Dodgers would be gleeful if Giants take legend's old man yelling at cloud moment to heart

For years, newly inducted Hall of Famer Jeff Kent tormented the Los Angeles Dodgers as a member of the San Francisco Giants. He then briefly joined the Dodgers, and despite being in the twilight of his career, is still regarded as one of the best second basemen in Los Angeles's history.

Kent is a worthy Hall of Famer. His 377 career home runs are the most in MLB history by a second baseman. His .290/.356/.500 career line proves that he was a fearsome force at the plate. He deserves the recognition that he's been getting for the honor.

Recently, at a celebration for the 2026 Hall of Fame class, Kent started a raging debate around the MLB world after responding to a question as to how the game is played today. Kent gave a long, detailed, and occasionally rambling answer. It was more nuanced than some have indicated, but the crux of the matter is that he believes analytics play too large a role in the modern game and impede winning baseball.

"It is going to be, and I hope there's patience with Buster Posey, because it's going to be an uphill battle to change the dynamic of the evolution of the game that has gone the wrong way," Kent said. "I'm sorry it's gone the wrong way. Now, I hate to be the grumpy old man up here, and I'm going to voice his opinion on the game sucks, and these kids don't know what they're doing. That's not what I'm saying."

Kent continued by saying that the evolution of the game has moved past the standards of run production, thanks to analytics. He conceded that analytics should be in the game to a degree, but complained that it's gone too far.

"You win games by scoring more runs than the other guy, not how many arbitrary runs did you save," Kent complained. "I mean, they come up with these numbers, 'well, the shortstop saved five runs in a week.' How? How do you get that number? It's some dude just guessing that, yeah, maybe, he saved five runs. I'm sorry, it's not a fixed number, but if you go get three hits, that's a fixed number. You can't argue against that one."

Many other former ball players came out in support of Kent's claims. The common theme in their arguments is that the way hitters approach the game today, with a strong focus on walks and launch angle and a de-emphasis on limiting strikeouts, actually results in runs being less likely to score.

Woven throughout Kent's arguments were pleas to Giants president of baseball operations Buster Posey to return to the philosophies Kent was espousing, particularly at the minor league level, so that the next generation of talent in San Francisco comes up playing the game the same way as in this bygone era.

The Dodgers are proof that analytics lead to wins, while Jeff Kent wants to send the Giants to the Stone Age

Kent is off base here because he assumes that the determinations in how these advanced stats assign value are random. It's almost certain that he'd agree that a double is more conducive to scoring a run than a single, but he's bemoaning the process that goes about answering the question by how much.

What has happened thanks to the sabermetric revolution is a better understanding of what actions are more likely to produce (or prevent) runs being scored, and then maximizing those traits. It works, and the Dodgers are the poster child for why.

Los Angeles invests more in technology and analytics than pretty much any other organization. They've worked with scientists to better understand the movements that lead to optimal outcomes on the baseball diamond, and then implemented their findings into their coaching and development plan from the lowest levels of the minors all the way to the top.

It's a big reason why the club always has a top-ranked farm system and has been able to build the type of player development infrastructure that allows the team to be able to consistently trade for star-level talent without sacrificing depth.

It's fair to gripe about the death of situational hitting in modern baseball. There's nothing more frustrating than watching a hitter strike out with a runner on third and less than two outs. One could argue that players today need to better learn when to switch gears.

But contrary to Kent's argument, we now have a better understanding of how to produce runs than we did in the 1990s and early 2000s. Knowledge is power, and when that power is wielded properly, dynasties are built.

So, we hope Posey takes Kent's advice to heart. Please teach your hitters that giving away outs via sac bunts and rolling over grounders to the right side to advance runners is a good idea. Teach your pitchers that they have to throw 120 pitches a night to get through seven innings. If that happens, we'll watch the Giants rack up losses while the Dodgers actually win games because they know the secret sauce behind what actually puts runs on the board.

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