famers. No doubt he gets credit for the baserunning and for being an excellent center fielder, but even among Hall of Famers who were predominantly center fielders, that OPS+ would be tied with Max Carey for 15th out of 17. And that was enough for me.

I'm not as sure anymore. Three reasons:

First, that OPS is very on-base-percentage-heavy. Lofton was never a power hitter, but hit around .300 and drew walks at a good clip. OBP is a more important component of OPS than is slugging percentage, so that makes Lofton's OPS+ deceiving; his 107 is a lot better than, say, Eric Karros' 107. Sure enough, wRC+ (which I talk about a little here and which, in short, is a stat on the same scale as OPS+ but which credits OBP properly, among other things) has Lofton at 118, Karros at just 110. There's nothing you can do to make Lofton look like an elite hitter, but valuing his OBP properly, taking into account the length of his career and his defensive skill, moves him from a pretty good hitter for a CF to a very good hitter for a CF.

Second, if you haven't checked out where Lofton stands on the all-time WAR list before, I bet you'll be shocked. I was. Lofton's 65.1 wins above replacement put him 80th all-time among position players, right below Willie McCovey and right above Tim Raines. Of the 79 players ahead of Lofton on the list, I count 63 who are or have been eligible for the Hall of Fame, and of those 63, 57 (90.4%) are in the Hall. The ones who aren't in the Hall top most people's lists of guys who aren't in but should be: starting from the top, Bill Dahlen, Lou Whitaker, Barry Larkin, Bobby Grich, Edgar Martinez, Alan Trammell, and Ron Santo. Among the many Hall of Famers or future Hall of Famers whose career WAR totals fall below Lofton's are Ernie Banks, Roberto Alomar, Ryne Sandberg, and Harmon Killebrew. And there's nothing outlandish about Lofton's WAR totals, either. He doesn't have one huge freak year with the glove or on the basepaths. He's got two all-around phenomenal years in 1993 and '94 (7.4 and 7.7 WAR, respectively), and the other six of his first eight years are comfortably All-Star quality, with four to six wins each season. He spends the second half of his career as an average- to above-average player, but there's no shame in that either.

Third, it's getting harder for me to justify why Raines belongs (and I remain 100% convinced that he does), but Lofton doesn't. As I said above, they're essentially equal in WAR, 65.1 for Lofton to 64.9 for Raines. As an offensive player, Raines was a little better at everything Lofton was good at; he reached base at a better rate (considering the era, anyway), stole even more bases at an even better rate, just ran the bases better generally, and even had more power. His 137 wRC+ just blows Lofton's away. But, despite Raines' speed, his poor instincts kept him from being a great outfielder, and he was almost entirely limited to left field, and comes out looking like an average left fielder at that. Meanwhile, Lofton, as I've said, was a very good (probably not historically good, but certainly very good) center fielder. WAR gives Lofton close to a ten-run-per-season advantage just for playing center rather than left -- because the center fielder is much more costly to replace -- and gives him ninety runs over the course of their careers for his relative defensive ability. The value of having a terrific center fielder, contrasted with the value of having an average left fielder, is huge. I'm not totally convinced it's a huge enough difference to overcome Raines' offensive edge (or his 1000+ extra plate appearances), but it does seem to me that they're pretty close in total value, and if Raines is a slam-dunk Hall of Famer, shouldn't Lofton at least be borderline?

There are knocks against him too, of course. Lofton got to play in eleven postseasons, the product of first playing for a dynastic Cleveland team and then, later in his career, continuously getting traded to a contender; he hit just .247/.315/.352 in chances approaching a whole 'nother full season (434 PA). He did steal 34 out of 40 successfully, including 11 in the 1995 postseason alone. I suppose some might dock him points for playing for all those different teams, and never sticking with one aside from Cleveland for more than a season. And he got injured quite a bit, only once topping 150 games in a season (though he also played all but one of his team's 113 games in the strike year of 1994). 

But, you know, my normal practice with posts such like these is to pose an outlandish question, act like I'm going to address it thoughtfully, and then tear it apart on the way toward the expected "no, of course not!" conclusion. That's really what I expected to do here. But not this time. I've actually convinced myself, and I don't mean just moved myself off the fence, but I've come completely around from one side to the other: yes, Kenny Lofton is a Hall of Famer.

It's very close. I could change my mind again tomorrow. He'll never get in (or not for decades, anyway), and his omission won't be a tragic one. But taking everything we know into consideration, I think he did enough that he belongs. The one thing I'm sure of, though, is that he's a better candidate than Belle...

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