Baseball HOF Inductions 2009

[DanMcQ]

14

www.boston.com/sports/baseball/redsox/gallery/07_26_09_rice/

sports.espn.go.com/mlb/halloffame

[SFHoya99]

Jim Rice doesn't come anywhere near the HOF if he doesn't play in Boston or NY. There are worse players in, of course, but he simply wasn't good enough in my book.

Henderson is the class of this class -- as Bill James said, you could split Rickey in half and have two Hall of Famers.

[DanMcQ]

Agree with you about Henderson and I am sure Ricky would tell you that himself.

Rice certainly benefits from the Steroid Era but wishing he had played somewhere else does not make him ineligible for the HOF.

[whatmaroon]

Jim Rice in the baseball Hall of Fame would be like Jimmy Smith being in the football Hall of Fame. Thankfully, the latter won't happen.

[hoya9797]

Jim Rice's induction officially makes this the Hall of Very Good.

[SFHoya99]

Jul 26, 2009 20:58:15 GMT -5 hoya9797 said:

Jim Rice's induction officially makes this the Hall of Very Good.

While I'm no fan of the Rice induction (there's a ton of players like him in baseball history), this was the Hall of Very Good a long, long time ago.

Rice is one of the lesser BBWA picks -- most of the truly awful picks are Veterans Committee picks.

[hifigator]

In all honesty, I was sort of thinking along the same lines that most of you are. But then I heard a different opinion from one of the National guys. His basic point was that "raw numbers" are only part of the story. More specifically, you have to compare guys within their era. You can't simply compare stats from the dead ball era to the steroid era for example. But in Rice's day, 25 homers and 100 RBI was the "norm" for a really good season. Now, that's a middle of the pack shortstop.

In fairness to Rice, if this stat is correct, then he could certainly make a very good case:

For a 12 year period -- '75 to '86, I think -- Jim Rice lead the majors in 11 offensive categories. I presumed them to mean in the aggregate for that 12 year period, but I guess it's possible that they meant that he lead 11 times during that 12 year period. That might change things for sure, but if, in fact, he did lead in 11 offensive categories over that 12 year period, then he certainly dominated his era. And in my mind, that is worthy of Hall of Fame consideration.

[SFHoya99]

You absolutely have to look in context.

And Jim Rice played in one of the best hitting environments in Fenway. In an era of much larger ballparks, he played in a ballpark that is still a bandbox in today's tiny ballpark era.

I'm not comparing Rice's numbers to today's players, I'm comparing him to his compatriots. But you have to adjust for multiple contexts.

I hate picking on Rice. There's worse out there and some of the anti-Rice people underrate him as well. But Fenway Park plus Boston hype means overrated hitters.

[kchoya]

I think Rice should have been in a long time ago. His numbers really are underappreciated (maybe not so much now in light of the steroid era). Compare his numbers to Mike Schmidt's, who played during the same era and for about the same number of years. Overall, Schmidt's numbers are obviously better, but there's not a huge gap. The biggest differences are in walks, which then translates into differences in OBP and OPS. (plus the gold gloves). However, there's not so much of a difference that it should translate into Schmidt cruising in on the first ballot and Rice barely making it in on the last ballot.

[SFHoya99]

Rice wasn't any better than Dale Murphy or Harold Baines, and he was worse than Albert Belle and George Foster and Dave Parker and Andre Dawson and a whole slew of other outfielders who shouldn't make the Hall.

Bill James had a great argument of how big the Hall should be. Basically the distribution of talent in the major leagues is the extreme right edge of a bell curve. The most players are the worst. There's a point where the moving your standard to a lower level of ability greatly increases the number of players eligible for the Hall -- the curve starts to incline rapidly. That's the point of cutoff.

Rice-level corner outfielders aren't a dime a dozen, but there's probably four or five of them playing at any one time. That's a lot to put in the Hall.

[Buckets]

In terms of "looking in context," MVP voting shines a very favorable light on Rice: www.baseball-reference.com/leaders/mvp_cya.shtml

I also couldn't find how many guys finished in the Top 5 of MVP voting six times, but I would wager there aren't many non-HOFers in that group either.

[SFHoya99]

The problem is, MVP voting over the years has been horribly slanted to people with:

• Large RBI and HR totals
  
• Winning teams
  
• Players who play poor defense because voters ignore it
  
• Players are power positions because voters ignore the value of good hitting at tough positions (replacement value)
  

Rice fits all of those items. The first one is the biggest -- Rice had massive RBI totals because he was very good, played in a bandbox, and had Fred Lynn, Dwight Evans, Carl Yastrzemski and other high OBP guys around him (so people were always on base).

Rice had a career OPS+ of 128, which is adjusted for ballpark and era. Brian Giles, a better fielder and baserunner in the same position, had a career OPS+ of 136. But he played on crappy teams with no one on base, so he won't really sniff the Hall.

Other players with a Career OPS+ of 128:

Mickey Cochrane (Cather)
Goose Goslin (HOF corner OF)
Keith Hernandez (borderline HOF with defense)
Ryan Klesko
John Olerud
Pete Reiser
Tim Salmon
Sammy Sosa (includes before juicing)
Joe Torre (C/3B)
Jimmy Wynn

Rice has decent longevity, but like Goslin, he's more or less a mistake. Tim Salmon is the great comparable -- lots of All-Star games, but not a HOF. David Justice is another solid comp n terms of quality -- though both Salmon and Justice were more slanted to getting on base than power like Rice. Frankly, Fred Lynn isn't too far off of Rice -- and maybe better because he was a CF!

[hoya9797]

Jul 27, 2009 12:18:12 GMT -5 kchoya said:

I think Rice should have been in a long time ago. His numbers really are underappreciated (maybe not so much now in light of the steroid era). Compare his numbers to Mike Schmidt's, who played during the same era and for about the same number of years. Overall, Schmidt's numbers are obviously better, but there's not a huge gap. The biggest differences are in walks, which then translates into differences in OBP and OPS. (plus the gold gloves). However, there's not so much of a difference that it should translate into Schmidt cruising in on the first ballot and Rice barely making it in on the last ballot.

The whole first ballot thing also drives me nuts. Either a guy is good enough or he isn't. The idea that someone could get in on his 15th try is ridiculous.

[SFHoya99]

Jul 27, 2009 12:18:12 GMT -5 kchoya said:

I think Rice should have been in a long time ago. His numbers really are underappreciated (maybe not so much now in light of the steroid era). Compare his numbers to Mike Schmidt's, who played during the same era and for about the same number of years. Overall, Schmidt's numbers are obviously better, but there's not a huge gap. The biggest differences are in walks, which then translates into differences in OBP and OPS. (plus the gold gloves). However, there's not so much of a difference that it should translate into Schmidt cruising in on the first ballot and Rice barely making it in on the last ballot.

There's a lot of gap there.

Schmidt played in a more difficult ballpark to play in. He had 10000 plate appearances, and Rice had 9000.

Schmidt hit 166 more home runs.

They hit about the same number of doubles+triples.

Schmidt got on base about 600 more times (and committed only 400 more outs despite having 1,000 more plate appearances).

All the while playing in a much larger park and playing Gold-Glove defense at a more difficult position.

The end result is that Schmidt has a legit claim to being the greatest 3B of all time, and like I said, there's a bunch of Corner Outfielders that Rice is like.

[Jack]

Isn't the subject of Jim Rice's HOF-worthiness now beaten completely to death? I am certain there was a lengthy discussion of it here back when the results were announced, and probably again the previous year when he was close but did not make it.

In the end, I am forced to concede the argument to those who show his statistics were probably not great enough to make it, but I still took some pleasure in his induction because I grew up watching him (really after his peak) in the early and mid 80s, and I wore no. 14 on my JV baseball team and played a bad left field (I did not, however, break any bats on a checked swing, although I am sure I would have had we used wood). I particularly enjoyed (as usual) Joe Posnanski's take on Rice's induction, and found myself identifying with his sentiment despite the fact Poz is about 10 years my senior:

joeposnanski.com/JoeBlog/2009/07/26/a-thought-about-jim-rice/

[SFHoya99]

So, Jack, I get that. But here's my issue with Posnanski's article (and he's one of the best out there):

"But you know what? I grew up watching Jim Rice play baseball. I remember cringing when he came to the plate against my Cleveland Indians. I recall the feeling of joy I would get when a Jim Rice baseball card appeared in my wax pack — hey, Jim Rice, he’s a SUPERSTAR. The Hall of Fame is there to honor players, of course, but in a way it’s also there to honor our childhoods, to stamp our memories, to tell us that yes, we were lucky enough to watch this player, this Hall of Famer, this baseball icon."


That's great, Joe. But answer these two questions:

1. What about the people who grew up watching Frank Howard in Washington? Brian Giles in Pittsburgh? Countless other players? Why do only the Red Sox fans deserve this? Or Yankees fans? These guys were SUPERSTARS as much as Rice was -- except they were in the wrong city or the wrong ballpark or the wrong era.

2. If your response is to "put everyone in" where does the line get drawn? When is the Hall cheapened so much that the honor is worthless?

[Jack]

Poz didn't vote for Rice and I probably wouldn't either. Doesn't mean that I don't take some pleasure in seeing him enshrined. And the idea that some sort of pro-Sox bias is at play is a bit odd to me- there may be a bias to players who played for big winners (Yankees, Dodgers, Reds), but I don't really see it with Rice- he had a few teammates who were probably worthy of more consideration than they received (and some would argue more worthy than Rice himself) in Dwight Evans, Fred Lynn, and Luis Tiant- all of them are still revered in Boston, but none of them is even on the ballot at this point.

[SFHoya99]

I don't think there is a huge media bias in the HOF -- but there is in the "I thought he was a Superstar in his Youth" argument. Uggh. That's a bad reason to vote for a HOF. I realize Pos didn't vote that way, but he seems to be advocating it a bit.

[Jack]

Yeah, at age 8 I probably would have voted for every player ever to appear on "The Baseball Bunch" with Johnny Bench, but thankfully the voters have thus far resisted enshrining Rick Dempsey. Though Ted Simmons' lessons on switch-hitting should have been a bigger point in his favor.

[GIGAFAN99]

A couple of things:

I absolutely abhor using OPS and all that nonsense to pick hall of famers. Baseball is played on the field, not on a spreadsheet. Fantasy baseball and assessing free agents and prospects are good uses. Selecting players for the Hall of Fame is not.

The reason is simple. The player's career is over. All that stuff is cool when you're trying to predict performance per dollar in the front office or draft your fantasy team.

But after the fact, if a guy hangs on three years too long and that affects his adjustd scaled on-base plus earned run niner, who cares?

Rice was great in his prime. He's borderline for the hall still in my mind but a guy like Andre Dawson had power, speed, and a cannon you didn't even want to test. Murphy the same way. They're being killed by the roid rage inflation and the derived stat obsession.

Brian Giles has a 136 OPS? How do I enjoy that as a fan? I don't believe my dad and I ever sat around and said "Wow, did you see how Mike Schmidt increased the probability of Phils win today? That was some play to give us a 57.4% chance of victory. Had he not gunned that guy down, it would have been 52.6%, that last decimal is repeating of course."

I have more of a problem with the obviously big market bias SF mentions. Joe Gordon? Really? The 4th-best Yankee second-baseman is in the hall? Meanwhile Bert Blyleven and one of the greatest curveballs of all time AND the stats to back it up is not? Ridiculous.

I guess what I'm rambling about is the Hall of Fame is for the fans. And there's some stats in that, sure. Baseball is a game of numbers. But there's a certain nostalgia as well and things that can't be measured no matter how many numbers you crunch. I'm not sure if Rice is a HoFer but it doesn't degrade the hall to have him in. That's not to say you let everyone in, but I don't understand why erring on the side of very good when you're still talking about the top 1% is such a bad thing.