Jim Rice in the Hall?

Just looked up Rice on Baseball Reference. It says similar players include HOFers Orlando Cepeda, Duke Snider, Billy Williams and Willie Stargell. No HOFers come up as similar to Andruw Jones.

 

Depends on how much you value fielding. Rice was average in LF, at best. Jones was one of the top three CFs of all time.

Rice's hitting > Jones's hitting, sure. But Jones's fielding >>> Rice's fielding. (Baserunning seems about equal -- Jones was faster, but lazier. Intangibles? Clutch? Don't really think either was much better than the other in those subjective categories, but I suppose that's why it's all subjective.)


EDIT: B-R's similarity scores for position players completely ignore fielding. That's only comparing them as hitters. Explanation here: http://www.baseball-reference.com/about/similarity.shtml. And I agree, Andruw Jones would never be considered a Hall of Famer just based on his hitting.

 

Again, I'm not a baseball guy by any stretch, so correct me if I'm wrong, but there have to more than a few guys in the Hall who were average or even below-average fielders but got in as one of the most feared hitters of their era. And that's what Rice was.

 

Albert Belle > Jim Rice

 

OK, but what does fear mean? Does it mean pitchers/managers walked him a lot, intentionally or otherwise? Not really. He never walked more than 62 times in a season, and never once led the league in IBB. Does that mean the guys ahead of or behind him in the lineup got better pitches to hit? Not really. In his very best season, 1978, Remy and Yaz were pretty average in the 2nd and 4th spots, respectively. But forget the stats -- how do you measure fear, without being completely subjective about it?

Well, one way is MVP voting. Rice was considered very valuable -- finishing in the top-5 six times -- and only Dave Parker got a higher share of the MVP voting all-time without being voted into the Hall of Fame, among all eligible players.

So the perception was that he was a dominant, valuable, feared player. But was he? Well, the numbers don't back up that perception as much as some would like to think. He was no more dominant over his league in his time than Hall of Famers Goose Goslin or Mickey Cochrane -- or non-HOFers Joe Torre, Jimmy Wynn, Keith Hernandez and Moises Alou, at least according to OPS+. In fact, there are 127 other players who were more dominant than Rice over their own peers when you measure it by that number.

What kind of impact did that fear of Big, Bad Jim Rice have, statistically or otherwise? I haven't heard a good argument for it yet. It's just kind of accepted that he was feared, and of course he was. But what does that really mean?

 

And I'm in no way picking on you or putting you on the spot for an answer here. I could talk about this stuff for hours, that's all. All in good fun.

 

Jim Rice should have been in long before this. He will get my vote.

 

Unless you're Koufax, the voters wants their longevity.

 

The thing about "compilers" is that they're still ... you know ... compiling.

Rice's last two full years were .277/13/62 and .264/15/72. In the 56 games he played his last year, he hit .234.

As to B-R's comparable players, there are in fact 4 of Rice's comparables that are in the HOF. And there are 6 that aren't, including legends such as Ellis Burks and Chili Davis.

As to the 6 top-5 MVP finishes, I find it odd that in the eight other years he played full-time, he had a 13th, a 19th and a six years with no votes.

If Rice played anywhere other than Boston, New York or Chicago, we'd have long since quit discussing him.

 

I disagree. Jim Rice was that dangerous of a hitter is prime.

 

If his "prime" was 77-79, then I agree. Problem is, he's got all those other years. Years that make it clear he's not a Hall of Famer.