Andruw Jones finally getting his Hall of Fame moment is a long-overdue celebration. Atlanta Braves fans spent years watching a no-brainer case get treated like a complicated math problem. Now that Jones is in, there’s an obvious next step if the Hall actually wants to keep fixing its own blind spots:
Kenny Lofton should be next. Yes, Lofton only played one season in Atlanta (1997). But that’s not the point. The point is that Lofton is one of the most baffling “how did this happen?” Hall of Fame snubs of the modern ballot era — and his case is exactly the kind of thing a post-BBWAA process should be designed to correct.
Andruw Jones’ Hall of Fame moment exposes the next glaring Braves-adjacent snub
Lofton received the ultimate disrespect of a one-and-done lasting just one year on the BBWAA ballot in 2013, got 3.2 percent of the vote, and fell off immediately. And if you’re a Braves fan who watched Jones slowly climb out of the same kind of undervaluation pit, you know how broken that can be.
He finished with 2,428 hits, a .299 batting average, and 622 stolen bases. Lofton created chaos at the top of the order for more than a decade. Add the defense in center field, six All-Star selections, four Gold Gloves, and a career value profile that stacks up cleanly against plenty of enshrined outfielders, and the question stops being “is he a Hall of Famer?” and becomes “why did we let him get erased?”
That’s where the conversation gets a little uncomfortable. Lofton’s reputation followed him around. People called him difficult. A jerk. A “clubhouse lawyer.” And sure — maybe some writers didn’t enjoy dealing with him. Maybe his journeyman path (11 teams) made it easier to treat him like a compiler rather than what he actually was: a premium center fielder and leadoff hitter who stayed valuable everywhere he went.
But being “kind of a jerk” shouldn’t equate to “keep him out forever.”
If personality is the standard, Cooperstown is going to need some serious renovations, because the Hall has never been a purity contest. It’s supposed to honor what happened on the field. Lofton happened on the field. He defined a style of baseball that mattered, and he did it at a premium position.
Atlanta fans understand what “value you can’t see in one clean stat” looks like. Jones was a defensive titan whose greatness wasn’t always reflected in the old-school comfort metrics voters clung to. Lofton is another version of that problem: a player who did so many things well that the lack of one loud counting stat (like 400 homers) made people weirdly comfortable dismissing him.
Now, Lofton isn’t coming back through the BBWAA door. That door slammed shut in 2013 for reasons that look worse every year.
Which is exactly why the Eras Committee exists — to fix mistakes the ballot process made when it moved too fast, held grudges, or failed to understand what it was looking at. And if the Hall wants to ride the momentum of “we finally got Andruw right,” there’s no cleaner next correction than Kenny Lofton.