#EdgarHOF - Day 26

Edgar Martínez has a powerful ally who combines a Gilmore Girl-speed delivery with the lush hair of a woodland creature, and it is MLB Network’s Brian Kenny. Kenny has made a point of including Edgar in multiple years of his Cooperstown Justice segment on MLB network, all the way back to 2011, when Kenny ended an interview with the non-Edgar-voting Jon Heyman with a promise that he would “work on him” about Edgar. (Just give Brian Kenny what he wants, Jon! He may talk like Lorelei but I assure you he is a steely Paris underneath that pelt.) In 2012, Kenny called Edgar a no-brainer for the Hall. In 2014, Kenny devoted half of a segment focused on Fred McGriff to talk about Edgar (skip to the 5:00 mark for the Edgar part):

In 2015, Edgar gets pride of place in Kenny’s Cooperstown Justice segment:

Here, Kenny digs a little deeper into an idea he’s batted around before about recency bias, pointing out that only about half as many players born in the 50s and 60s (those that played in the 80s and 90s) are enshrined, with the numbers lagging behind the rate of induction for those players born around the turn of the last century, despite the fact that baseball today is a bigger and more diverse game than ever. Kenny argues against the idea that only the Ruths and Mays and DiMaggios are HOF worthy, and instead uses the middle third as a jumping-off point for assessing candidates, cherry-picking three of the more recognizable names (McCovey, Killebrew, Carew). “If you measure up to Willie McCovey, Harmon Killebrew, or Rod Carew, you’re a Hall of Famer,” says Kenny flatly, or as flatly as he’s able to while vibrating with the energy of one million tiny angry suns. In fact, stacking Edgar up against those players in WAR and OPS, he actually makes the top half of the first basemen/DH category. We can’t see Kenny’s feet here but I’m pretty sure he has levitated off the floor a couple inches with the sheer force of his conviction that Edgar belongs in the Hall.

Here’s a screengrab from a Reddit AMA Kenny did back in May of this year:

The original questioner’s identity has been deleted, as has the original question but I can only see two possibilities for this: 1) Kenny himself asked the question; 2) the question was posed by a craven relative hoping to gain control of Kenny’s fortune by shocking him into such a state of outrage as to be declared a ward of the state. I imagine Kenny mashing down the key on that exclamation mark and pile-driving it straight into the earth’s core. Here the cruel trickster is at it again, this time wearing a totally obvious Mets disguise, the nose-and-glasses of avatars:

Brian Kenny will not be drawn in this time! The angry exclamation points have been replaced by that typographical symbol of utter incredulity, the ellipses. Kenny is leaking over into disdain and exhausted ennui, which is no good for us, as Edgar supporters. We need him packed full of rage like Chris Davis’s jaw is packed with chaw, coiled like a snake and ready to strike at whatever unsuspecting guest wanders into his lair without a tick next to Edgar’s name. Time is running short and it’s time to kick this campaign into high gear. We need you, Brian Kenny, to be our mouthpiece to your more dimwitted peers and draw them firmly into the tractor beam of an Edgar vote. You bear our hopes and dreams balanced precariously upon your lushly furred widow’s peak. Burn, you intense little man, burn like a bush.