Tom Verducci delivers a mix of expert commentary, inside angles and thoughtful perspectives on baseball’s biggest storylines every week.
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Otto Greule Jr./Getty Images
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The Coaches Who Molded Baseball’s Newest Hall of Fame Inductees |
The inductions Sunday of Carlos Beltran, Andruw Jones and Jeff Kent to the Baseball Hall of Fame brings 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 Beltran, Jones and Kent became Hall of Famers cannot be told without the influence of coaches, one of the underappreciated contributors to the game.
Beltran 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 Beltran was playing Low A ball in Spokane, the Royals asked one of their minor league coaches, Kevin Long, to teach Beltran how to switch hit.
Long met Beltran 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 Beltran 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 Beltran 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, Beltran 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.
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.
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Ali Overstreet/Getty Images
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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. Beltran, 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
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| Through 1,994 Games |
HR |
RBI |
OBP/SLG |
OPS |
| Andruw Jones |
403 |
1,210 |
.337/.487 |
.824 |
| Manny Machado |
391 |
1,203 |
.336/.483 |
.819 |
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Carlos Beltrán = José Ramírez
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| Through 1,682 Games |
HR |
SB |
TB |
BA |
OPS |
| Carlos Beltrán |
289 |
289 |
3,189 |
.282 |
.854 |
| José Ramírez |
295 |
311 |
3,121 |
.278 |
.852 |
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Jeff Kent = Nolan Arenado
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| Through 1,884 Games |
HR |
RBI |
BB |
TB |
OPS |
| Jeff Kent |
324 |
1,285 |
640 |
3,547 |
.861 |
| Nolan Arenado |
367 |
1,232 |
610 |
3,597 |
.842 |
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Scott Taetsch/Getty Images
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Starting this past weekend in Miami, the Padres have decided to run these remaining games in July like playoff games. On Friday in Miami, manager Craig Stammen pulled his starter after 37 pitches and used five relievers to secure a 4–2 win. It’s the way forward for San Diego: quick hooks, piggyback starters, mid-game matchups and heavy workloads for relievers.
Yes, the urgency is partly a function of the impending trade deadline. San Diego is right on the precipice of buying or selling and it will come down to the Aug. 3 deadline. But Stammen said it’s mostly because of the standings. The Padres are backed up behind five teams for the final wild card spot with the weekend presenting a head-to-head opportunity against one of them, Miami. These become mini-playoff games.
The risk is that the bullpen, a team strength, gets worn. The Padres have the fourth worst rotation in MLB, so they need a stout pen. Playing with the pedal to the floor while facing 26 games in 27 days coming out of the break is a big ask, but one the Padres think they need to make with their playoff aspirations on the line.
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Even in an analytics age, the Triple Crown, like 20 wins, a .300 batting average and a well-executed hit-and-run play, is still cool. Yordan Alvarez of the Astros is in great position to pull off the 17th Triple Crown in AL/NL history—and only the second with 50 or more home runs, joining Mickey Mantle.
And if you do lean toward modern analytics, take comfort knowing Alvarez could win the Slash Triple Crown (batting, OBP, SLG), which is even rarer. Only eight have won the STC: Carl Yastrzemski (the most recent, in 1967, and the only one in the past 79 years), Ted Williams (twice), Lou Gehrig, Chuck Klein, Rogers Hornsby (twice), Ty Cobb and Nap Lajoie.
What is so remarkable about Alvarez is his incredible balance at the plate. The dude is never caught on his front foot with his barrel through the zone before the pitch enters the smash area. That is why Alvarez is one of the most powerful two-strike hitters we have seen in this generation. The numbers show he remains an elite slugger even when “protecting the plate” with two strikes:
Greatest OPS+ With Two Strikes (Since 1988, min. 190 AB)
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| Player, Year |
OPS |
SplitOPS+ |
| Barry Bonds, 1992 |
.981 |
271 |
| Victor Martinez, 2014 |
.927 |
264 |
| Yordan Alvarez, 2026 |
.912 |
256 |
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In two-strike counts entering this weekend, Alvarez:
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- Swung and missed at only two breaking pitches in the zone.
- Was hitting .291. Only 14 other players are hitting that high overall this season.
- Was slugging .556, a level reached only by Bonds (1992), Todd Helton (2000) and Albert Pujols (2004).
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On May 8, Manny Machado of the Padres was hitting .202/.313/.355, including .100 against pitches 95 mph and faster. It had nothing to do with bat speed or age. His timing was poor. So, he did something about it.
He opened his stance a bit more, rested the bat on his shoulder in his pre-pitch setup rather than holding it high and angled, and began his step-in leg kick earlier. It took a couple of weeks for the changes to take root, but Machado found his rhythm. Since then, Machado has been crushing just about everything, especially elite velocity. You can see how he did it here. And you can see the results above.
Highest SLG vs. Pitches 95+ MPH Since May 28
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| Player, Team |
SLG |
| Willy Adames, Giants |
.967 |
| Max Muncy, Dodgers |
.885 |
| Luis Garcia Jr., Nationals |
.773 |
| Jake McCarthy, Rockies |
.769 |
| Kyle Karros, Rockies |
.759 |
| Manny Machado, Padres |
.738 |
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Wednesday, July 29: Yankees @ White Sox, 7:30 p.m. ET (MLBN)
Thursday, July 30: Mariners @ Dodgers, 10 p.m. ET (MLBN)
Saturday, Aug. 1: Diamondbacks @ Guardians, 7 p.m. (Fox)
The Yankees have successfully tread water without Aaron Judge thanks to consistent starting pitching and the stability of Cody Bellinger, who seems to do something each game at bat, on defense or on the bases to help win a game. New York will miss him while he’s on the injured list with a hamstring strain. Bellinger is my Exhibit A of what it takes to hit in this age of multiple pitch shapes and looks. A hitter needs multiple swings to make later swing decisions with shorter paths to the ball.
Bellinger spent his first six years in MLB using the same athletic, whippy stroke no matter the count or situation. But over the past four seasons, he has become one of the best two-strike hitters in baseball. He has done it by shortening his stroke and putting the ball in play. The improvement is striking:
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| Bellinger With Two Strikes |
AB |
Hits |
BA |
| 2017–22 |
1,495 |
263 |
.176 |
| 2023–25 |
1,024 |
229 |
.224 |
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MLB’s Best 2-Strike Hitters, 2023-26 (min. 2,000 pitches with 2 strikes)
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| Player, Current Team |
Batting Average |
| Luis Arraez, Giants |
.284 |
| Bobby Witt Jr., Royals |
.238 |
| José Ramirez, Guardians |
.234 |
| Steven Kwan, Guardians |
.231 |
| Yandy Diaz, Rays |
.227 |
| Cody Bellinger, Yankees |
.224 |
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