Kansas City Royals: Three thoughts on 2020 Hall of Fame

The Baseball Writers’ Association of America will announce the next class of inductees into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Three thoughts come to mind when pondering the Hall of Fame as it relates to the Kansas City Royals.

Among the current 32 eligible players, only one played at least part of his career for the Kansas City Royals: Raul Ibanez. Just as interesting, if not more so, is that of the 279 players in the Hall of Fame, only one primarily played for the Royals: George Brett, who was inducted in 1999.

Of my aforementioned three thoughts about the Royals and the Hall of Fame, the first has to do with Ibanez. The second revolves around perhaps the next best bet for the Royals to land a player in the Hall, and how much of a hit that player recently took. Then, the third revolves around the 2015 team that captured the World Series.

Lastly, I’ll share with you my (imaginary) Hall of Fame ballot.

Raul Ibanez

Raul Ibanez broke into the Majors in 1996 and didn’t hang up his cleats until after the 2014 season. While he played primarily for the Seattle Mariners, with whom he spent a total of 11 seasons on three different stints, he spent 2001-2003 and the last portion of 2014 with the Royals.

Ibanez’s breakout season came with the Royals in 2002 when the then 30-year-old slashed .294/.346/.537 while smacking 24 home runs to go with 37 doubles and six triples. He finished with an OPS+ of 122 while scoring 70 runs.

Kansas City finished that season 62-100.

For the rest of his career, Ibanez would top that home run total only three times, in 2006 (33), 2009 (34), and 2013 (29). For his career, Ibanez, who made one All-Star team in 2009 and finished in the top 25 of MVP voting on three occasions, finished with 2,034 hits, 305 home runs, 424 doubles while slashing .272/.335/.465 for a .801 OPS and a 111 OPS+.

That’s a nice, solid career.

It is not a Hall-of-Fame career, yet it’s a nice career for a man who made over an estimated $66 million and who will, undoubtedly, one day be a big-league manager.

But he’s got no shot at the Hall. In fact, it would be rather surprising if he even garnered the 5% of the vote to stay on the ballot for 2021.

And so the Kansas City Royals must wait longer to have another player join Brett in Cooperstown.