The Coaches Who Molded Baseball’s Newest Hall of Fame Inductees

Jeff Kent, Andruw Jones and Carlos Beltrán recall the mentors who shaped their paths to Cooperstown. Plus, finding a modern comparable for each honoree.

Jeff Kent, Andruw Jones, and Carlos Beltrán were inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame on Sunday. | Daniel Shirey/Getty Images

This article is part of Verducci’s View, a new weekly baseball newsletter from Sports Illustrated senior writer Tom Verducci. Every Monday, Tom empties out his notebook over email and covers MLB’s hottest topics, provides in-depth analysis through both text and video breakdowns, looks forward to what’s worth watching during the week and more. If you want to be featured in his new mailbag, please email newsletters@si.com with any questions about MLB or his decades in the sport.

The inductions on Sunday of Carlos Beltrán, Andruw Jones and Jeff Kent to the Baseball Hall of Fame bring membership of the game’s most exclusive club to 354. Among them, 315 wore a uniform as a player, manager or umpire. Only one segment of officially uniformed personnel is not represented in Cooperstown: coaches.

The stories of how Beltrán, Jones and Kent became Hall of Famers cannot be told without the influence of coaches, one of the underappreciated contributors to the game.

Beltrán was a second-round, right-handed-hitting teenage draft pick out of Puerto Rico who hit no home runs in his first year in pro ball, 1995. The next season, while Beltrán was playing Low A ball in Spokane, the Royals asked one of their minor league coaches, Kevin Long, to teach Beltrán how to switch-hit.

Long met Beltrán every morning at 10 o’clock to work on left-handed hitting for 90 minutes. Then they would take a break for lunch. Then they would begin another session. Then Beltrán would resume his right-handed work in normal pregame work before playing in the 7 p.m. games. This went on for five weeks. Finally, when Beltrán was ready, he took his left-handed swing into a game. He hit a home run in his first game as a switch-hitter.

A Hall of Fame path was born. Over his 20-year career, Beltrán hit .280 with a .843 OPS hitting right-handed and .279 with a .834 OPS hitting left-handed.

For Jones, the career-defining influencer was Braves hitting coach Merv Rettenmund. Jones was such a gifted defender he could have forged a long career as a defense-first center fielder.

Said Jones, “I focused so much on defense that I wasn’t worried about my hitting until I had a coach named Merv Rettenmund. He came to Atlanta in 2000 and told me, ‘Hey, go to the plate with the same approach you take in center field.’ He opened my eyes to being more relaxed and just letting things happen instead of trying to make them happen.”

Until then, through four seasons, Jones had been a .260 hitter with an .811 OPS. That year he made his first All-Star Game, hit a career high 36 homers, batted .303, posted a .907 OPS and finished eighth in MVP voting. His career was propelled forward from that season.

Jeff Kent (right) and his former manager Dusty Baker talk during a 1997 game for the Giants. | Otto Greule Jr./Getty Images

For Kent, his biggest influencer was a manager (and former hitting coach), Dusty Baker. Kent joined the Giants in 1997 as a .277 hitter who was 29 years old and had been traded three times. Baker, he said, encouraged him to find another level to his game. Specifically, Baker told Kent, then a dead-pull hitter, that windy, spacious Candlestick Park would devour him unless he drove the ball to the opposite field gap.

“He really motivated me to get the peak performance out of me,” Kent said. “That was the place where I learned how to go the other way.”

Kent finished eighth in MVP voting that first year with Baker, the first of seven seasons in which Kent received MVP support, including one MVP award. He hit .295 from that season through the rest of his career, finishing as a .290 hitter, including—thanks to using the whole field—a career average of .300 with runners in scoring position.

No, there are no coaches in the Hall, an oversight that someday should be corrected. But, like teachers to Nobel laureates, they are behind every Hall of Fame legend.

Finding Tomorrow’s Hall of Famers Today

Only 62 of the 262 players in the Hall of Fame were elected on the first ballot. This year’s inductees remind us that the road to Cooperstown often is not obvious. Beltrán, Jones and Kent waited four or more ballots to get in.

What does their induction mean for current players? Here are the most similar statistical comps to the three inductees, which means they, too, are traveling the long and not always obvious road to the Hall:

Andruw Jones = Manny Machado

Through 1,994 Games	HR	RBI	BA/OBP/SLG	OPS
Andruw Jones	403	1,210	.256/.337/.487	.824
Manny Machado	391	1,203	.275/.336/.483	.819

Carlos Beltrán = Jose Ramirez

Through 1,682 Games	HR	SB	TB	BA	OPS
Carlos Beltrán	289	289	3,189	.282	.854
José Ramirez	295	311	3,121	.278	.852

Jeff Kent = Nolan Arenado

Through 1,884 Games	HR	RBI	BB	TB	SLG	OPS
Jeff Kent	324	1,286	640	3,547	.507	.861
Nolan Arenado	367	1,232	610	3,597	.504	.842

---